The Chinese are coming.  A website linked to Israeli intelligence reports that a new Chinese aircraft carrier and missile cruiser has passed through the Suez Canal.  That fact cannot be hidden, so it is likely to be true. 

The Chinese task force is heading for the Russian-controlled Mediterranean port of Tartus, to join Syria's Assad and Hezb'allah forces aiming to knock out the U.S.-supported Sunni rebels in Syria.  Russia also now controls a Syrian air base. 

The Russians and Chinese have limited force-projection capabilities, but put them both together, combined with Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hezb'allah, and Assad's troops, and you get the kind of force projection only the U.S. has possessed in the past half-century. 

This is a major surprise strategic move, coordinated by Putin while talking peace at the U.N. 

Obama has been snookered again. 

Putin is insisting that ISIS is his target.  At the U.N. he (correctly) compared ISIS to Hitler's Nazis.  But his real goal is a superpower play against the United States and its half-century of dominance in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean.  Pax Americana is gone. 

The United States simply lacks the political leadership with a strategic vision able to cope with this major new threat.  Under Obama, the U.S. has lost credibility with our former allies like Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.  We therefore do not know how the dominoes will fall. 

In the worst case, it will accelerate the rise of Iran's Armageddon cult to regional power.  In the best case, Putin is positioning to cut the Iranian Crescent in half.  Chances are that Putin doesn't want an Islamofascist nuclear power on his southern border.  ISIS has recruited both Chechen and Uighur Muslims, who pose a domestic threat to Russia and China, respectively. 

In the last few days, France has also sent jet bombers to raid ISIS training camps, possibly based on its sole modern aircraft carrier. 

All these moves could be coordinated, with the aim of bringing Russia and China into the Middle East while the U.S. deliberately turns away. 

These big, coordinated moves spell a long-term change in global power politics.