At the Shangri-La Dialogue conference in Singapore, attended by the Defense Ministers of 26 Asia-Pacific nations, Ashton Carter chided China for its latest island reclamation moves and reassured his country’s partners that the US was committed to the Asian pivot.
Afterwards, he left for Vietnam, where he signed the first-ever joint vision statement with it that facilitates deeper military cooperation between the two former enemies. Symbolically, the move came just days after Vietnam signed 10 agreements with Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) to create a free trade zone covering a market of 276 million customers.
Following that, Ashton Carter’s visit trip to India saw him and his counterpart agree to a US-Indian Defense Framework. All in all, the agreements reached by the Pentagon Chief in India were seen as a challenge to Indo-Russian military-technical cooperation – the pillar of the all-weather strategic partnership between Moscow and New Delhi.
Boris Volkhonsky, Head of the Asian Desk, Russian Institute for Strategic Studies(studio guest), Nandan Unnikrishnan, vice-president of the Observer Research Foundation, Jouhari Oratmangun, Indonesia’s Ambassador to Russia and Dr. Derek Yuen, Honorary Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong, commented on the issue.
