>The Third Barbary War seems to be upon us. No- you need to go further back before you see the big picture. Much as in the ancient world (which the modern wor

>The Third Barbary War seems to be upon us. No- you need to go further back before you see the big picture. Much as in the ancient world (which the modern world order consists of in large part), this is a Romans vs. Parthians vs. Chinese thing. These actions are just the Parthians making access to the Silk Road harder, in the hopes that Consul Biden and the Senate and People of Rome (and the provinces they control) will stop supporting the king of Judea and his recent military invasion of the Parthian-allied settlements on his border. >Those shipping lanes are vital, and there is only so much disruption the international order will accept before putting a decisive end to the interference. I'll believe that as soon as the Chinese Emperor Xi commands his warships to sail out and fire their first salvos at the Parthian-supplied forces. The "international order" you think exists is literally just Rome and its provinces, and those provinces are currently busy supplying a civil war in the European Borderland (one the Romans were a major factor in creating the conditions for it to occur) and they barely contribute anything to their obligations in the North Adriatic Treaty Organization to begin with. They don't even have any legions to deploy (not that they could raise any in the first place) and won't be anywhere near decisive in a proper fight. So that just leaves the Romans themselves... who have been engaging in proxy military action (with the king of Arabia) to remove the Parthian proxies for the past 10 years or so with very little success. To be fair to Parthia, their main goal has always been to pull nearby provinces out of Roman orbit and into Parthia's- while Judea and Arabia might never enter the Parthian orbit unless physically conquered (organization of the Parthian-sympathetic states surrounding Judea has been a long goal of the Parthians; unfortunately for Parthia, their armies keep losing) the vassal states that depend heavily on goods traveling through the Silk Road might start to view the actions of the Judeans with disfavor. And sure, the Romans could always just attack the Parthian proxies directly- but the entire reason that Parthia can get away with this is because the Senate and People of Rome aren't actually interested in yet another desert war that costs quadrillions of denarii, and by committing to assisting the King of Arabia secure his southern flank they lock themselves out of defending a breakaway Chinese province (whose unique products Rome arguably values even more than the loyalty of its own provinces) should the Chinese attempt to capture it, as they've long been threatening to do.