By Richard Weitz
Russia has a strong stake in Asia. The U.S. should recognize this.
The Sochi Olympics should help counter the view that Russia is not an influential player in Asia. Whereas major European and U.S. political leaders have boycotted the event, the leaders of China and Japan could not. Indeed, Sochi witnessed vigorous trilateral diplomacy as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping lobbied for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s favors. Russia has critical national interests in Asia and employs diverse tactics to pursue them. Moscow’s main problem is that, while it has major stakes in Asia, its means to pursue them are weak. In some cases of overlapping Russian-U.S. national interests, it would prove mutually beneficial for Washington to help Moscow to achieve its goals.
Russia’s overarching goals in Asia generally include promoting multipolarity (limiting U.S. influence but also managing China’s rise), developing beneficial economic relations, having a visible presence in all major Asian events and institutions (to accord with the vision of Russia as a great power), and minimizing the adverse impact of regional disputes while seeking to exploit some of them to enhance Russia’s influence and interests.
Russia’s tactics to achieve these objectives include pursuing a “multi-vector” strategy of seeking good relations with all players, encouraging balanced trade and high-tech inward investment, using arms and energy exports as foundational instruments to develop more comprehensive ties, conducting flexible diplomatic alignments in which Moscow seeks to avoid backing one side in territorial or other disputes so as to induce all parties to curry Moscow’s favor, and “Project Siberia.” The latter strategy of developing the Russian Far East by increasing its economic integration within East Asia has both defensive and offensive purposes. Moscow hopes to counter Chinese economic absorption of Siberia as a raw material appendage while simultaneously building a more solid foundation for promoting Russia’s regional influence.
Read the full 2 page story at The Diplomat