Russian-Japanese Relations in Quest for Normalization: a Comparative Foreign Policies Analysis
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Department of Political Sciences Chair of History of International Master in International Relations Relations Russian-Japanese Relations in quest for normalization: a Comparative Foreign Policies Analysis Supervisor Candidate Professor Maria Elena Cavallaro Ludovico Pollastro Cruciani Student Reg. n. 630362 Co-supervisors Professor Andrey Sushentsov Professor Riccardo Mario Cucciolla Academic year 2017/2018 “We expect a high-quality “President Putin visited my progress with regard hometown of Nagato last to relations with our eastern December. President Putin neighbor, Japan. We and I spoke with each other welcome the aspiration for five hours. We firmly of the state’s government decided to look ahead instead to develop economic ties of looking back, […] with Russia, to launch joint the history of the Japanese- projects and programs.” Russian relations entered a new era at that time.” Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, Shinzo Abe, Vladivostok Eastern annual State of the Nation Economic Forum, September 7, Address to the Federal 2017 Assembly, 2016 2 Acknowledgments First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisors from MGIMO and LUISS, Professors Andrey Sushentsov and Maria Elena Cavallaro, who have constantly assisted and supported me throughout my thesis, continuously motivating me to pursue a deep and balanced knowledge of the object of this dissertation. I would also like to express my gratitude to Professor Riccardo Mario Cucciolla, who provided me with insightful advice and assistance. This work is the result of a two-year experience, which allowed me to understand Russian politics from the inside and the lifestyle, enriching my knowledge. Thus, I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who made this possible, and to Moscow itself, the city which welcomed me twice. The first time I spent an entire year in the Russian capital, studying at MGIMO. This gave me the opportunity to know Russian experts of international relations and their point of view over Russian foreign policy, to take part in different activities that influenced my work, as the lecture of Professor John Mearsheimer and, last but not least, to work as an intern at the Embassy of Italy in Moscow, allowing me to enter in contact with the diplomatic environment, to take part in the organization of diplomatic and cultural events which demonstrated the high value of mutual relations and friendship between Russia and Italy. I would like to express my deep gratitude to all of my colleagues. The second time I came to Moscow for a shorter period, just a couple of months, in order to deepen my knowledge of Russian at the Pushkin Institute and to search for further material for my thesis, as the interview to Professor Dmitry Streltsov, whom I am grateful for having shared his knowledge with me. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who joined me in this journey, to the new friends and inspiring people I met and to whoever supported me despite not being physically with me. Without you, all of this wouldn’t have been possible. 3 Tables of contents INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................6 CHAPTER I - Comparative analysis of Japanese and Russian foreign policy strategy ................................................................................................................10 1.1 Japanese foreign policy overview and guidelines ......................................... 12 1.1.1 Japanese strategy in the Pacific region ................................................20 1.1.2 Russo-Japanese relations: Tokyo’s perspective ..................................31 1.2 Russian foreign policy overview and guidelines ....................................38 1.2.1 Russian strategy in Asia and the Far East ...........................................44 1.2.2 Russo-Japanese relations: Moscow’s perspective ...............................59 CHAPTER II - The Kuril Islands territorial dispute ........................................66 2.1 The structural and systemic factors involved in the territorial ..............66 2.1.1 Isolationism and geography as historical structural factors of reciprocal indifference ......................................................................................66 2.1.2 The World War II and the San Francisco Peace Treaty as the prelude of the contentious indifference .........................................................................68 2.2 The conjectural factors influencing the territorial dispute resolution ...75 2.2.1 The interpretation of the treaties .........................................................77 2.2.2 The failure of Japanese diplomacy from 1985 until 2012: the five lost opportunities caused by conjectural agent-centered factors .............................78 2.3 Towards a new course .................................................................................85 2.3.1 The achievements of the Putin-Abe era: the causes and the limits .....85 2.3.2 The present-day status of agreements .................................................88 2.4 Considerations and future perspectives ....................................................90 2.4.1 Economic ties as a mean of reconciliation in the context of the disputed territories ............................................................................................91 2.4.2 The relevance of the security aspect concerning the territorial dispute ..............................................................................................................93 4 CHAPTER III - The North Korea Nuclear Crisis case study: opportunities and challenges for Russia and Japan’s cooperation ...........................................96 3.1 North Korea: historical background and the role of ideology in the State-building process ........................................................................................97 3.2 Japanese and Russian defense of national interests: the approach to North Korea ......................................................................................................107 3.2.1 The particularities of the national interests in the North-Eastern Asia context.............................................................................................................107 3.2.2 The position of Japan ........................................................................110 3.2.3 The role of Russia..............................................................................114 3.3 The Six-Party Talks: analysis of a lost opportunity for Japanese- Russian multilateral political cooperation .....................................................119 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................127 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................132 ANNEX .................................................................................................................151 ABSTRACT .........................................................................................................158 5 Introduction After the end of the bipolar world, the states had to face new challenges and to compete, or cooperate, for a new multipolar world order. Indeed, the Eurasian continent is the one subjected to the most sudden changes: the soaring economies of the Asian countries, the growing population, the rearmament of new rising powers, the unsolved historical problems and the confrontation with the West made the region one of the most interesting and stimulating areas of observation and research for the present and the years to come, despite in Europe there is still a little focus on the Eurasian dynamics. This is the reason of the choice of this macro-area of research. The reason why I decided to analyze the bilateral ties of Russia and Japan, lies in the peculiarity of the relations the two countries have, and their relevance on the international arena. On one hand, Russia, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and almost a decade of recovery, is a restoring great power which regained global influence and attention thanks to its intervention in Syria and the Crimean annexation, which eventually deteriorated the relations with the West and gave an impulse to the Asian vector of the Russian foreign policy. On the other hand, Japan is a state which is striving to reaffirm its regional power, and trying not to succumb to the Chinese influence. Moreover, Japan represents the most loyal ally of the US in the Pacific region, providing a strategic outpost for the US army. Furthermore, Japan and Russia are bounded by an ironic fate: despite theoretically they could be natural allies in the pursuing and consolidation of a multipolar balance, the two states never signed a peace agreement because of the Kuril Islands territorial dispute, unsolved since the end of WWII. Nevertheless, in the last year the two nations have made great progresses in the fields of economic cooperation, aimed to solve the dispute. This makes the topic of this research even more relevant nowadays. The aim of this research, thus, is to demonstrate how the interests of Russia and Japan are not potentially conflicting, analyze the role and relevance of the Kuril 6 Islands issue in the bilateral ties, explaining why, despite the absence of a peace treaty, the two countries could manage to cooperate and what are their limits and elements of disturbance. Moreover, there will be analyzed