The Games Countries Play
// The price of the question
Russian-Japanese relations are immune to the vagaries of time. Everything goes forward and nothing changes. Long ago, at the very beginning of his presidency, Vladimir Putin visited Japan. Many documents were signed then and even more pretty and correct words were spoken about the rosy future of cooperation between the two countries. Then it all dissolved. As usual. The infrequent, but always epochal, changes of leaders in our country instill hope in the Japanese, and in us too, that a breakthrough to relations of a new quality might be made. Those hopes are, to put it mildly, not fully compatible. The Japanese are counting on a solution to the infamous territorial problem. And the Russians wait for the Japanese to emerge from their strange isolation.
The main cause of the regularly dashed hopes is that neither side changes its behavior in the least. Japan stubbornly maintains a high degree of rhetoric on the territorial issue. Russia does not lag far behind. It may not be aggressive in its words, but it casts a large shadow. Russian and Japanese “patriots” deserve each other. Russian and Japanese bureaucrats do as well. They have never had time to implement large-scale plans for cooperation. In the Japanese hierarchy of foreign affairs priorities, Russia is lucky to be in the top five. Russia thinks about Japan mainly when something is out of order with Europe or the United States. Together they serve as a braking mechanism, to which the so-called enforcement agencies contribute. They behave as if they have their own conspiracy among themselves. Judge for yourself.
The Russian president had not even completed his first visit to Japan in 2000, when Japan arrested an officer in its Naval Self-Defense Forces (Navy) on suspicion of spying for Russia. The next year, as soon as the Russian president personally reached an agreement with the Japanese prime minister on their next meeting, the Russian Air Force made a heroic flight either across Japan's airspace or across its border. Japanese interceptors were put on high alert, Tokyo protested to Moscow, and Moscow dismissed the protest. Such incidents are swept under the rug, bit a lump remains.
Such are the recent events. Russia will have a new president soon and he will travel to Japan this summer to the G8 summit. The Japanese are already hoping for disturbance in relations with Europe and the U.S. so Russia will turn its attention to it. And then, there you go. An employee of the so-called research bureau of the prime minister's office, an intelligence organization, is arrested for spying for Russia. And the Russian Air Force, with a single bomber, has made another heroic flight either across Japan's airspace or across its border. Japanese interceptors were put on high alert, Tokyo protested to Moscow, and Moscow will, of course, dismiss the protest. A strange coincidence. It could be called a tendency already. Who needs this cheap comedy? It looks as though everyone does. The question is why.
Georgy Kunadze, senior fellow of the Russian Academy of Sciences' World Economy and International Relations Institute, former Russian deputy foreign minister and ambassador to Japan
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 11, 2008
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