By Richard Weitz
With large-scale military exercises and huge energy deals, Russia has been increasingly assertive in Asia.
Russia’s security differences with NATO countries have been encouraging Moscow to strengthen ties with Asian countries, above all China. These differences range from concerns over U.S. missile defense programs to unease about NATO’s increasingly capable conventional weapons to dissatisfaction with Moscow’s minimal influence on European security issues due to Russia’s non-membership in NATO. The U.S. “pivot” to Asia has also irritated Russian policymakers given Washington’s reluctance to engage Russia as an Asian power. But Moscow and the West do share overlapping security interests in Iran, North Korea, WMD nonproliferation and especially Afghanistan. These interests should buffer Russian-Western tensions for now and perhaps provide the foundation for a better relationship in the future.
Washington’s new Asian focus has removed some sources of strain between Russia and the West. For example, U.S. efforts to offer NATO membership to more former Soviet republics, such as Georgia and Ukraine, have noticeably slackened since the rebalancing began. Yet, the pivot confronts Moscow with the problem that the main European security actor, the United States, considers the Middle East and East Asia higher priority areas than Europe, which Washington sees as a relatively stable security environment. Russians insist that European stability is fragile due to Moscow’s artificially marginalized status. A reinforcing problem is that Washington policymakers often treat Russia as a second-rate Pacific player. Most visibly, U.S. officials fail to mention Russia in key speeches on Asia, such as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s speech at the recent Shangri-La security conference in Singapore. Moreover, since Russian analysts discount U.S claims that Iran, North Korea, or other rogue countries are serious threats to Western security, they suspect that U.S. policymakers cite Asian disputes as a convenient pretext to justify augmenting U.S. military capabilities, such as missile defenses, that Washington could use against Russia.
Russian policymakers have responded to these challenges by acting more assertively in Asia and developing security ties with China, including renewed arms sales and new bilateral military exercises, and other Asian players to remind Western countries that it too is an Asian-Pacific power.
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