U.S. seeks to rally allies through joint military exercises: expert

By Zhang Dongfang

The U.S. and the Philippines recently launched their 2025 joint military drills. Lin Kaicheng, associate professor at the School of Marxism, Jinan University, as well as deputy director of International Public Opinion Monitoring Laboratory on Chinese Peripheral Security in the South China Sea, said in an interview with China News Network that the U.S. seeks to cooperate with its allies to intensify deterrence against China and to convince the international community that it still holds a military advantage over China.

By accelerating the deployment of strategic and tactical weapons to the Philippines, the U.S. aims to quickly establish a military edge over China in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. This approach, however, inevitably pushes countries in the region to the forefront of a tense confrontation, Lin noted.

Although both the U.S. and the Philippines have their own calculations in the drills, their moves, whether reinforcing military deployments or provoking confrontational tensions, ultimately lead to the same result, that it, undermining China’s territorial sovereignty, maritime rights, and interests, as well as jeopardizing regional peace and stability, Lin said.