In September, 2025, the US military deployed its Typhon mid-range capability missile launcher system in Yamaguchi, Japan following joint military exercises with Japan.
They said this deployment was only temporary but it took weeks before its withdrawal was completed---just last November 17---and only after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi started a flurry of vitriols against China, which exacerbated into a war of words between the two neighbors over the issue of Taiwan.
The Typhon missile system formerly located in Yamaguchi is capable of launching Tomahawk and SM-6 missiles that could reach Beijing.
This is the same missile system that Defense Secretary Gibo Teodoro and General Romeo Brawner Jr. are fixated about, hoping that someday, the Philippines could acquire these modern weapons of war. But with the way President Bongbong Marcos, their commander in chief, is handling the country's finances---wasting billions and billions of people's money to corruption, this dream will never see the light of day.
After the September 2025 drills, Japan said the Typhon system will be returned to the US, its Japanese sojourn being only temporary. But this did not happen at once, since the system's disposition depends on the US, not its ally.
The presence of the Typhon in Yamaguchi is hinged on the US-Japan Security Treaty or the Anpo joyaku, a treaty that permits the presence of US military bases on Japanese soil and commits the two nations to defend each other in case of foreign aggression.
The Anpo is just like the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) between the Philippines and the United States wherein an attack on the Philippines or the US by a foreign power obligates the other partner to help militarily.
The MDT recognizes that an attack in the Pacific on either side would endanger the peace of both and they agree to act in concert to meet the common danger. It was signed in Washington DC on August 30, 1951.
American officials such as Presidents Obama, Biden and Trump and their ambassadors in Manila and their senators, congressmen and secretaries of Defense and State were all parroting the same narrative---that America will never abandon the Philippines in case of war just like General Douglas MacArthur did when he pulled his coward ass to Australia at the height of the war in Corregidor.
They used to say, and still say, that we Filipinos have their "iron-clad" support.
This iron-clad "budol" is the same promise the administration of President Trump made to Japanese officials, but on the first signs of trouble such as what we are now witnessing with the ramping up of tension between Tokyo and Beijing, the POTUS was spooked by Xi Jinping and immediately pulled out his Typhon from Yamaguchi.
Will Trump move the Typhon missile system to Northern Luzon, more specifically to Cagayan province, where the same system had been deployed by the American military since the Balikatan Exercises in April, 2024.
Just like the Japanese government, the Bongbong Marcos administration showed that it has no control over the disposition of this missile system which is situated in the various EDCA military sites all over the country, particularly in Northern Luzon.
Teodoro and Brawner should point out to their Commander-in-Chief who might not be aware of it because of his dependence on some harmful chemicals that the "iron-clad" commitment of the US to Japan has just been proven as non-existent or "ampaw."
This goes to show that "iron-clad" will also not be true for the Philippines.
If the US can do this to a strong, rich and powerful country like Japan (the third biggest economy in the world), it goes without saying that they can easily do this to the Philippines, a servile vassal and an unimportant ally.
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