SYDNEY — Four days in Asia. That’s all President Vladimir Putin of Russia needed to anger Washington, undermine Beijing and rattle a collection of Indo- Pacific nations already scrambling to cope with a jumbled world order.

After stops in Pyongyang, North Korea, and Hanoi, Vietnam, last week that were draped in communist red, Putin left behind a redrawn map of risk in Asia. North Korea sat at the center: a rogue nuclear state that regularly threatens its neighbors, suddenly empowered by Russian promises of sophisticated military aid and a mutual defense pact.

Putin also signed at least a dozen deals with Vietnam — a country of growing importance for China and the United States as they vie for influence — where he insisted that “reliable security architecture” could not be built with “closed military-political blocs.”

The trip was defiant and disruptive. It showed that the jockeying for power sometimes framed as a new Cold War between the United States and China is less binary than it might seem, and many countries in the region seemed to emerge from the week with a deeper sense of unease.

Putin’s presence and his threats, bold one minute, vague the next, have added even more complexity to their already difficult calculations around security and Great Power competition.

Over the past few years, the Indo-Pacific has been knocked around by a geopolitical shoving match between the United States and China, primarily over China’s claims on Taiwan, and increasingly over Chinese militarization in the South China Sea.

In May, China launched two days of intense navy and air force drills around Taiwan in what it called a form of “strong punishment.” The exercises came after Taiwan’s new president pledged to defend the sovereignty of the self- governing island that Beijing sees as lost territory.

Just last week, another flashpoint — the South China Sea — edged closer to conflict. A Philippine navy sailor was injured after ships from China and the Philippines collided near a disputed archipelago.

Many countries in the region were already beefing up their militaries to deal with China’s pressure and the uncertainty over how far the rivalry between the U.S. and China might go.

Add to those concerns a wave of jitters in the region over the U.S. presidential election, not to mention a report this month showing that China is in the midst of a “significant” expansion of its nuclear capabilities.

Now Putin has induced a few more. With his embrace of North Korea, including his open threat to better arm Kim Jong Un’s military, he has effectively added another potential crisis to Asia’s list of concerns, reigniting old hostilities on the Korean Peninsula.

Officials in South Korea and Japan — North Korea’s avowed enemies — were especially alarmed. Both countries had already been talking about toughening their defenses and growing closer to the United States and each other, particularly since Kim’s rhetoric has become markedly more hostile toward them in recent months.

Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, described Putin’s burst of activity in Asia as “your worst fears come true.”

“What Russia just did is, they told us they are going to be the principal organizers of rogue states that develop nuclear weapons, violate nonproliferation treaties and allow countries under U.N. sanctions to get outside those sanctions,” he said.

Peter Tesch, Australia’s ambassador in Moscow from 2016 to 2019, stressed that Putin favors keeping the world chaotic because he believes Russia benefits from keeping other countries off-kilter. Disinformation and partnerships with other provocateurs have become Putin doctrine.

“He’s quite happy for Russia to be the smelliest, farting uncle at the barbecue,” Tesch said. “The signal is, ‘Yes I am a disrupter. I can act in ways that increase the complexity of what you’re trying to manage.’ ”

China, North Korea’s largest trading partner and arguably its biggest influence, must also contend with the fallout. That could include pressure to clarify what its “no limits” friendship with Russia means for China’s stated goal of stability on the Korean Peninsula.

Some analysts suggest that Putin had all of this in mind. He may have tightened the bond with Kim, who greeted him with hugs at the airport, to scare the United States and signal frustration to China’s leader, Xi Jinping, for not doing more to help Russia win in Ukraine.

“If Putin cannot get everything he wants from Beijing, he will look to get it elsewhere, and there aren’t a lot of supermarkets that cover his wish list: arms, labor and a willingness to pick a fight with Washington,” said Samuel Greene, a professor of Russian politics at King’s College London. “Iran is one. North Korea is another.

“While Putin recognizes his dependency on China, he can’t afford to let Beijing dictate the course of the war effort — because as goes the war, so goes Putin.”

To some degree, Putin’s trip to Asia was also a potent reminder of Russia’s historic military ties: North Korea, India and Vietnam are a few of the countries that have been heavily dependent on Russian hardware for decades, creating links in training and maintenance that keep Moscow deeply embedded in the region.

But even before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, those ties were fraying: Russia’s arms sales to Southeast Asia dropped to $89 million in 2021, down from $1.2 billion in 2014, according to independent studies.

Putin’s visit to Hanoi focused on deals. Most were kept secret, but analysts predicted that some would probably emerge later as defense-related, with financing devised to skirt international sanctions — possibly with payment in the form of oil and gas rights in the South China Sea.

In May, Putin visited Beijing, and while his trip to North Korea may bother Xi, analysts don’t expect a major rupture in the relationship.

“There’s some concern about Russia-China ties strengthening,” Grossman said, “and the potential for both countries to gang up on the smaller and medium- sized ones.”

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said that was already happening. He accused China and Russia of colluding to undermine a peace summit June 15 to 16 in Switzerland led by Ukraine. Only a handful of Asian countries attended.