Japan-Russia: The end of delusions

11 April 2022

The war in Ukraine has led to a major rift between Japan and Russia. Reacting to political condemnation and economic sanctions from Tokyo, Moscow decided on 21 March to withdraw from the ongoing negotiations to solve their dispute over the Kuril Islands, ending 30 years of cordial relations between the two neighbours. Japan is now aware that Russia and China work hand-in-hand as revisionist powers, and that an engagement policy towards Moscow is no longer enough to secure its interests. Sanctioning Russia and materially supporting Ukraine also marks a historic break with Tokyo's traditional cautiousness on the international scene.

Taking stock of Abe’s engagement policy

Since the end of the Cold War, Moscow has no longer posed a threat to Tokyo. A weakened Russia even seemed open to returning at least two of the four South Kuril Islands to Japan. These islands have been under Russian sovereignty since 1945, but were previously under Japanese control and are strategically placed north of Hokkaido on the east flank of the Sea of Okhotsk. This territorial dispute has so far prevented the signing of a formal peace treaty between the neighbours. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made resolving the dispute a personal affair — his father, a former foreign minister, passed away before completing a round of discussions that started in 1990.

During his tenure (2012-2020), Abe met with Putin almost 30 times in the hope of forging a relationship of trust. Adopting extremely modest sanctions after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, he actually proposed investing in Russia to facilitate the resolution of the territorial dispute. A joint development plan for the South Kuriles (“Northern Territories” for the Japanese) was announced in 2016, but this plan has not led to any concrete action. In fact, Abe's efforts were useless: Russia has not surrendered an inch of sovereignty. On the contrary, it has reinforced its existing military presence on the islands with, among other equipment, batteries of S-300 surface-to-air missiles at the end of 2020.

Faced with the paralysis of the UN Security Council (UNSC), for instance, Tokyo condemned Russian actions and called for reform of this body. As part of this reform, the number of UNSC permanent members would increase, with a seat for Japan.

By trying to get closer to Putin, Shinzo Abe was also aiming for a more strategic objective: to prevent Russia from falling into the Chinese orbit, or at least, to prevent a Sino-Russian front against Japan on territorial and historical issues. This, again, has failed: Moscow's economic dependence on Beijing has been deepening and the two countries have been engaging in unprecedented military cooperation. In recent years, Chinese and Russian forces have conducted large-scale exercises in the Far East. Last October, Russian and Chinese vessels circled the Japanese archipelago, causing alarm in Tokyo. In 2022, the context is definitively different from 2014: the aggression against Ukraine by Russia is violating all the principles of the laws of war and humanitarian law. Hence, Japan has had no choice but to adopt a tougher stance and to make a clear break from Abe's magnanimous approach that only led to meagre results.

Japan firmly aligns with the West

Japanese rhetoric has hardened. Tokyo immediately condemned the Russian aggression, stating that it "unilaterally changes the status quo by force" — terminology usually used to describe Chinese manoeuvres in the South and East China Seas. In official documents, the Northern Territories are once again presented as an “inherent part” of the Japanese nation. The relationship with Russia will therefore undergo a profound reassessment: the revised National Security Strategy upcoming this year will certainly describe it as an unfriendly country. While over the last decades’ China has become the number one security concern for Tokyo — especially because it frequently intruded into Japanese territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands — the Japanese may now want to redeploy their Self-Defence Forces to cope with a more threatening Russia.

In a remarkable move for a country traditionally reluctant to use sanctions and generally cautious on the international scene, Japan instantly aligned itself with the United States, and more broadly with the G7 countries. Demonstrating its solidarity with the West, even before the start of the conflict Tokyo responded positively to American requests to share part of its LNG stock to supplement Europe. Later, when the war broke out, a series of sanctions was adopted, including freezing the Russian Central Bank's yen reserves, withdrawing the most-favoured-nation status granted to Russia, and suspending exports of more than 30 goods, including used vehicles and spare parts (which account for more than half of Japanese exports to Russia). This said, Japan remains strategically dependent on Russia for its energy: it imports 9 per cent of its LNG, 4 per cent of its crude oil, and 14.5 per cent of its coal. At the moment, therefore, Tokyo is not envisioning the exit of Mitsui and Mitsubishi from the Sakhalin 2 gas field, as long-term contracts guarantee Japan inexpensive gas with reduced transport costs. If Tokyo were to stop importing gas from Russia and supply itself on the spot, the cost of its LNG imports would jump by 35 per cent.

Exceptional measures to support the acceleration of history

The scale of warfare in Ukraine and Western reactions prompted Japan to take exceptional measures. While Japan does not normally provide equipment to countries involved in a conflict, for the first time Tokyo has decided to send non-lethal military equipment (helmets, bulletproof vests, generators, food and humanitarian aid) to Ukraine’s combat forces. In the face of Russian aggression, discussions in Tokyo about a significant increase in the defence budget have resumed. During the general elections campaign last October, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) proposed doubling military spending to bring it to 2 per cent of GDP. Although Prime Minister Kishida has not formally endorsed this proposal, he is likely to strive for a significant increase in the defence budget. By doing so, he aims to please the ultraconservatives who facilitated his election as head of the LDP, but also satisfy the United States, as Tokyo wants to ensure an enduring American military commitment to East Asia.

If Japan decides to adopt NATO criteria to calculate its defence budget (by including, for example, the salaries of reservists or the coast guards), the budget would automatically reach 1.2 per cent of GDP. A further decision to authorise a supplementary budget could be facilitated by the German case, as the Scholz government recently broke several taboos regarding the country’s defence posture. Another decision that stands out in the Japanese context is the welcoming of Ukrainian refugees who have family or friends in the archipelago. Normally, less than 1 per cent of annual asylum applications (4,000 in 2021) are accepted; but so far, Japan has welcomed more than 335 Ukrainians fleeing their country, and Foreign Minister Hayashi reportedly brought back 30 evacuees with him after his visit to Poland last week. This exception to the rule comes as Ukraine's resistance against Russia becomes a symbol of the democratic fight against autocratic regimes with revisionist views.

Japan, which presents itself as a fierce advocate of the rules-based international order, sees the emergence of a democratic front very favourably, especially since China's seeming ambiguity over the war in Ukraine — calling for an end to the fighting while seemingly not taking sides — is no longer concealing its de facto support for Moscow. In this ‘acceleration of history’, which sees the emergence of two international blocs, Japan is firmly anchored in the camp of liberal democracies. Faced with the paralysis of the UN Security Council (UNSC), for instance, Tokyo condemned Russian actions and called for reform of this body. As part of this reform, the number of UNSC permanent members would increase, with a seat for Japan.

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Author biography

Céline Pajon is Head of Japan Research at the Center for Asian Studies of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), Paris, where she has been a Research Fellow since 2008. She has also joined the Japan Program at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel as a Senior researcher since 2020. Céline is an International Research Fellow with the Canon Institute for Global Studies (CIGS) in Tokyo. Her area of expertise is Japan’s foreign and defence policy, as well as the geostrategic dynamics of the Indo-Pacific area, including French and European engagement in the region. Image credit: Wikipedia.