Russia’s pivot to Asia

RUSSIA’S twin-headed eagle faces east towards Asia as well as west towards Europe. This far-sighted beast is near-as-dammit the heraldic coat-of-arms of Vladimir Putin, who revived the old imperial symbol. So why does the president of a country with half its vast lands lying east of Singapore need to make so much of his “pivot to Asia”, declared two years ago? That many readers familiar with the much-maligned Asia pivot of Barack Obama will not have heard of Mr Putin’s hints at a gap between rhetoric and substance. And yet the prevailing view among pundits is that Russia is indeed back in Asia.

Once the Soviet Union and China were a hair-trigger away from war along their long border. Today many see a new strategic convergence or even an alliance in the making between Russia and China, the world’s second- and third-biggest military powers. The two states’ media paint Mr Putin and Xi Jinping, China’s president, as strongmen buddies. In 2014 they signed a huge deal to bring Russian gas to China. Recently, Russian sales to China of advanced weapons resumed after being halted a decade ago because of technology cloning.