Replies

If China is going to Syria they are going for one reason and that is to build a unit of troops trained in combat on a modern battlefield.

China hasn’t had that in decades since they fought the Vietnamese and got their butts handed to them.

Looks like the Chinese are doing what the Italians did at the end of WWI and joining the war during its final stages on a flimsy pretext in order to gain a small bit of territory and influence for very little cost. Because they have a lot of money, and a powerful economic machine behind them, they are able to make better progress per dollar/pound/euro/shekel/wampum spent and per life lost [not that they ever cared for such things as long as it served the general strategic interest, from the Yellow Emperor until Korea].

This is almost certainly tied into [and likely caused by] the construction of the New Silk Road, which is intended to stretch roughly along the path of the original one. Great strides have been made in the last ten years alone in this regard, and it was a large part of the reason that Xi Jinping was elevated to the status of Mao and Deng Xiaopeng at the Party Congress earlier this year. But there was a problem in the construction – how to get to Anatolia or the Caucasus. [I strongly doubt that the second will be the main road, though it will likely become a spur, as the Chinese have not had excellent relations with the Russians for sixty years.] Now that they have a foothold in Syria, the path to the Mediterranean and beyond can be completed. It is a massive political and economic coup now and will be a well-known one when it is finally completed, which at its current pace should be roughly 5-10 years.