And indeed, even in the south-west Pacific, in our near abroad, really, you've got China probing for vulnerabilities and trying to establish deeper relations in the Pacific Islands off Australia's coast.
He expects Britain and France, which account for about 60% of Europe's military purchases, to put a higher value on being able to conduct operations in the “near abroad” than on playing a junior role in conflicts far from home.
In the political language of Russia and some other post-Soviet states, the near abroad (Russian:ближнее зарубежье, blizhneye zarubezhye) refers to the newly independent republics (other than Russia itself) which emerged after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.