The Philippines remains the largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the Indo-Pacific region, having received more than $1.14 billion in funding from 2015 to 2022. These bases were used in every major U.S. war in the 20th century, as well as serving as “rest and recreation” sites for military personnel, in which an exploitative informal sex worker industry was made into an unofficial policy.
More than a century of systemic human rights violations — including gang rape, indiscriminate shootings and murder — have been committed by the U.S. military in the Philippines since the United States invaded and colonized the country in 1899. These crimes led in part to a nationwide social movement to close the Subic Bay Naval and Clark Air Force bases. By 1991, in an attempt to finally rollback U.S. colonial control, the Philippine Senate chose to not renew the U.S. military bases treaty.
The United States was key in propping up and emboldening martial law under the fascist dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. from 1965 to 1986. But last year, 36 years after the People Power uprising that ousted Marcos’s reign, the Marcos dynasty returned with the election of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., Ferdinand Sr.’s son, as president.
