Re: Blood and Iron

Chapter 732: Eastern Proxies

The council chamber in the Presidential Palace of Manila was filled with silence. For the last ten years the Philippines had been slowly progressing towards total independence.

And now the ships in the harbor said otherwise.

Outside the window, one could see in the distance that the port was filled with freighters, a newly painted ANZAC transport ship, and a pair of US Liberty-class troop carriers already taking on fuel.

The sound of diesel and gulls threaded the air like a warning.

Ambassador James Halvey smoothed his tie, an anachronism of silk and American confidence, and folded his hands on the mahogany table.

Across from him sat the Transitional Council for Philippine Independence: a mix of former guerrilla commanders, technocratic economists, and a woman who had once run a provincial hospital and now ran the Council’s public health portfolio.

There was an undercurrent of fatigue in every one of their faces. Ten years of transition had aged them ahead of the calendar.

“Mr. Ambassador,” said Councilor Reyes, the hospital administrator, “we are grateful for your support over the last decade. But we did not vote for permanent bases.”

Halvey inclined his head. “No one is asking you for permanency, Councilor. We are asking for access. Temporary stationing. Rotational forces to assist with training and logistics. The Philippines would remain sovereign; our forces would be guests under the terms we agree.”

A rustle of papers.

An ex-guerrilla named Lumbayan, still broad shoulders under his civilian shirt, narrowed his eyes.

“Guests don’t occupy the guest room in your house and then rearrange it. Guests don’t dig bunkers in the yard. What guarantees do we have? Guarantees our islands won’t be a staging ground for a new war in Asia?”

Halvey let the question hang. It was the right question.

Washington had written it into talking points and then shelved the fear.

The Philippines wasn’t just a piece on a chessboard: it was the homeland of three generations, the storehouse of a contested identity, and now the theater where the United States wanted to project power.

The American civil religion of “forward defense” clashed with the very human fear of becoming someone else’s battlefield.

“Simple guarantees,” he said. “Time limits. Withdrawal clauses triggered by Parliament. Clear rules of engagement that preclude offensive operations launched from your soil. A joint oversight commission with Philippine representation and an audit mechanism, public. We will not occupy your ports. We will coordinate our logistics through your Ministry of Defense.”

Reyes folded and refolded a small, dog-eared list.

“You know the Germans are already in Sakhalin and the northern islands. The Japanese have since their defeat become a permanent fortress of German projection in the east. And their allies in Thailand grow more fearsome by the day… If you station forces here, it will open a new theater here in Asia.”

Halvey felt the floor lean. “Germany has influence where it has influence. We are not France and we are not Britain. We are asking to help you ensure your independence, not to wage war on your soil. The presence will be temporary and transparent.”

Lumbayan laughed, short and bitter. “Your transparency will be written in English and read to us in Tagalog. We have seen transparency before.”

From the side of the room an aide entered, clutching a tablet.

Halvey glanced down: aerial reconnaissance photography, ship manifests, troop movement timetables.

“Councilors, if I may be frank, the Pacific has already changed. Germany’s naval reach is preying on the old order; the Japanese rump state is a tributary now, but the strategic lines run through the islands. The Americans cannot let the ANZAC and allied logistics be choked on the way to the theater where our interests remain.”

There it was, “theater,” finally said without romance or euphemism.

No one in the room wanted artillery on their beaches even if they all understood the calculus that had birthed the ask.

The Philippines had been nominated by geography and history; now it was up for negotiation.

Councilor Reyes pressed a fingertip to her lip. “You expect trust where we have every reason to be suspicious.”

“We expect a mutual investment,” Halvey answered. “Aid, upgrades to ports, improved civil logistics, emergency medical infrastructure. Real projects that leave behind something your people can use after we leave. We’ll refurbish three regional hospitals, modernize the Bataan supply yards, and fund a ten-year educational grant to train your logistics corps.”

The word “leave” tasted thin in the air. Lumbayan muttered, “And if the Germans or their proxies decide this island is in their line of sight?”

Halvey could not say what the Defense Department had whispered into his ear: intelligence, now classified at the highest level, recommended contingency plans for covert harassment at sea.

There were already rumors, a shadow war of sabotage and whispers, a quiet testing of nerves across the sea lanes. He folded the tablet closed.

He chose the truth that was politically useful.

“Then we will make the islands harder to take than they are to hold. We will harden your infrastructure, train your ports to be redundant, and build logistics webs quick enough that any force thinking of choking us would face spirals of delay.”

Reyes looked at Lumbayan, and for a second the two of them were a single voice of weary realism.

“So the offer is carrots and fortification, and the price is our assent to foreign troops on our soil while our neighbors rearrange themselves into new empires.”

Halvey’s jaw went tight.

He had negotiated ceasefires and commodity deals and hedged statecraft in three continents.

This was the hardest ask yet: to promise defense while preventing domination.

“You have leverage,” he said. “You have the right to demand specifics: limits on troop concentrations, the right to audit, sunset clauses, and an automatic revocation triggered by violations. We can put those terms into law; we can make them binding on the men who come ashore.”

Silence. Outside, a freighter’s horn moaned.

Beyond the harbor, the silhouette of a German corvette crawled across the horizon like a dark idea.

Councilor Reyes let out a breath and set the papers down.

“We will not sign blank checks. We will not become a bridgehead for a war we did not choose. If you want our sovereignty intact, you will propose a treaty in three parts: a five-year access agreement, a joint oversight council with veto rights for emergency sorties, and a public accounting of all munitions and their purpose. Anything else, and you will find our ports closed.”

Halvey’s relief was private. It was smaller than the bargain. “We can write that. We can accept that.”

Lumbayan’s eyes stayed hard. “And one more thing… our people will watch your men. Not because we do not trust, but because we do not forgive being turned into other people’s staging grounds.”

He pushed his hand flat on the table and looked each foreign face in the room. “Let there be no bases. Let there be no permanence. Let the law be the law.”

Halvey inverted his palms and smiled in the practiced way of diplomats who had accepted a hard truth.

“No bases. Guests. Transparency. Sunset clauses. We’ll begin drafting tonight and bring a clean text to you by morning.”

They stood, and the day outside made a sudden, ordinary clatter, jeepney horns, market cries, the clink of dishes.

Halvey stepped into the sunlight and felt the country breathe under him: a fragile thing being used as a weapon and a shield, depending on which hand you trusted.

Somewhere between the shore and the horizon, the future of a nation was being auctioned for the time being, and no amount of hospital grants could buy back the nights their sons might spend on another man’s beach.

The republic negotiates its survival in teaspoons and treaties. The sea takes what the continent will not yield.