Vicious cycle in the Russo-Japanese territorial dispute

Abstract

The present work is an analysis of the modern Russian foreign policy formulationto explain the recent change of the Russian policy in the territorial dispute with Japan overthe southern Kuril Islands. It evaluates the former Soviet Union̕s Cold War period and the Gorbachev period as well as the Russian periods of Yeltsin and Putin. The aim behind thisevaluation is to explain the transformation of the Russian foreign policy in these, givenabove, four periods. The explanation of the transformation process helps finding ananswer to the question of why the change in the Russian stand on the Kurils issue happened. This change is the Russian announcement in 2004 to settle the territorial disputewith Japan according to the 1956 Soviet-Japanese Joint Declaration. Russia accepts thisDeclaration as an end of the dispute, whereas Japan considers it as a prelude for the returnof all four islands renounced by Japan after WWII. An analysis of the recent developments in this dispute in the context of the transformation of foreign policy visions suggests thatPutin̕s strategy of great power pragmatism is an answer to the asked question. The thesisanalyzes the periods of Cold War, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin as one cycle of eventsbecause of the similarities between the current Russian and the former Soviet foreign policies.