With blood on the streets of Bangkok and no end in sight to the struggle for Thailand's future, it is hard to look beyond next weekend, much less towards anything more strategic. The crisis means that much of the government's routine planning - both domestic and foreign - is on hold, and Thailand's emerging military relationship with China appears to be no exception.
There are few more closely watched and intriguing relationships in East Asia than the Sino-Thai military connection.
On the surface, they might seem strange bedfellows. A proud constitutional monarchy and a US treaty ally - a cold-war friendship that has been maintained - Thailand and its powerful military brass have long been suspicious of communism.
Yet Thailand's independence, its position at the heart of Southeast Asia and its quiet integration of its ethnic Chinese population - to an extent quite beyond anything seen elsewhere in the region - has long provided opportunities for Beijing.
Long before Beijing famously took the unprecedented step of chipping in to the International Monetary Fund-led bailout of Thailand in the Asian financial crisis in 1997, it was developing a discreet and highly strategic relationship.
China sold Thailand cut-rate oil to help the kingdom through the oil shocks of the early 1970s. And when the collapse of the Khmer Rouge in neighbouring Cambodia saw Vietnamese invaders move close to the Thai border a few years later, the two militaries swiftly forged secret co-operation to support Pol Pot's remnants in jungle hideouts.
The secret funnelling of cash and materiel from China to the Khmer Rouge via the Thai military became known as the 'Deng Xiaoping Highway'.
