BARACK Obama used his speech to the Australian parliament last year to

BARACK Obama used his speech to the Australian parliament last year to signal the US would pivot towards Asia. Now Russian President Vladimir Putin has used a major international summit to signal a similar move.

Like the US, Russia is shifting its economic, strategic and political attentions away from moribund Europe and toward booming Asia – away from an Atlantic past and towards a Pacific future.

Like President Obama, Putin knows this will be an Asia-Pacific century.

“Russia has long been an intrinsic part of the Asian-Pacific region,” Putin wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week.

“We view this dynamic region as the most important factor for the successful future of the whole country.”

That first line is a bit of a fib. While Russia is geographically Eurasian – if fact, most of its landmass is considered to be Asia – it has until recently had relatively little to do with the region.

It still conducts more than half its trade with Europe and less than a quarter with Asia.

But the second part of Putin’s statement is spot on. Russia is unlikely to have a bright economic future unless it finds a way to harness the stunning growth of Asia, particularly China.

Against this backdrop, last week’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders summit was Russia’s regional coming-out party.

Putin hosted the summit in the far eastern city of Vladivostok, a former Soviet-era naval port once almost completely closed to the outside world.

It was effectively a Cold War fortress. But now Putin wants it to become a gateway for Russian trade and engagement with Asia.

The Russian government pumped about $20 billion dollars into upgrading the city’s infrastructure ahead of the summit.

This included the construction of a giant bridge linking Vladivostok city with Russky Island, where the 21 regional leaders held their talks.

Russky Island will now become home to the new Far Eastern Federal University.

One cannot escape the sense that it is also profoundly symbolic and grander than it needs to be, designed to impose and impress and project a sense of power, thrusting out from the Russian mainland towards the Asia-Pacific.

But it’ll take a lot more than a big bridge to turn Vladivostok into any sort of Eurasian hub.

While the name Vladivostok means “ruler of the east” or “power over the east” – depending on which translation one uses – neither description is remotely accurate.

It’s a charming sort of place – at least during the current warm weather – but industrial or commercial powerhouse it most certainly is not. It’s rusty and dilapidated, a real fixer-upper.

It’ll take a lot more cash and probably a few decades to get it anywhere near the standards of Asia’s bustling port cities.

And that’s provided the government can attract and retain the necessary skills and labour to an area most Russians regard as a backwater.

Russia’s stifling bureaucracy and still rampant corruption won’t be much help either.

Having said that, Russia’s east certainly has natural resources – oil, gas, timber – that China and the rest of relatively resource-pour Asia would love to get their hands on.

So what does Russia’s strategic pivot mean for Australia?

“We welcome Russia’s engagement,” Trade Minister Craig Emerson told Australian reporters in Vladivostok.

We certainly have no reason to fear it, despite Putin’s increasingly authoritarian tendencies.

But for now, at least, Russia’s pivot is unlikely to change the calculations of Australian policymakers much.

They will quite rightly remain preoccupied with the US and China – how to balance the relationships with these two very different great powers and keep them from each other’s throats?

But Russia’s Asian focus is further evidence that Australia’s region is the place to be, and everyone wants in.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/russia-follows-americas-asian-pivot/story-fn3dxix6-1226474005589