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This week’s edition includes:

Chinese naval drills back
Vietnam into a corner

Since Russia began its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, China has begun flexing its muscles at sea in a clear show of force to regional rivals, announcing a major defense spending increase and undertaking a nearly two week-long military drill in the Gulf of Tonkin, located just 60 nautical miles off of Vietnam’s coast.
 
Asia Times’ correspondent Richard Javad Heydarian reported that Beijing’s maritime authority issued a navigation warning unilaterally banning vessels from entering an area overlapping with Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) during the drills, prompting pushback from Hanoi. He weighed in on the matter in this week’s Q&A.
 
What message do you think China is trying to send the region by holding massive military drills in the South China Sea so soon after Russia’s Ukraine invasion?
 
Well, China has been conducting ever-larger and increasingly regular drills across the South China Sea, especially since the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, which heavily distracted much of the region.
 
In recent years, China conducted unprecedented ‘four seas’ naval drills across all its adjacent waters, from the Bohai Gulf and Yellow Sea to the north all the way to the East China Sea as well as the Taiwan Straits and the South China Sea in the south. Boasting the world’s largest marine fleet, China is clearly in a mood to flex some muscle and test its new shiny warships.
 
Nevertheless, timing is also a big factor in geopolitics and, by extension, Chinese statecraft. Beijing’s latest military drills came just two weeks into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has raised fears of similar adventurism by China across the latter’s own backyard. And the announcement of the new drills came abruptly and unilaterally, seemingly catching Vietnam by surprise.
 
It’s also worth noting that portions of the latest drills are taking place in the exclusive economic zone of Vietnam, which, similar to Ukraine, has no treaty alliances with any major power. Although post-Cold War Ukraine is constitutionally committed to join NATO, post-Cold War Vietnam is constitutionally prohibited from forming alliances with or hosting troops from any external power.
 
Notwithstanding the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Air Force’s constant violation of Taiwanese airspace in recent weeks, China seemingly has no qualms with also flexing its muscle against Vietnam. By and large, Taiwan and Vietnam are the closest analog to Ukraine in Asia.

Thus, I think both Hanoi and Taipei are carefully following developments in Europe in order to decipher Beijing’s potential lessons learned from the ongoing crisis. Both Taiwan and Vietnam have largely relied on a so-called “porcupine” strategy of self-defense, namely developing a sufficient deterrence capacity by making any Chinese adventurism extremely costly.
 
Do you think China is a step closer to a Taiwan invasion after ally Russia’s aggression or that the Western response has likely given Beijing pause?
 
It goes without saying that the situation is extremely fluid. But if you were in Taipei today, you would be largely heartened by the stiff and largely successful resistance of Ukrainian forces against a far larger invading force. Preliminary analysis suggests that Russia is really struggling with multi-domain operations, its much-vaunted air force is performing well below expectations, and its ground forces have been sluggish and highly vulnerable to Ukrainian reprisals. Western equipment, most notably the FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missiles, seems to be very effective against Russian forces. Not to mention NATO-made drones. So the technological gap between NATO and Russia is still there.
 
Now here comes the crucial part: First, China’s military technology and doctrines are very similar to Russia’s. And unlike the latter, which has been involved in multiple conflicts in the post-Soviet space as well as in the Middle East, China has had very limited combat experience in the post-Cold War era.
 
So Russia’s vulnerabilities don’t reflect well on China. Moreover, any Chinese intervention in Taiwan will ultimately have to take the shape of an amphibious attack, which is far more complicated than Russia’s ground invasion of neighboring Ukraine. Finally, the Taiwanese armed forces are among the best-equipped and most prepared on earth. So far, it looks like Beijing should learn more humility and caution from the mishaps of its Moscow ally.
 
Do you think Southeast Asian states could start to wean themselves off Russian arms in light of Ukraine, particularly considering most of those armaments are meant to deter Moscow’s ally China?  
 
To begin with, the new round of sanctions targeting Russia’s defense industry, top financial institutions, and central bank will make any major arms deals with key regional states extremely prohibitive. And the shadow of secondary US sanctions has further widened in the wake of the Ukraine crisis. Even India, an avowedly independent-minded and heavily Russian-equipped power, is now recalibrating its defense relations with Moscow.
 
Indonesia’s decision earlier this year to ditch Russia in favor of France, and potentially even the US, for the modernization of its air force is telltale of the deepening structural limitations on Moscow’s arms exports ambitions in the region. By all indications, Jakarta was deeply concerned about US sanctions, thus its decision to seek alternative suppliers. But I doubt if the likes of Vietnam are seriously reconsidering their defense cooperation with Russia.
 
After all, countries like Vietnam have tended to procure the better and more modern versions of Russian-Soviet military technology that the Chinese have been deploying for their own armed forces. I think Hanoi will try its best, despite the minefield of sanctions, to maintain robust military ties with Moscow.

After all, the bulk of Vietnam’s defense equipment is of Soviet origin, and defense ties with the West have been hobbled by disagreements over human rights and democracy issues. So they don’t have much of a choice, to be honest.
 
But the relative vulnerability and seeming underperformance of Russian forces against the Western-equipped Ukrainians will clearly leave some impression on any new potential buyer in the region, whether it’s the Philippines or Malaysia, two countries that have largely relied on NATO-grade weaponry for quite some time.
 
And I think there will be even greater worries on potentially inviting Western sanctions, and even American wrath, should regional states insist on procuring Russian weaponry. Thus, I won’t be surprised if Russia makes the removal of secondary sanctions, especially on its global arms industry, a big part of any potential peace deal in Europe.

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