Four days in Asia. That’s all it took for President Vladimir Putin of Russia to anger Washington, undermine Beijing and shake up a collection of Indo-Pacific countries already struggling to cope with a confused world order.
After stops in Pyongyang, North Korea, and Hanoi, Vietnam, last week, which were covered in communist red, Putin left behind a redrawn map of the risks in Asia. North Korea found itself at the center: a rogue state that regularly threatens its neighbors, suddenly emboldened by Russian promises of advanced military aid and a mutual defense pact.
Putin also signed at least a dozen agreements with Vietnam – a country of growing importance to both China and the United States as they vie for influence – in which he emphasized that a “reliable security architecture” could not be built with “closed military-political blocks’. ”
