KEY POINTS:
Russia's use of its rich reserves of oil and natural gas as a political weapon has become a major security preoccupation for Europe.
In Asia, too, as the post-communist Russian Government under President Vladimir Putin seeks to rebuild influence, it is using exports of arms, as well as
energy, to strengthen old ties and build new links.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has been successful in retaining India as a major customer for weapons and equipment, while attracting China as an increasingly big buyer.
About 45 per cent of Russian arms exports, worth nearly US$6 billion ($8.7 billion) last year, go to China and 40 per cent to India.
Now Asia's third most populous nation, Indonesia, is showing intense interest in Russian military supplies. Among a raft of agreements signed in Moscow last week during a visit by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was a US$1 billion loan from Russia for the purchase of arms.
Indonesia could not get spare parts for its United States-supplied fighter jets and transport aircraft when law-makers in Washington imposed a military embargo after Indonesian troops killed dozens of unarmed protesters in East Timor in 1992.
The embargo was finally lifted last year and Indonesia's relations with America have greatly improved in recent years, a point underscored by US President Bush when he visited Jakarta last month and praised the country's transition to democratic rule.
But the still powerful Indonesian defence establishment has not forgotten the danger of becoming too dependent on a sole supplier. It has been diversifying arms purchases since 1998 when the US accounted for 80 per cent of Indonesia's military equipment.
According to the Indonesian Defence Minister, Juwono Sudarsono, US products constitute 65 per cent of the country's arms purchases and will fall below 50 per cent in coming years.
Russia is keen to take up the slack by offering Jakarta flexible payment terms. It is able to do so because high prices for Russian oil and gas exports have brought surplus revenue to the Government which it can use to promote military sales.
Indonesia wants to add six to eight more Sukhoi fighters to the four it has already acquired. Its wish list also includes Russian infantry fighting vehicles, submarines, helicopters and air defence systems.
As part of the former Soviet Union, Russia was a leading arms supplier to Indonesia in the 1960s when the Government of the late President Sukarno resorted to armed confrontation to try to break up the newly formed Malaysian federation, which was supported by the former colonial power, Britain, as well as Australia and New Zealand.
Does it matter that Asia's three largest nations are looking to Russia for advanced weapons? Does it presage a further decline of US and Western influence in the region?
The United States and its allies and friends in the Asia-Pacific region, including New Zealand, find it more difficult to hold joint military training and exercises with countries that use Russian rather than American or Nato-standard equipment. But this is not an insuperable barrier.
Indeed, India last year signed a wide-ranging defence co-operation agreement with the US and is undertaking an increasingly wide array of activities with American forces, despite its extensive use of Russian naval and air force weaponry. Taken as a whole, US-India relations have never been closer.
The Sino-Russian strategic partnership is more problematic for Washington. India's longstanding military connections with Russia no longer have a parallel political alignment. However, China and Russia aim to counter the influence of the US and its allies in Asia, particularly Japan, while combining to veto US initiatives that cut across their interests in the region.
For example, they are blocking tough action in the United Nations Security Council against North Korea and Iran over nuclear weapons development, and against Myanmar for human rights abuses.
Russia has supplied China with modern combat and transport aircraft, aerial tankers, early warning and control planes, destroyers, submarines, and other equipment and technology that have strengthened Chinese capabilities for defensive and offensive military operations.
But so far Moscow has stopped short of selling advanced strategic weapons to China, including long-range supersonic bombers armed with cruise missiles that could threaten the US Navy protecting Taiwan and attack American aircraft carrier battle groups in the western Pacific from afar.
Meanwhile, the US can offset Indonesia's interest in Russian arms by offering assistance to the Indonesian armed forces to maintain their existing US military equipment in good working order, to continue defence reform, to counter terrorism and to improve maritime security.
Japan's move last week to start negotiations with Indonesia on a preferential trading arrangement will also help. Trade between Indonesia and Russia is small. By contrast, Japan is Indonesia's biggest export market and second largest supplier.
Concluding a mutually beneficial trade expansion deal with Japan will remind Indonesia that Russian guns without butter are of limited use.
* Michael Richardson, a former Asia editor of the International Herald Tribune, is a senior research fellow at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore.
