Moscow is turning to financially vulnerable South Pacific nations to promote its foreign policy agenda thousands of miles away. Since returning to power as Russia’s president three months ago, Vladimir Putin has lived up to his well-honed reputation as the hard, no-nonsense man of East European politics by bullying his way into the internal affairs of neighbors with fearless abandon.

He has served notice that Moscow will challenge the West’s naval dominance of the world’s oceans, moving to shore-up his country’s defenses from the Arctic Circleand its Western flank to its troubled southern borders,breakaway republics and even the South Pacific.