“Western countries are trying to preserve a former world order that is beneficial only to them,” he told participants at the Eastern Economic Forum in the Russian city of Vladivostok in September. Those days were numbered, he insisted. The future was in the “dynamic, promising countries and regions of the world, especially in the Asia Pacific region,” he said. Putin was followed on stage by Myanmar coup leader Min Aung Hlaing – the symbolism not lost on close observers of regional politics. This week Putin was invited to attend the Group of 20 meeting, which opens on Tuesday on the Indonesian island of Bali. It appeared to be the perfect space to double its views in the Asia-Pacific, particularly in Southeast Asia – one of the world’s most economically dynamic regions. But it was not to be. Putin skipped his moment in the Balinese sun for unspecified “scheduling” reasons. With Putin a no-show, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had a captive audience when he addressed the summit effectively on Tuesday after being invited to attend by the summit’s host, Indonesian President Joko Widodo. Putin’s absence from the G20 undermines “the debate about a Russian pivot to Asia,” wrote Suzanne Patton of the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank. Now with the Russian military on the retreat in parts of Ukraine and international sanctions biting deep into Russia’s economy, some old friends in Southeast Asia appear to be avoiding direct eye contact as Putin looks east. Others are actively looking the other way, and Myanmar appears to be Moscow’s last true friend in the region. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Myanmar’s Senior General Min Aung Hlaing meet at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia in September 2022 [File: Valery Sharifulin/Sputnik/Kremlin pool via AP]
Old comrades, short memories
Russia has no major strategic interests in Southeast Asia, but Soviet-era ties run deep, and Moscow has longstanding political and emotional ties to the former nations of Indochina: Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Hanoi, in particular, remembers Russian support during the war against the US-backed regime in South Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s — a war it won in 1975. Vietnam and Laos abstained from UN resolutions condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, annexation of Ukrainian territory, and voted against Russia’s suspension from the UN Human Rights Council. In Monday’s vote on a resolution requiring Russia to pay reparations for damage caused in Ukraine, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were among the 73 assembly members who abstained. Among countries in the region, only Singapore and the Philippines supported the resolution. Vietnamese communist soldiers advancing under heavy machine gun fire during the Vietnam War, circa 1968 [File: Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images] Vietnam’s decision to stay away from the UN is perfectly legal, argued Huynh Tam Sang, a lecturer at Ho Chi Minh City’s University of Social Sciences and Humanities. But it is also “morally questionable” as Vietnam has failed to uphold the “principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he writes. This is no small oversight for a country whose successful liberation struggles against foreign occupiers—China, France, and the United States—are a defining national motif. “Vietnam’s move is to avoid criticism and possible retaliation from Moscow,” said Huynh Tam Sang, pointing to the material behind the fraternity: trade relations between Hanoi and Moscow amounted to nearly $2.5 billion the first eight months of this year and Russia is a major investor in Vietnam’s oil and gas sectors. Russia is also Vietnam’s largest arms supplier. “It is not in Vietnam’s interest to weaken Russia,” Carlyle A Thayer, an emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales in Canberra, told Al Jazeera in a recent interview.
Historical threads
Vietnam’s support for Russia must be understood in light of Hanoi’s traditionally fraught relationship with neighboring China. Vietnam fought its own border war with China in 1979 and often relies on its ties to Moscow as a counterweight to pressure from its historic rival. Neighboring Cambodia, however, with its authoritarian Putin-like leader Hun Sen, who has held power for 37 years, has shown stunning defiance of its former Soviet-era aid donor and political backer. The then-Soviet Union was one of the first countries to help rebuild Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge regime, when the government in Phnom Penh — installed by Vietnam — faced near-total Western sanctions. One of Phnom Penh’s most popular markets is still known as the “Russian Market” due to the large population of Russian diplomats and technical aides from the Soviet states who frequented its stalls during the 1980s. Just last year, Hun Sen received the medal of the Order of Friendship of Russia. Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen during their meeting at the ASEAN-Russia summit in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia, in 2016 [File: Alexander Zemlianichenko, pool/AP Photo] But that hasn’t stopped the Cambodian leader from taking a “surprisingly tough stance” against Moscow over the war in Ukraine, according to Ian Storey, senior fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. Hun Sen not only called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine an “act of aggression,” but also questioned Russia’s ability to emerge victorious and expressed a willingness to accept Ukrainian refugees, Story notes. Hun Sen’s pro-Ukraine stance appeared to prompt the Russian ambassador to remind him in a tweet that it was Moscow that came to Cambodia’s aid “at the most difficult time in its history” after the Khmer Rouge. 📌 Discussed both the history and prospects of relations 🇷🇺🇰🇭 at the online conference in the framework of the project “#Russia in the South Seas”. Our two nations have always maintained friendly relations. It was Moscow that helped Phnom Penh in the most difficult period of its history. pic.twitter.com/GMPm9HUOBD — Anatoly Borovik (@RusAmbCambodia) March 23, 2022 Cambodia was not moved by the Russian reminder. Phnom Penh has been a supporter of UN resolutions condemning Russia’s invasion — though it has abstained on some Ukraine-related votes — and more recently, Hun Sen invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to speak via video link at the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) last weekend in Phnom Penh. The invitation was apparently torpedoed by the need for consensus among ASEAN leaders. Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia have been more cautious in their public statements about the war, with G20 host Indonesia careful to maintain its traditional non-aligned stance. But Indonesia’s Widodo first visited Kyiv and Moscow the next day in late June, when he went to discuss the global food crisis with Zelensky and Putin and apparently extended personal invitations to the Bali summit.
Russian arms market
Russia’s arms industry is the “single largest supplier of major arms to Southeast Asia,” according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Russia has accounted for more than a quarter of all major arms deliveries to the region over the past 20 years, according to SIPRI, and when Moscow can’t sell its weapons for cash, it has been willing to make swap deals or give loans. Indonesia’s government planned to buy 11 Russian-made Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets from Russia in a deal that included paying half the cost in exchange for agricultural and other products, according to reports. In the Philippines, Russia said in 2018 that it was “more than willing” to provide a soft loan so Manila could buy its first — but Russian-built — submarine, the country’s Philippine News Agency reported. As SIPRI points out, Russian arms sales to Southeast Asia are “an important component of Russia’s total export earnings and essential for maintaining the economic viability of the Russian arms industry.” But with US sanctions imposed on Russia following its 2014 annexation of Crimea and alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, some regional governments have already begun to distance themselves from Russia. Manila did not buy the Russian submarine and Jakarta announced in December that the Sukhoi fighter deal was dead. Now, with a raft of sanctions related to the Ukraine war awaiting those dealing with Moscow, Russia’s arms export industry looks set to feel the collateral damage of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Take the Philippines for example. Fearing sanctions, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said last month that his country would procure military helicopters from the US after scrapping a $215 million deal to buy 16 heavy-lift helicopters from Russia. The government of Marcos Jr.’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, had signed the deal with Russia in November 2021. But even Duterte wanted to distance himself from Putin, who he had once described as his idol, after the invasion in Ukraine. “Many say that Putin and I are both murderers,” Duterte said three months after the invasion in May. “I have long told you Filipinos that I really kill. But I kill criminals, I don’t kill children and the elderly,” he said, comparing his brutality to that of Putin in Ukraine. “We are in two different worlds,” he added.
“21st Century Imperialism”
The Southeast Asian extreme is the military rule of Myanmar, which has fully supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Already…
