The inside story of the negotiations on the Northern Territories: five lost windows of opportunity

Abstract

This article examines Japan's relations with the Soviet Union/Russian Federation during the sixteen-year period between Gorbachev's coming to power in 1985 and Putin's completion of his first year as president in the spring of 2001. It identifies five lost windows of opportunity for solving the Northern Territories dispute between these two nations, which might have significantly improved the bilateral relationship. At the time of the first missed opportunity under Gorbachev in 1986–1988, the Cold War rigidity in relations still deeply affected how Japan and the Soviet Union dealt with one another. The second missed opportunity under Gorbachev in 1989 saw structural rigidity on the part of Japanese policy-makers hampering the faster development of the relationship. The third missed opportunity under Yeltsin in 1992 was the consequence of a failure in policy choices on the Japanese side and of policy-makers not fulfilling their responsibility. At the fourth missed opportunity under Yeltsin in 1997–1998, the Japanese side learned lessons from past mistakes and did not hesitate to propose a courageous proposal to break the impasse. President Yeltsin was impressed by this proposal, but the Russian side as a whole did not accept it as a basis for negotiations. Before the fifth missed opportunity, awareness of past failures was very much at the forefront of Japanese and Russian negotiators’ mind. The negotiations proceeded unexpectedly fast and effectively in 2000–2001, and then were suddenly crushed because of domestic issues in Japan. Individual responsibility was fulfilled in negotiating with the Russians, but the negotiators were unable to overcome domestic constraint.