MIYAZAWA TO YELTSIN: NO NORTHERN TERRITORIES, NO YEN FOR YOUR VISIT

p>(Washington, D.C.): In the diplomatic
equivalent of a “Dear John”
letter sent after wedding
invitations have been posted, Russian
President Boris Yeltsin telephoned
Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa
today to announce that his meticulously
planned state visit to Tokyo was off.
This trip — which was, until the Yeltsin
bombshell, scheduled to begin this
Sunday, 13 September — has nominally
been postponed until mid-December. At
this point, however, there is no firm
basis for believing it will take place
even then.

Tokyo, Washington and other Western
capitals are rife with speculation about
the Russians’ eleventh-hour cancellation
of the September visit. Incredible as it
may seem, in most G-7 countries,
the blame for this diplomatic upset will
likely be placed at Japan’s door.
Specifically, Tokyo’s alleged
“intransigence” over the
Northern Territories issue — which the
Japanese have properly described as a
matter of “national honor” —
frightened off President Yeltsin, lest it
produce a summit marred by failure and
finger-pointing.

The Real Explanations for
Yeltsin’s No-Show?

In fact, the decision may have been a calculated
ploy by Mr. Yeltsin, designed to
serve several purposes:

• Isolating Japan
  by casting Japan as the
  “odd-man-out” with
  respect to multilateral aid
  infusions said to be necessary to
  help consolidate democratic and
  free market institution-building.
  As one Tokyo-based Western
  diplomat told the New York
  Times on 8 September,
  “The islands issue distorts
  [Japanese] foreign policy not
  just with Russia but with the
  other G-7 countries….The
  Government [of Japan] is still
  kind of stuck in the old
  thinking.” (Emphasis
  added.)
• Intensifying pressure
  from other G-7 nations on Tokyo
  to decouple a satisfactory
  resolution of the northern
  islands issue from Japanese
  agreement to new, large-scale aid
  flows to an as yet still largely
  unreformed Russia. As President
  Yeltsin warned Japan earlier this
  month, “This [linkage] is
  unfair. These two issues should
  be separated. It is essential to
  develop economic relations and simultaneously
  to tackle the problems of the
  Northern Territories.”
• Appeasing Russian
  opponents of reform,
  whose noisy opposition to any
  territorial concessions may
  actually serve Mr. Yeltsin’s own
  nationalistic impulses. At the
  very least, the strident
  complaints — and even threats —
  of these
  “conservatives” enhance
  his negotiating position vis a
  vis Japan.
• Preserving ill-gotten
  strategic assets coveted
  by the erstwhile Soviet military.
  One indication of the Russian
  General Staff’s determination on
  this point — and its power to
  impose its will — is to be found
  in an 18 August report from
  Interfax to the effect that
  orders have been issued by the
  General Staff to double
  by 1993 both the number of troops
  and missiles deployed in the
  southern Kurile Islands claimed
  by the Japanese.

Tokyo Is Playing It Just
Right

The Center for Security Policy
commends Japan for reacting with quiet
confidence to this Russian diplomatic
power-play. Far from displaying the
consternation and anguish anticipated by
Moscow, Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe
responded to Yeltsin’s announcement by
saying, “We are taking this
calmly.”

Were Tokyo to do otherwise it would
be, at best, garnering the fleeting favor
of its G-7 allies who are anxious to fob
off onto Japan a substantial portion of
the billions in new money flows promised
to the former Soviet Union. At worst, it
would be permanently compromising its
principled position — and its most
important leverage for securing a return
of its stolen property. Instead, by
largely withholding new multi-billion
dollar government-guaranteed credits and
investments pending the recognition of
Japan’s full sovereignty over the
Territories and an acceptable formula for
their return, Tokyo has maintained the
pressure where it properly belongs: squarely
on Moscow.

Moreover, the delay now certain to
result from the Yeltsin postponement may
actually strengthen Japan’s hand
in this high-stakes poker game. For
example, on 28-29 October, Tokyo will be
the site of an aid conference for the
former Soviet Union involving ministerial
delegations from over 70 nations and 15
international organizations.

More importantly, Japan will take over
the chairmanship of the G-7 in January
1993 and play host to the Tokyo Economic
Summit next summer. These events provide
the Japanese Foreign and Finance
Ministries with unprecedented
institutional authority for shaping
alliance economic and financial policies
toward Russia and other CIS states.

Washington has, to date, generally
been supportive of Japan’s understandable
insistence on sovereignty over the
islands as a precondition for any further
large-scale aid to Russia. There have,
however, been some troubling hints that
the U.S. position may erode toward that
of Germany, Italy, France and other EC
nations — all of whom want Japan to
“get with the program.”

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy
believes that the Bush Administration —
and, depending upon the outcome of the
November election, its successor —
should be guided by the comment of an
unnamed Japanese Foreign Ministry
official in today’s New York Times,
“The litmus test on whether [the
Russians have] changed is whether they
will return the northern islands….Unless
they do so, we will remain skeptical of
their intentions.”

However the Russian/Northern
Territories dispute is resolved, the
United States and Japan are going to face
continuing regional threats to their
mutual security. The vigorous Chinese
arms build-up — which fully justified
the recently announced sale of F-16s to
Taiwan — and the relentless pursuit of
weapons of mass destruction and delivery
systems by North Korea are just two of
the reasons why the bilateral
relationship must remain robust. Today’s
Yeltsin announcement merely serves to
reinforce that point by demonstrating the
grievous risks involved in banking on the
ability of Russian reformers to deliver
on their intentions or relying upon the
cynical assurances of Western “new
thinkers.”