That's always been the risk for the US of being involved in a major contingency operation (regardless whether you chose the conflict, or it chose you)... the usual suspects on the other side of world might decide to take advantage of the situation while you're distracted.

Yes we plan for that as well. Immediately post cold war, the force structure plan was to be able to fight two such conflicts at once.

After enough drawdown, the philosophy shifted to "Fight One, Hold One". Idea being fight one conflict to a suitable resolution while preventing the other enemy from winning. Then shift forces from the first conflict to the second. Sounds challenging, and yes it is.

But in this case China is *very* deliberate about how they proceed.

1. They *really* like to watch, learn and take notes when we engage in major operations. As opposed to going off half-cocked on their end.

2. They like to do things on their own timeline, and they think long-term.

So I don't think they're going to start a war just because something else popped off on our end.

Now that's not absolutely saying that they might not have a plan ready, and their Go Criteria *requires* us to be involved elsewhere. Or even hypothetically that they arrange for the distraction to go down. But no sign of that in this case, I suspect this was probably instigated by IL one way or another.