Moscow’s Influence Wanes in Southeast Asia

As President Vladimir Putin has increasingly tried to project Russian power around the globe in recent years, one of the areas it has focused on has been Southeast Asia. While Russia’s attempted influence in the region attracted less attention than its influence in Africa or Eastern Europe, Moscow had quietly become a much bigger military and diplomatic presence in Southeast Asia. Now, however, that influence seems to be dramatically fading, cutting Moscow out of a critical region of the globe. For more on how and why Moscow’s influence is waning in Southeast Asia, see my new World Politics Review article.