THE last time I wrote about this, I suggested, naively, it now turns out, that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. should urge the Pentagon to repatriate the mid-range missile system it had brought for the joint Philippine-American military exercise last April and left as a token of Philippine 'deterrence' at the Laoag international airport. China had asked the US to recall the system, but since there has been no response, I thought Marcos Jr. should talk to the Pentagon about it. That should put China in the Philippines' debt and help de-escalate the tension between the two countries.

I was wrong. If the latest press reports are to be believed, the two governments have agreed to keep the missile system where it is to boost the nation's deterrence. The reports identify the weapon as the Typhon missile system, a land-based weapon that can fire the Standard Missile-6 and the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile over a distance of 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers), well within China's missile range.