[Source: Reuters]

The U.S. has deployed troops and anti-ship missiles into the northern Philippines as part of almost continuous, joint war drills throughout the country.

One goal is to block the Bashi Channel and deny Chinese warships access to the Pacific Ocean if Beijing launches an attack on Taiwan. As a former Philippine military chief told Reuters: You can’t invade Taiwan if you don’t control the northern Philippines.

Marilyn Hubalde still remembers the first time she heard the thunderous chop of military helicopters swooping over this northernmost outpost of the Philippines, less than 90 miles from Taiwan.

It was April 2023, when Filipino and American troops descended on the cluster of 10 emerald green islands of Batanes province for amphibious warfare drills.

“We were terrified,” the 65-year-old Hubalde recalled. “We thought China might attack when they learned there were military exercises in Batanes.” Hubalde’s helper, who was in the fields when the troops arrived, panicked and hid in the woods until nightfall. “She thought the war had already started,” said Hubalde, who owns a variety store in the provincial capital, Basco.

Since then, Batanes’ 20,000 residents have become accustomed to high-tempo war games in these islands of tightly packed towns and villages wedged between rugged slopes and stony beaches.

Among them: a series of joint exercises from April to June this year in which U.S. forces twice airlifted anti-ship missile launchers here.

Until recently, locals say, this smallest and least populous province of the Philippines was a peaceful backwater.

But geography dictates that it is now on the frontline of the great power competition between the United States and China for dominance in the Asia-Pacific region.

The islands sit on the southern edge of the Bashi Channel, a major shipping lane between the Philippines and Taiwan that connects the South China Sea with the Western Pacific.

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