See You Next Year

Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, agreed with Russian President, Vladimir Putin, that Putin will visit Japan in an appropriate timing next year. Taking opportunity of Asia-Pacific Economic Conference in Beijing, they had the seventh meeting since the second Abe administration started in late 2012. In spite of international pressure on Russia, that took aggressive action on Ukraine territory, Abe was serious about maintaining his one of the few reliable diplomatic channels. However, situation of international politics does not allow Abe having an optimistic view on the bilateral relationship.

The agreement meant that they abandoned the official visit of Putin to Japan, planned this fall. In ninety-minute dialogue, Abe told Putin that he wanted to talk firmly about peace treaty negotiation and international relations. Referring to the negotiation on peace treaty these years, Putin required analytical exchange of opinion for bilateral cooperation. On Northern Territory of Japan, they reconfirmed their promise in April last year, which recognized the necessity for both party to have acceptable solution.

From an objective viewpoint, the outcome of the meeting was something opaque. Simply saying, they officially cancelled Putin’s visit to Japan and failed in determining next opportunity. Visit in “an appropriate timing” means that the visit will not be happen as long as inappropriate situation continues. It was in other words an unconditional suspension of the visit.

In fact, they exchanged few serious words on Ukraine. Abe criticized the independent election by pro-Russian residents in Ukraine as making matters complex. In the situation that the Western nations strongly oppose Russian attitude on Ukraine, Japan cannot solely make progress in the relationship with Russia. “I demand that Russia make a constructive effort for improving the situation,” told Abe.

For Abe, it is his failure that he tried to manage the diplomacy to Russia through cultivating personal relationship. If he wants to solve the problem over Northern Territory, he need to be cooperative with the nations supportive to Japan, especially the United States, because the territory was a talking point among United Nations during the World War II. It was U.S., United Kingdom and Russia that determined current situation.

In addition, Abe needs to be careful on Russian ambitions over economic relationship. In the meeting participated the governor of Sakhalin for talking about economic cooperation. The approach is a consecutive effort of Russia to separate the territory issue from economic cooperation.