On Saturday, the 11th, the Asia Times published an interesting analysis on the relationship between economic investment and war. It notes that China has invested $145 billion in the Middle East, but “does not maintain a permanent military presence in this volatile region.” The result, the outlet continues, is “a structural inconsistency at the core of Chinese foreign policy: economic ambitions that increasingly depend on a security architecture that Beijing does not control.”
The United States, by contrast, maintains a strong military presence in the region, with around 50,000 troops at at least 19 military bases in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. It also has a military presence in Syria, Jordan, and Iraq.
At the same time, since 2003 the U.S. Navy has maintained its largest deployment in the Middle East, with more than a dozen ships, including aircraft carriers that form two strike groups, enabling it to project power throughout the region.
This formidable military muscle conveys to powers seeking to increase their global presence—particularly China—the need to expand their deployments simply to protect their substantial investments. Until now, China had been relying on its productive and commercial capacity to expand its influence, but the war against Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran will force the Dragon to seriously reconsider this matter.
A single statistic can illustrate the tremendous asymmetry of global power: The United States has 128 formal military bases and a total of 750 military facilities deployed primarily in Europe and the Middle East, amounting to a presence in 80 countries. China has only one permanent military base in Djibouti and a naval base in Cambodia. For now, China uses “support bases” focused on logistics and the control of trade routes for the Belt and Road Initiative, but not permanent military installations.
The problem China faces is that its substantial and growing investments are at risk if they are not accompanied by military protection. This is the logic of all empires throughout history. Furthermore, maritime routes for transporting hydrocarbons and goods can be disrupted, as is currently the case with the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Malacca is just as important, if not more so. It connects the Indian and Pacific Oceans and is crucial for Asian economies, particularly for China.
While 20% of the world’s traded oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, 25% of it—along with 50,000 ships a year—passes through the Strait of Malacca. Unlike the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca is 950 kilometers long and varies greatly in width, ranging from 250 meters to less than three kilometers. As you can imagine, blocking shipping traffic is even easier in this scenario.
China has built seven large artificial islands in the South China Sea and has militarized reefs and rocks to secure trade in the immediate vicinity. Each island has a runway, radar systems, and missiles. But beyond this sea, China’s military presence is not permanent, which could jeopardize its main global strategy, the Silk Roads, which include massive investments to facilitate trade between Asia and Europe.
China is at a turning point in light of the aggression by the United States and Israel against Iran. If it does not complement its commercial and investment expansion with military expansion, it could suffer substantial losses because its enemies are capable of bringing it to ruin. If it decides to expand militarily, it will have to finance an empire without yet having control over global finance. The United States can maintain a massive military budget (in fact, four times larger than China’s) because it leverages the advantages afforded by the dollar as a reserve currency, which it can print at will.
For social movements and the people in movement, this is terrible news, because this reality indicates that wars will become increasingly widespread and intense, in what some are already calling a period of “Permanent Systemic War.” In every region, we could consider how this war will play out and who the perpetrators will be, so that we are prepared to face it with the least material cost to the peoples.
A first task is to connect the different regions affected by war, which allows us to understand that in Venezuela and Massachusetts, in Gaza and Guerrero, the same issues are at stake—namely, accumulation through dispossession—which entails militarization and the displacement of populations.
A second is to understand that although they are all related, the various wars involve different modes, ranging from the war on drug trafficking to the genocide of populations. The common thread running through them is the war against the people, a necessary condition for capital to turn common goods into commodities.
Original text by Raúl Zibechi published in Desinformémonos on April 14th, 2026.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.