NEW THINKING President Obama visits Vietnam and Japan this week. The US approach to security in the region is shifting as its friends in the region forge new ties among themselves.

PARIS — President Barack Obama’s visit to Hanoi is doubtless replete with historic and symbolic significance. He may even offer to sell America’s old enemy lethal weapons. But for a clue as to how nations across Asia are redrawing their security map in novel ways, look instead at two lower-profile recent visitors to Vietnam.

One was Philippines Foreign Minister Jose Rene Almendras, in Hanoi a month ago to agree on an action plan expected to lead soon to joint maritime exercises. The next day the Japanese Navy showed up, in the shape of two destroyers docking at Cam Ranh Bay, the first ever such visit.

China’s neighbors are alarmed by Beijing’s rising defense budget and its increasingly assertive behavior in the South China Sea, where it has built pinprick reefs and shoals into weapons-ready islands. Their response? To weave a thickening web of new ties among themselves.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2016/0522/With-eye-on-South-China-Sea-China-s-neighbors-weave-new-web-of-security