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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Like President Obama, Putin knows this will be an Asia-Pacific century.<\/p>\n
“Russia has long been an intrinsic part of the Asian-Pacific region,” Putin wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week.<\/p>\n
“We view this dynamic region as the most important factor for the successful future of the whole country.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It still conducts more than half its trade with Europe and less than a quarter with Asia.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Against this backdrop, last week’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders summit was Russia’s regional coming-out party.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It was effectively a Cold War fortress. But now Putin wants it to become a gateway for Russian trade and engagement with Asia.<\/p>\n
The Russian government pumped about $20 billion dollars into upgrading the city’s infrastructure ahead of the summit.<\/p>\n
This included the construction of a giant bridge linking Vladivostok city with Russky Island, where the 21 regional leaders held their talks.<\/p>\n
Russky Island will now become home to the new Far Eastern Federal University.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But it’ll take a lot more than a big bridge to turn Vladivostok into any sort of Eurasian hub.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
And that’s provided the government can attract and retain the necessary skills and labour to an area most Russians regard as a backwater.<\/p>\n
Russia’s stifling bureaucracy and still rampant corruption won’t be much help either.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
So what does Russia’s strategic pivot mean for Australia?<\/p>\n
“We welcome Russia’s engagement,” Trade Minister Craig Emerson told Australian reporters in Vladivostok.<\/p>\n
We certainly have no reason to fear it, despite Putin’s increasingly authoritarian tendencies.<\/p>\n
But for now, at least, Russia’s pivot is unlikely to change the calculations of Australian policymakers much.<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
But Russia’s Asian focus is further evidence that Australia’s region is the place to be, and everyone wants in.<\/p>\n
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