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Philippines was a Spanish colony in the 19th century. At the end of the 19th, Filipinos rebelled and declared independence. The US, as part of the Spanish-American War, allied with the Filipinos to defeat the Spanish but decided to take over the Philippines as a colony rather than allowing the Filipinos to have self-government. In 1898 and the following years the US military killed a quarter of a million Filipinos and took over the country; until the WWII Japanese occupation (early 1940s), the Philippines was a US colony.
The Philippine Left fought the Japanese occupation forces during WWII with USG. End of WWII, USG turned on Philippine left, hunted them down and tried to disarm them. (Note that this was similar to the British and US treatment of the US-Britain-allied antifascist left in Vietnam and Greece at the end of WWII.) After WWII, USG supported former Japanese collaborators. When Philippine Left won seats in elections, they were not allowed to sit in National Assembly.
Then followed a long history of extensive US intervention in Philippine affairs which continues to present. (Colonel Edward Lansdale was in charge of creating Philippine president Magsaysay; Lansdale would later provide the same sorts of services for the US as the handler for the US's South Vietnamese puppet, Ngo Dinh Diem.) Included US support for candidates in elections, a candidate flying in US helicopter on campaign, US-designed counterinsurgency plan, US direction of Philippine presidents from the US embassy, USG asking Philippine govts to deal with unpleasant Philippine public opinion regarding US-backed dictators in other countries (Rhee in S. Korea and Chang in Taiwan), CIA funding of scores of Philippine newspapers, US military support for the dictator Marcos who declared Martial Law in 1972 and was repeatedly called democratic by USG and US press, USG support for 1986 coup and "People's Power" revolution that overthrew Marcos in 1986 (during which much of the Philippine military waited to see which way the US would jump, since the Philippine military was not only focused almost entirely on killing Filipinos rather than defending the Philippines from foreign powers, but was structured to be so dependent on the US military that it only had the capability to operate for a matter of hours without US military backup), and successful USG pressure on new President Cory Aquino to deal with Philippine constitution's antinuclear provision that made conditions difficult for US military at its huge bases in the Philippines.
Later the bases were removed, but then US troops returned to the Philippines as part of the "War on Terror." The Philippines has been completely US-dominated for over a century.