Four days in Asia. That’s all President Vladimir Putin of Russia needed to anger Washington, undermine Beijing and rattle a collection of Indo-Pacific nations already scrambling to cope with a jumbled world order.
After stops in Pyongyang, North Korea, and Hanoi, Vietnam, last week that were draped in communist red, Putin left behind a redrawn map of risk in Asia. North Korea sat at the center: a rogue nuclear state that regularly threatens its neighbors, suddenly empowered by Russian promises of sophisticated military aid and a mutual defense pact.
Putin also signed at least a dozen deals with Vietnam — a country of growing importance for both China and the United States as they vie for influence — where he insisted that "reliable security architecture” could not be built with "closed military-political blocs.”