Putin, East Asia’s New Power Broker
Russian President Vladimir Putin had a busy few days of diplomacy in Sochi as the Winter Olympics opened there last week, meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Saturday. Analysts say that, by scheduling the meetings as he did, Putin was using the occasion to expand his influence in East Asia.
Up until now, the dour Russian leader has shown little interest in that part of the world, preferring to devote himself to the “near abroad,” his country’s western border, and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Yet an increasingly nasty struggle embroiling China and Japan has given Putin an opening in East Asia—and leverage. Says Liang Yunxiang of Peking University, “Both countries attach great importance to their relationship with Russia as they hope he will play an active role in regional security and they want his support amid the dispute over the uninhabited islands.”
The “uninhabited islands” are more like barren outcroppings, eight of them to be precise. The Japanese now control what they call the Senkakus in the East China Sea. The Chinese, who call them the Diaoyus, want them as well. So it should be no surprise that both Xi and Abe showed up at the now-famous Black Sea resort in recent days to woo the leader of the Russian Federation.
Abe’s Japan and Putin’s Russia are still technically in a state of war, having never settled the fate of three islands and a set of rocks in the Kuril chain, seized by the Soviet Union in August and September 1945. For decades, neither Tokyo nor Moscow was willing to give an inch, literally or figuratively. Now, some believe Abe, a nationalist, is ready to deal. Negotiations over the islands, the Japanese prime minister said on Saturday, have been “very fast.” Putin will visit Japan in the fall.
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