Russia - Japan Relations

Kimie Hara explores the problems underlying foreign policy decision-making between Japan and Russia since 1945, including the infamous "Northern Territories dispute.

This collection of essays by leading scholars and diplomats involved with the area examines the key political and economic issues facing Japan, Russia, and their neighbors since the end of the Cold War. The main goal is to analyze recent developments in Moscow-Tokyo bilateral relations and their growing interest in closer economic engagement, stability, and regional cooperation.

In this edited collection diplomats, academic researchers, and journalists survey modern Russian-Japanese relations. An attempt is made to go back to the origins of the conflict in their relations, to analyze their current status, and to propose an agenda for the future. The authors argue that the problems Moscow and Tokyo inherited from the decades of the Cold War cannot be resolved through a narrow bilateral approach and will require constructure U.S. participation. The problem of the Northern Territories is examined in the context of the North Pacific regional security environment. The authors explore the prospects for cooperative regional engagement, a nuclear build-down in the North Pacific, and possible involvement of the UN in the resolution of the territorial dispute.

Eastern Destiny: Russia in Asia and the North Pacific is the history of a remarkable eastern expansion under tsars, emperors, and commissars. The narrative spans the period from the Mongol conquest in the 13th century to the Cold War of the 20th. An intense anxiety for security, owed in large part to the Mongol incursion, would impel the eastern Slavs relentlessly toward territorial aggrandizement. Over the centuries, the modest Grand Duchy of Moscow in Eastern Europe was so successful that it grew into the massive Russian Empire, whose lands stretched from the Holy Roman Empire in Central Europe to the edge of British power in the wilds of North America.

In The Strategic Quadrangle five experts on East Asia explore the new shape of power among the major players in the region - Russia, China, Japan, and the United States. The authors examine the web of alliances, historical rivalries, and conflicting worldviews that define the relations among these four powers and analyze how the interactions among them will affect East Asia and the international system as a whole. Robert Legvold, surveying the sweeping changes that have taken place in Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union, contends that genuine integration into East Asia requires the kind of economic changes that have just begun in Russia and will take years to complete. David Lampton, in his chapter on China, examines the Chinese leadership's policy of military detente and economic cooperation with the other three powers in order to sustain the remarkable economic performance of the last two decades. In his chapter on Japan, Michael Mochizuki discusses the uncertainty that the end of the Soviet-American rivalry has produced in Japan's domestic politics and foreign policy. Michael Mandelbaum discusses the bilateral relationships between the United States and the three other countries and the differing issues that loom large for each: security, economics, and human rights. Finally, Richard Solomon attempts to answer the pivotal question of who will shape and wield power in the new East Asia.

"Three quarters of Russia's territory lies in Asia, east of the Ural mountains. The country's principal threats now come from Asian countries on its southern borders. Drawing on a wide variety of Russian language sources, this book provides the first substantial study of Russian military posture in the Asia Pacific since the collapse of the USSR."

This book provides an in-depth study of the Japanese-Soviet neutrality pact, which held between 1941 and 1945 and ended with the USSR's declaration of war against Japan.

In 1581 a Cossack raider crossed the Ural Mountains to plunder and claim for Tsar Ivan IV the land called "Sibir" by its Tatar inhabitants. Within half a century, Moscow's reach would extend nearly six thousand miles to the east. Thus Russia has a long history as part of Asia. Does it have a future there as well? Rediscovering Russia in Asia takes the reader on a trans-Siberian expedition to encounter the peoples, cultures, and riches of Russia's eastern expanses. The expert guides are scholars with the language skills and the sense of adventure to explore a "crossroads of civilizations" at long last reopened to the world.