Thursday, June 20, 2024, 7:00 p.m.
The search for a “reliable security architecture” in Asia and the Pacific to which Vladimir Putin has dedicated his tour of North Korea and Vietnam could well be translated as an attempt to minimize the international isolation to which Russia has been subjected since the invasion of Ukraine. After the usual trips to China, in December he took a new step with visits to several countries in the Persian Gulf and two weeks ago he moved the campaign to Cuba with the sending of a Navy flotilla.
The Kremlin seeks to show that it maintains its firm bloc of allies when the divisions among the countries that support kyiv are increasing when it comes to continuing with unlimited support for Volodymyr Zelensky’s army. Likewise, he poses a new challenge to the West, especially the United States. If Putin intended to irritate the White House and NATO, he has achieved it with the mutual defense commitment signed on Wednesday with the Kim Jong-un regime and the triumphant red carpet reception that the two communist leaders of Hanoi gave him yesterday – the President To Lam and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh – in a nod to the old days, although risking an angry reaction from the West.
Washington and its entourage consider that Putin has achieved in this journey a speaker, with limited scope but capable of expanding his speech. For this, they blame Vietnam – it knows that Pyongyang is impenetrable to North American influence – for failing to comply with the pacts signed a year ago during a trip by Joe Biden that forced him to distance himself from Moscow in exchange for the help he received from the West. Hence the sour response of the United States to the eleven agreements signed with Putin on energy, nuclear science, education, technology, defense and security.
China influence
Washington’s fate in this area of the planet depends largely on its good relations with Vietnam to counteract China’s influence in a territory very distant for the White House. However, Hanoi wants to have its own character in its foreign policy. That is why it is committed to a balance, without favoring any of the great powers despite mutual hostility. It has its own interests, forgetting its communist past and a quasi-capitalist present that has its main export market in North American territory. The so-called “bamboo diplomacy”, as described by Alexander Vuving, of the Asia-Pacific Security Center, based in Hawaii.
This turn by Moscow towards Asia to avoid Western sanctions has set off alarm bells in Washington and predicts a new episode between closed political-military blocs. Russia’s move has caught the Biden Administration off guard at a time when global attention and its particular gaze are focused on the Middle East crisis while the Ukraine conflict appears frozen.
Putin’s tour is carefully scheduled in settings lately forgotten by the West. His confidence has increased recently. He feels like a winner of the Ukrainian conflict, as can be detected in his more aggressive and forceful speech, and in his bold steps outside its borders to reject the image of loneliness on the world stage. He always has the safety net of only visiting countries that do not recognize the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which issued an arrest warrant against the Russian president for alleged war crimes.
The Kremlin’s propaganda machine is trying hard to convey the message that Western attempts to isolate Moscow are not working. A successful publicity coup when in Washington the date of most interest is next November 4, when Biden and Donald Trump are playing at the polls for the lease of the White House until 2028.
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