Engaging Russia in Asia Pacific by Koji Watanabe (ed) (Tokyo: Japan Center for International Exchange, 1999, ISBN 4-88907-029-X) 190 pages, US $25

The question of how to engage Russia constructively remains a passionate one. The erstwhile world power clearly has not yet come to terms with its decolonialization experience and decline in status. It remains resource rich, a nuclear power and a tactically skilful, intelligent and ruthless operator. Yet strategically it is on a course of self-destruction and determined to drag most of its hapless “near abroad” as its jealously guarded sphere of influence along. You are part of the rest of the world and are tasked to engage. What do you do?

This edited conference volume contains nine Asian answers—some of which are fairly non-descript, but most remain pertinent even after the passage of some time.

Professor Ha Yoong-Chool in a well-structured and well-informed chapter starts out by defining the objectives of Russia’s East Asian policy: to develop the Russian Far East and Siberia, to eliminate US military influence, to inhibit Japan from nuclear rearming, to prevent China from becoming hostile to Russia, and to increase Russian influence in Korea. Yet he rightly observes a great deal of inconsistency (p. 25). During perestroika the Soviet’s classical hostile policy style was abandoned also in the Asia Pacific. But under communist and nationalist pressure during 1993–1996 an aggressive foreign policy posture resumed. Since then Russia follows a short term orientation as an opportunistic “balancing power” (p. 26). Relations with South Korea, and its diplomatic recognition in 1990, were developed as a substitute for the outstanding settlement with Japan. Yet Russia never made any concrete designs for Korean unity. It seemed happy with the status quo and just made vague allusions to coexistence (p. 29). South Korea had clearly overestimated Russian influence over the North, deeming it to be the “godfather of the Socialist camp” (p. 28). Yet North Korea continued to be more obsessed with US attitudes and behaviour. In her turn South Korea disappointed the Russians by her empty promises and “attempts to cheat”. The \$3 billion offer made for opening diplomatic relations was disbursed only half. Grandiose investments did not materialize either. Thus the “brief honeymoon was less than happy”.

In the 1980s Japanese projects started, notably extracting natural gas and anthracite from Yakutia. This triggered the Far Eastern regional administration’s plans in 1989 for self-governance and a free economic zone with an open mixed economy (p. 35). It came to naught like the Tumen River delta development, which the UNDP had judged as critical for the region’s prosperity. Fears of a Chinese takeover led to a Russian cancellation. This indicates clear limits for the Russian/Chinese “strategic partnership” which Yeltsin and Ziang Zemin had announced during mutual visits in 1996/1997, with US–Japan cooperation as common object of dislike (p. 38/9).

Yang Mingjie agrees that Russia remains west oriented, and that it cares only about its European part (p. 52). He retraces the origins of the SCO as confidence building agreement, reducing the military to less than 130.000 men stationed within 100 km of the border lines between Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

Professor Li Jingjie also pretty much reproduces the official line. In the 1960s/1970s the confrontation with the USSR had diverted resources, allowing Japan and the NICs to develop. Thus in 1982 China adopted the doctrine of peaceful coexistence, but abstaining from joining any power bloc at the same time. At a 1997 Moscow summit “multipolarity” was enshrined in a joint declaration as the desirable state of the world after the end of the bipolar cold war (p. 57). In 1999 during the NATO attacks on Serbia there was “close contact and coordination” (p. 56), but obviously no action. On domestic dirty business, like Chechnya and Taiwan, there are assurances of mutual support (p. 60). Russia is praised, unlike the West, not to “launch an attack on China concerning so-called human rights and democracy” (p. 60). As Russia could not develop Siberia and the Far East alone, it needed Chinese participation and cooperation, as the region offered complementarity to China’s Northeast. This was evident in the pipeline project from Irkutsk oblast to Shandong province (p. 63), a project cancelled since, like the Tumen Delta, due to Russian fears of too much Chinese complementarity. Still the border disputes along the Ussuri and Amur River against the resistance of the Russian locals were nicely settled in China’s favour (p. 64). Hence the Damansky islands, where hundreds died in border clashes over the Ussuri in 1969, have now reverted to Chinese sovereignty as the more poetic Black Bear and Silvery Dragon islands.

The same has not happened yet to the Northern Territories of the Southern Kuriles, which were occupied after the seize fire of September 1945 and subsequently annexed by the USSR without a shred of legitimacy. As the editor Koji Watanabe reminds, hopes were high during the Krasnoyarsk summit of 1997 that due to the good personal relations between Yeltsin and PM Hashimoto a peace treaty with a redrawn border line (with actual handover occurring later) could be signed during 2000 (p. 68). Time and again these hopes were frustrated. As a result cooperation on Far Eastern development is limited to a few fisheries and investment treaties, with most joint ventures in the non-energy sectors closed down after losses and bureaucratic difficulties, including those of the shady kind, mounted (pp. 73). It could well be that Russia will loose control over its depopulating underdeveloped Far East to the Chinese, precisely due the Japanese withholding investment over the Northern Territories dispute. Obviously this would be in neither interest. Tetsuo Sugano, a banker, recaps the development of the offshore oil and gas fields of Sakhalin I and II (p. 86), which after decade long planning have now come to fruition. Other sensible projects, like UNDP 1992/1996 Tumen River work plan (p. 87), and the Siberian Land Bridge, which as a rail link would shorten the distance Yokohama–Rotterdam from 20.700 km (via Suez Canal) to 13.000 km, remain blocked by Russian politics and managerial incompetence.

Bilveer Singh recalls the competition between Atlanticists and Eurasianists in the Russian foreign policy establishment. He observes the original Atlanticist orientation of Kozyrev and Primakov, who had hoped to replace NATO by the OSCE as a common security organization, to end in frustration by late 1992. Since 1993 there is a Eurasian coalition at work in moscow, a collection of former communists and nationalists who nourish their aggressive anti-Western grief over the lost superpower status and its external and internal empire gone with a more Asian orientation (p. 109). As the political elite struggles with the manifold difficulties of transition, it is clearly not interested in the development of the Far East, yet at the same time fears Japanese and Chinese influence and control, Singh perceptively notes (p. 106). The result is the evidence of Russian self-destructive obstructionism which is so puzzling to many observers. Professor K.S. Nathan sees Russia’s influence in SE Asia declining, reduced mainly to a residual arms supplier, like of 18 MiG 29 to the Malaysian air force (p. 115).

In a more substantial chapter Amado Mendoza attempts to discern Russian economic influence. Yet as Russia’s economic integration in the world economy remains limited to the supply of crude oil, natural gas and metals, and with very modest merchandise exports (p. 129), her economic role remains marginal in Asia. This is unlikely to change as even with higher commodity prices, most of the revenue gained by Russia is tunnelled into real estate in London or the French Riviera or into Swiss bank accounts rather than into Russian industry. Capital flight at $10/15 bio/year easily exceeds the FDI inflows which are limited mainly to extractive industries (p. 130), given the entrenched hostility of the legal, political, security and administrative environment (p. 135). Hence Russia is, as mentioned, reduced to an arms dealer, with China, India and Iran being the main markets, and Malaysia and Vietnam subsidiary ones (p. 136).

The book quite movingly is devoted to one author, Akino Yutaka, a professor at Tsukuba University, who was murdered in July 1998 while on a UN peace mission in Tajikistan. In a way the half-finished chapter of this young Russia specialist reads like a testament. For him the overall power balance in Eurasia is shifting perceptively from Russia to China (p. 160). Russia has been pushed East by NATO’s expansion, yet looses ground in Central Asia and the Caucasus. In Dushanbe, his last assignment, he saw a Chinese/Kazakh/Kyrgyz “triangle” against the region’s Islamists in the making (p. 165). This may be still some way off, yet would be indicative of significant increase of Chinese influence not only in the Russian Far East but in Central Asia as well. In the meantime Moscow is obsessed with trying to eliminate American influence from the regions. It may succeed, but at the prize of eliminating its own influence as well, by backing the region’s discredited corrupt regimes, whose tumultuous inevitable overthrow then leads to the flight of the local Russian population and the reconstitution of monoethnic nation states, sufficiently weakened for their bigger Eastern neighbour.

The introduction of this interesting and stimulating volume states programmatically: “Engaging Russia is good for peace and prosperity in the region” (p. 12). Such pious wishes are pleasant to read. yet the thornier question, how do you engage a wounded former empire which does not want to engage constructively for his own good and for the good of the region, remains unanswered.