The Chinese famously play the long game. The high priest of realpolitik, Henry Kissinger, coldly noted, “China’s leaders avoid direct confrontation and prefer to achieve their objectives indirectly.” Basically, in every international conflict the Chinese frame a position but never actively participate in any war directly. This allows them to provoke from the sidelines, but never commit to any boots-on-ground or risk any sovereign wherewithal. If anything, the Chinese gain commercially by selling weapons to one side or the other in the conflict.

The last three decades have seen major global conflicts in the Middle East theatre (Gulf War-1, Gulf War-2, ISIL and other terror group wars, Syrian Civil War, Yemen Civil War, and most recently, in Iran), Ukraine War, African conflicts (Congo, Darfur, Somalia, Libya, Mali etc.,), Balkan Wars, and Afghanistan. All these bloody conflicts have entailed the active military participation of the United States of America. Besides the obvious human costs, Brown University estimated that the total financial cost to the USA was about $8 trillion for only the post-9/11 wars ~ not including the very expensive ongoing war with Iran.

Meanwhile, the Chinese have literally staked nothing in terms of human costs or financial costs, save for earning from each of these conflicts, by selling weaponry. On the contrary, the Chinese have steadily and increasingly been upping their investments in developing new military technologies, platforms, and capabilities, without risking any damage to their military infrastructure. Conservative estimates of about $5 trillion investment in the Chinese military in the commensurate three decades, without including “off-budget” defense-related expenditures, tells a parallel story.

While this figure of investment still makes China the second biggest spender on the military behind the USA ~ the investments in the defence budgets of the USA are getting neutralized by the expenditure outflow incurred in participating in global conflicts. The USA’s longest........

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