A Pragmatically Amended 1956 Compromise Could Speedily Resolve The Kuril Islands Issue

The amended 1956 compromise put forth in this piece would advance their interests and arguably also America’s as well but requires Russia to make the first move by informally floating this proposal.

Putin’s first-ever visit to the Kuril Islands during his trip to Iturup was harshly condemned by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi due to her country’s continued claims to that island and several others that Tokyo considers to be its “Northern Territories”. Kunashir, Shikotan, and the uninhabited Habomai Islands round out the rest of the Russian territory whose control is disputed in Northeast Asia. For background, the Yalta Agreement returned the Kuril Islands to the USSR, but Japan raised a technicality.

From its perspective, the abovementioned islands supposedly weren’t ever legally considered part of the Kuril Islands, but a 1949 State Department memo argued that aquaculture-rich Shikotan and the Habomai Islands are the only ones whose legal status under the Yalta Agreement might be debatable. Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956 that restored their diplomatic relations included a compromise whereby Moscow agreed to transfer those two to Tokyo after they sign a peace treaty.

For reasons beyond the scope of this analysis to detail but which many on the Russian side suspect was due to American influence over Japan, their grand compromise fell apart, ergo why the dispute persists to this day with Tokyo claiming all four of the previously mentioned areas. Putin invested considerable time and effort into restoring the 1956 compromise so as to unlock more Japanese investment, open up more of its energy market to Russian exports, and preemptively avert Russian dependence on China.

These outcomes are also in Japan’s objective national interests, but the emotive nature of this dispute for some of the Japanese electorate impeded a resolution even under the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who Putin considered to be a close friend and with whom he discussed this issue at length. “Putin Lamented The Worsening Of Russian-Japanese Relations” during his tour of the Russian Far East right before his trip to Iturup to signal that this is Moscow’s response to the trend that he blames on Tokyo.

The preceding hyperlinked analysis also directs readers to these two analyses here and here to respectively learn more about why Russia considers Japan to pose a growing threat to its security and the role that the US envisages Japan playing in the new regional security architecture. The purpose in referencing them is to highlight the military-strategic stakes of potentially worsened Russian-Japanese relations with a view towards drawing attention to why Japan should compromise with Russia instead.

Peace and stability are the paramount imperatives, which could then unlock economic and geostrategic dividends for Japan so long as Tokyo returns to the 1956 compromise with Moscow. In that scenario, even if Japan doesn’t lift all of its anti-Russian sanctions right away, it might begin by doing so in a blended sectoral-geographic way modeled off of this proposal here from a decade ago regarding a “Northern Islands Socio-Economic Condominium” (NISEC) between Sakhalin, the Kurils, and Hokkaido.

The idea is that these three regions could become the core of a more comprehensive economic integration project that could scale to include the entire resource-rich Russian Far East with privileged Japanese access to its energy and mineral wealth as elaborated on here and here. Instead of remaining dependent on unpredictable West Asian energy imports and politically vulnerable Chinese rare earth mineral processing, Japan could rely on Russia as a nearby solution with the right investment strategy.

On the geostrategic front, Russia would advance its goal of preemptively averting dependence on China, which is in Japan’s interests too. Given Japan’s closeness with India, and recalling that India is already making inroads in the Russian Far East via their Eastern Maritime Corridor, large-scale joint Japanese-Indian resource-centric investments – both in extraction and processing – are possible. Russia’s copious hydroelectric resources there and the resultantly cheap cost of energy make this all the more attractive.

To recap the amended 1956 compromise that’s being proposed, Japan would receive Shikotan and the Habomai Islands in exchange for dropping its claims to Kunashir and Iturup, the quid pro quo of which would be sweetened by the creation of NISEC and privileged access to the Russian Far East’s resources. Upon its full implementation, this (likely phased) plan would preemptively avert Russian dependence on China while reducing Japan’s dependence on the US, therefore mutually strengthening their sovereignty.

Moreover, the Japanese economy would no longer be held hostage to a hypothetical conflict in the South China Sea due to its reduced dependence on West Asian energy imports, while trade with the EU could be optimized via Russia’s Northern Sea Route. With low-cost energy and mineral resources flooding into the country from just across its namesake sea, the Japanese economy might experience a long-overdue renaissance, thus enhancing its competitiveness in the emerging global economic order.

For as much as Takaichi might truly believe in the merits of her country’s claims to Kunashir and Iturup, not to mention the influence of domestic political pressure from some voters and discreet international pressure from the US, she should therefore boldly explore the compromise put forth in this piece. After all, it’s also in the US’ interests that Russia preemptively averts dependence on China as explained here and here, so Trump might be convinced if his new friend Takaichi’s argument is persuasive enough.

Considering the three influences upon her – her own views on the issue, domestic political pressure, and discreet international pressure from the US – this proposal might require Russia to make the first move by informally floating it through diplomatic and/or expert channels. That could raise greater awareness of it among Japanese officialdom, experts, and then eventually society alike, which might then possibly reduce domestic political pressure upon Takaichi and thus embolden her to discuss this with Trump.

American diplomats and experts could also catch wind of this from their Japanese counterparts if Russia first informally floats it through one or both of these channels. With this in mind, Russia would do well to make the first move, which could then reconceptualize Putin’s first-ever trip to the Kuril Islands as the third example of him newly “escalating to de-escalate” by following up a “political escalation” (from the Japanese viewpoint) in this case with a viable de-escalation proposal. The Kremlin should reflect on this.