JRL NEWSWATCH: “Why China and Russia are obsessed with vast new war games” – Reuters/Peter Apps
“… Chinese troops will join their Russian counterparts for Moscow’s largest military exercises in more than three decades. … six months after Beijing’s biggest ever offshore naval drills, the joint war games are another reminder of how central military posturing now is to the world’s two most powerful authoritarian states. … neither likely desires or expects war with the United States or its allies[;] both Beijing and Moscow want to give every impression they are increasingly ready – and are relying on that message to dominate their neighborhoods and intimidate …. Both countries also have an unambiguous message … that if war should come in Eastern Europe or the South China Sea, the United States would risk serious losses if it tried to intervene. …”