I Know, Let’s Give Up Half the Northern Territories before We Begin Negotiations…

I’ve said before how stupid I think it is to make concessions before we’ve even begun to restart negotiating with Russia on the Northern Territories, especially since there is nothing to be gained from settling the dispute beyond whatever rights we get to subsidize the Russians living on those godforsaken islands. As the Aso administration unfolded and it became clear that the Prime Minister had a tendency to say out loud the first thing that popped up in his mind, I realized that the performance had been pretty much par for the course. Still, the mystery remained: Who, or what, had put that idea there in the first place? Well, now we know, it’s the former MOFA Vice-Minister, Shotaro Yachi who put the idea in his head, as this Mainichi report shows. Yachi and MOFA have issued denials regarding the Mainichi report, but it’s clear from the half-hearted nature of Yachi and MOFA’s efforts that he did say things more or less along the lines of what was reported.

What continues to astonish me is that there are people who should know better yet still think that a peace treaty with Russia by itself brings any benefits beyond the purely psychic.

It’s interesting to note that the three major political appointments that the Prime Minister has made with regard to non-politicians—the fifth and chief administrative secretary to the Prime Minister from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary, and now this, the Special Envoy.

Aso Meets Obama, Medvedev. What Gives?

There’s little that can be settled between someone with a four-year lease on power with a one-off extension option for the landlord and another guy who faces near-certain eviction in less than seven months. No to worry though; there are no purely bilateral issues of major concern, and the global financial/economic crisis is…well, global. At the regional level, Futenma, Guam, and the rest of the U.S. troop realignment issues are what they are (where Ozawa’s latest statements are far more interesting and somewhat alarming, given the political winds), and North Korea is…North Korea, the pending Taepodon 2 “satellite” launch notwithstanding. So Prime Minister Aso took the twelve-hour flight to Washington, had a one-hour get-together (half that, really, if you consider the interpretation) with President Obama—no lunch, no press conference—and took the flight back home; the clock started running again on the embattled Prime Minister as if nothing had happened.

The only effect seems to have been to give the President of the United States a four-year pass against charges of Japan passing NTTIAWWT. Think of it as a follow-up to Hillary Clinton’s visit and talk with family members of abductees. Speaking of whom, it may only have been a scheduling glitch, but I think it was a clever idea to insert Indonesia between Japan and China and South Korea in her itinerary. By breaking the sequence with a country of clearly less political consequence, the U.S. government minimized the political significance of the order of the visits.

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Russian President Medvedev made an offer his Japanese counterpart couldn’t refuse when he invited Aso to Sakhalin Island for the Wednesday launch of the LNG plant that will send 65% of its 9.8 million-ton annual production to Japan*. It should be good publicity, foreign and domestic, for the Kremlin in the face of issues with Ukraine and serious knock-on effects on Western European customers, all of it unfolding within a broader, alarming context of plummeting energy prices. Aso’s visit also provides political closure to an obscure but not insignificant legal issue regarding the final status of Sakhalin Island. The USSR never signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty, under which Japan gave up sovereignty over what was then a strategically significant but barely habitable piece of real estate, along with the Kurile Islands. So Sakhalin (and the Kurile Islands) must be part of the final bilateral treaty that will settle all issues including the four islands most commonly referred to as the Northern Territories. It was a bargaining chip, albeit very minor. Aso’s visit laid that issue to rest.

In return, Aso got a promise of a May visit by Prime Minister Putin and a pledge to settle the issue within “our generation”, which the Japanese side is spinning as “during the current administrations.” The last point should be alarming to Japanese nationalists; Russia has never shown any hint of any intention to give up anything more than the two near-most (from the Japanese perspective) and smallest islands except in President Yeltsin’s weakest moments—only a hint at that, mind you—and Putin’s Russia has gone some ways in reverting to its old empirical ways since then. Meanwhile, Aso as Foreign Minister all but gave away his own game plan when he talked about splitting the islands in half by area—giving Japan the three smaller islands and a significant portion of the fourth—before there was any inkling that negotiation were going to start any time soon. At bottom, actually, is Aso’s moderate pragmatism—something most Western observers miss because of his sometimes nationalistic pronouncements—but it certainly won’t help him with a significant portion of his support from the LDP right.

* The rest goes to South Korea and the U.S.

Kosovo Redux

Here’s the substance of the answer, slightly edited, to a question that I received from an analyst. It’s for anyone else who found my previous post on this issue to be of any interest.

I would not say that Japan is taking an “overly”-cautious attitude toward the Kosovo question. After all, the overall direction is clear. We will in principle recognize Kosovo, and that should please the US and the Islam Nation (not that the Islamic states notice, though I'm sure that they would if we said no to an independent Kosovo). However, there are no public discussions of the real reasons for our tag-along approach; it's not a compelling issue for us. So I’m really guessing here. Having said that...

China surely has Taiwan in mind in its opposition to Kosovo independence, but I don't think that the matter is important enough to China that Japan would feel compelled to defer to its wishes if they are to maintain the current amicable relationship. The China-Taiwan relationship is overwhelmingly determined by local factors and is not going to be materially affected by the eventual fate of Kosovo. Russia, in contrast, is the state that has the geopolitical interest in Kosovo and the broader counter-status quo posture that make this a compelling issue for it. To put it another way, it is my view that Japan would take the same approach if Russia were the only permanent UNSC member opposing Kosovo independence, while Japan would afford more immediate recognition if China were the only one doing so. Of course China would have to accept it if Russia decided to drop its veto on UN accession for Kosovo, so the last scenario would never happen.

The one possibility that I did not consider in my previous post is the possibility that Greece and other EU member countries withholding recognition (but, crucially, not opposing EU takeover from KFORS) will one day reconsider. What will Japan do then? But that will be some time in coming, certainly not in time for Japan to have to face the question before Medvedev comes to the Hokkaido Summit. I don't call the shots here, so don't blame me if the authorities say, hell with Putin, to hell with Medvedev, let's recognize Kosovo ASAP. But I would definitely bet against it.

In the meantime, Japan should be providing humanitarian and other forms of assistance that will not offend the Russians.

Will Japan Recognize an Independent Kosovo?

Asahi certainly seemed to think Japan would indeed recognize an independent Kosovo pretty soon, when it ran a report on February 6 under the headline “Japan Considers Early Recognition of Independent Kosovo Following Europe and US (日本、独立コソボ承認へ　欧米に続き早期を検討). Otherwise, the Japanese media has been silent on the Japanese position.

According to the Asahi, the Japanese government feels that Boris Tadic’s victory in the Serbian presidential election raises hopes that a peaceful settlement is within sight. Perhaps; in which case Kosovo would have “(a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.”* But Mr. Foreign Minister Masahiko Kōmura added an important caveat in his February 10 press conference:

Japan will consider the requirements for national recognition from a legal perspective in order to recognize Kosovo's independence, and make a judgment after observing how international society receives the issue.

Now I’ve always assumed that EU members and the US would quickly recognize an independent Kosovo, if only to keep the matter from boiling over into open violence and even civil war. In fact, Europe is dangling a possible EU membership as the carrot to the largely Moslem ethnic Albanians of Kosovo. No doubt the Middle East will also follow suit in recognizing the Moslem breakout from the Orthodox-Christian Serbia.

However, Russia will be none too happy. The Asahi article gives Bosnia and Herzegovina as a precedent of sorts for the Japanese authorities. But Bosnia and Herzegovina’s independence was conclusively settled by the 1995 Dayton Agreement, to which both Serbia and Russia signed off. Russia is no longer that shambling, eager-to-please, impoverished relic of the Soviet era under an erratic President Yeltsin. It also remains to be seen whether Mr. Tadic will be able to use his slim 50.5% edge over ultranationalist Tomislav Nikolic’s 47.9% to give up sovereignty over Kosovo in exchange for a fast-track ride on the express to the EU.

What does it matter to Japan? Well, imagine that Kosovo leaves Serbia without an agreement with Serbia and Russia. If Japan endorses the break any time soon, President Putin will be none too pleased to see Prime Minister Fukuda in Moscow during the Japanese Golden Week. The issue could linger further and be yet another cause of conflict between Russia and the West at the G-8 Summit in Hokkaidō, a dispute that Prime Minister Fukuda, as host, will be hard put to mediate as a mere bystander. Just as serious in the context of domestic politics, Japanese recognition of an independent Kosovo in the face of Russian opposition should seriously compromise Japanese efforts to paper over the Russian refusal to hand over anything beyond the two small islands － if even that － out of the four that comprise the Northern Territories.

I suspect that Japanese recognition in effect will be very slow in coming.

* Convention on Rights and Duties of States (inter-American); December 26, 1933; Article 1.

Russian Bomber Invades Japanese Airspace； Gets Me Thinking about the Alliance

Reported here by BBC, I was mystified by the Russian action. After all, Tupolev 95s have been plying their trade since the Korean War. They don’t suddenly wander into Japanese airspace 650km (400 miles) south of Tokyo by mistake, do they?

The timing was particularly odd, given the relative calm that prevails over Japan-Russia relations (in contrast to Russia’s increasingly contentious relations with the US and Russia). In fact, the two governments are reportedly working on a Golden Week visit by Prime Minister Fukuda to pay his respects to President Putin, just before the latter makes the switch to Prime Minister himself, while remaining as the real focal point of the public mandate and political power.

Japan, of course, wants access to Russia’s natural resources, as well as the swelling pocketbooks of the Russian people eager for all the luxury autos and other assorted gadgets that the Toyotas and the Panasonics can sell. Russia. The Japanese government also holds out hope, or at least continues to make gestures that it does, that the Northern Territories will be returned under more favorable terms than the two smallest islands only*, i.e. the only settlement acceptable to Russia now**.

On the Russian side, it’s a buyer’s market. However, Japan is a useful hedge against China. Make no mistake, notwithstanding developments such as the settlement of border disputes and the far more recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Russia has never stopped seeing China as its Far East strategic threat. Contrasts in demographics (Russia, a shrinking 142 million; China, a more stable 1.3 billion) and economic profiles (Russia, resource-based economy; China, industrial economy) ensure that the fear will be around for the foreseeable future. Russia wouldn’t mind a larger Japanese footprint in Siberia, and beyond for that matter. If Russia can manage to loosen Japan-US ties in the bargain, all for the better.

Well, yesterday, EST, CNN gave us the answer. It turns out that the Tu-95 was part of a bomber squadron on its way to buzz the USS Nimitz and otherwise annoy the Americans***. It’s payback for Kosovo, it’s payback for Ukraine, Georgia, NATO expansion, IMF receivership, Jeffery Sachs… Note that Japan has a peripheral role at most with regard to perhaps a couple of these and other post-Cold War grievances.

Russia has little by way of strategic quarrels with Japan. The blip on the Japanese radar turned out to be a passing shadow cast by the geopolitical struggle that Russia, with a reinvigorated economy, has chosen to resume against an insensitive (or so it sees, not totally without justification) and aggressive (likewise) West.

Most calls for a thorough review of Japan’s national security, i.e. the Japan-US relationship, focus on China and, in a more acute sense, North Korea. After the Far East, the debate leaps half way across the globe to the Indian Ocean and the Middle East. But Japan already distances itself from the US where the Palestine Question is concerned. The broader context for this is, of course, the Middle East and its fossil fuels. But the national interests of the two allies appear to be almost as dissonant where Russia is concerned.

It is time for Japanese policymakers to think hard about Russia as well. It is at least easier to contemplate than Japan’s place in the dispute over the Iranian nuclear program.

* Tarō Asō, regarded (correctly, if somewhat broadly) as a nationalist, famously suggested that Japan could take a settlement that gave back half of the land mass of the four islands. When he was Foreign Minister. And there was remarkably little outcry, all things considered. He did qualify his off-hand statement, but it did bring into question the seriousness with which even the more hawkish wing of the LDP was willing to press the issue.

** There was a brief period during the Yeltsin regime when the Russian government appeared to indicate a willingness to go beyond its interpretation of the 1956 Joint Statement. But Vladimir Putin came to power and oil prices went skyrocketed; the moment had passed.

*** Have you ever wondered why they aren’t called United Statists? USians? Just askin’.

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The DPJ’s actions concerning national security issues have been disappointing. It appears to be driven mostly by electoral objectives. As a result, it ends up walking and talking like the old Socialist Party., the permanent opposition. It is most evident in Yukio Hatoyama’s response to the alleged rape of an Okinawa schoolgirl by a US Marine stationed there. He says in essence that Japan must seek a relationship on an equal footing and, for that, US military bases must leave. There appears to be no timeline, no context to his demand, such that it is. Not that the government, or the LDP for that matter, is exercising its imagination. But there are the constraints of being in charge of the status quo. If the DPJ refuses to think strategically, that is, if it continues to play the political game with anything beyond the letter of its policy manifest, it will have no recourse but to let its checks bounce left and right when it finally comes to power.