Japan Makes Good Offer to Russia
// provided Russia can use it wisely
The visit of Russia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov to Japan makes us ponder how important Japan is for Russia. The Japanese themselves think it is very important. Moreover, they think it is growing more and more important every day. The arguments are as follows.
Russian authorities want their country to be not a primitive energy superpower, but a fully-featured producer and exporter of high-tech products, information and energy-saving technologies. Taking into account Russia’s new priorities, Japan believes Russia can no longer be satisfied with cooperation with China. Over two thirds of Russia’s export to China is raw materials, while the share of equipment and machinery export fell from 25 percent to 1 percent in the last decade. The trend of Russia’s turning into China’s raw materials appendage is obvious. So, Tokyo believes that Russia can obtain from Japan everything it needs for the conceived breakthrough.
Explaining why their country is attractive for Russia, the Japanese do not mention one more of their important qualities, -- political pantophagy. There is more and more money in Russia, and less and less freedom and democracy. Consequently, Russia’s worldview is changing. Moscow believes that the U.S. is plotting an ‘orange revolution’ in Russia, that Great Britain harbors Russia’s national enemies, and that European countries harass Moscow with petty nagging. Meanwhile, Japan has never done all those silly things. For Japan, there is no difference between Myanmar, China or Russia. Strong authority and money in a country is, basically, all that Japan needs to cooperate with a country.
Anyway, Japan seems to be nearly the best partner for Russia. However, there are some questions left. First: to what extent can the Russian authorities, preoccupied with the successor issue in the short-term perspective, and either with the Olympics in Sochi or with something morale-lifting else in the mid-term perspective, estimate the advantages of cooperation with Japan? Second: What is to be done about Japan’s claims on the South Kurils? After Russia easily surrendered the Amur river islands to China, nearly with the applaud of the ‘patriotic’ public, Japan seems to be thinking there will be no problems with the South Kurils as well, provided a necessary level of cooperation. Yet, Tokyo does not realize that Russia is not afraid of Japan at all now, and consequently will hardly ever make commeasurable concessions.
Joking apart, however. Russia indeed has no alternative for the economic and high-tech cooperation with Japan. Moreover, international cooperation with Japan can make Russia’s foreign policy well-balanced and strategically stable. The Russian foreign policy has been losing these qualities in recent years. Thus, it is an especially complicated task to find a way to realize that potential, avoiding the dreary wordings aimed at hiding the lack of progress in solving the territorial issue of the Kuril islands.
Georgy Kunadze, leading expert of the Global Economy and International Relations Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences, and former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 24, 2007
|
