Project on Japan - U.S. Relations

East Asia's Calm Before the Storm

2.25.05 Wall Street Journal, Asian Edition

COMMENTARY

By Michael R. Auslin

The current thaw between Tokyo and Moscow may appear to signal an end to over two centuries of mistrust and conflict, as well as suggest that old rivalries in the Asia Pacific region will soon disappear. But the reality is that the new friendship between Russia and Japan is a reaction to the looming threat of China, and a reminder of the great power competition that still plagues East Asia.

This year marks not only the centenary of the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War, but also the 60th anniversary of Japan's defeat in World War II. It is, perhaps, an unlikely time to see a thaw in relations between the two countries, but that is precisely what seems to be occurring.

In December, Russia decided to build a $10 billion pipeline from its Siberian oilfields to a Japan Sea terminus, thereby choosing Japan over China as its future major oil customer. This followed a summit between top Japanese and Russian regional military commanders, complementing ongoing naval exchanges. Although ownership of the Kurile Islands remains an unresolved issue, their political significance wanes as the wartime generation shrinks and broad-based bilateral relations, particularly economic, seem to improve.

The geopolitical situation in East Asia, however, may be more like a clock turning back than moving forward. The Russo-Japanese rapprochement reflects a slow but worrisome trend of great power maneuvering reminiscent of the 1930s. The prime mover is China, and the major powers are responding to their perceptions of Beijing's strategy for regional dominance.

Most troubling from a long-term perspective is the underground current of economic competition. The Russian oil pipeline may prove crucial to Japan's continued economic recovery as Tokyo watches China's oil appetite grow. Last year China surpassed Japan to become the world's second largest oil importer, after the United States. Both Beijing and Tokyo relentlessly lobbied for the pipeline deal, and Japan won out because it agreed to finance a large chunk of the multibillion dollar project.

Oil is just one part of the picture, however, and such economic competition will become only more acute in future decades. China's demand for raw materials is driving up the global price of everything from copper to coal. And even as trade continues to grow between Japan and China, reaching nearly $140 billion in 2003, they also find themselves in a zero-sum game over access to future resources and markets. The two countries continue to quarrel over control of the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands and its large natural gas fields, and Tokyo last year accused China of illegally drilling for natural gas inside Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone.

Japan has trailed in China's wake as Beijing moves to increase its economic influence in Asia. Last December, China signed an agreement with the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations to create the world's third largest free-trade area by 2010. China-Asean trade now nears $100 billion, while the proposed FTA would cover nearly two billion people with a combined gross domestic product of close to $2 trillion. In return, Japan, hobbled by the political clout of its domestic farmers' lobby, has only been able to come up with an FTA with Singapore, and even that is compromised by agricultural exclusions.

How might this economic competition one day exacerbate political and military tensions? When faced with bilateral or multilateral problems, East Asia has no regional security architecture in place that its leading powers can resort to, only ad-hoc measures. The region is held hostage to military balances of power, which themselves will become increasingly buffeted by economic and security tensions. This explains why few observers should feel sanguine about the Russian-Japanese rapprochement.

It is precisely China's growing strategic presence, on top of economic concerns, that worries Japan. Beijing is Russia's number one weapons customer as it pursues a long-term modernization of its military forces, including naval. This threatens not only Taiwan, but Japan as well, as was revealed late last year when Japanese naval forces discovered and chased out of their waters a Chinese submarine that had been lurking for several days.

Tokyo has given notice that it won't remain passive in the face of China's growth. The new "National Defense Program Guideline" warns that Japan must "remain attentive" to China's future military course, and recently, the Defense Agency revealed plans to defend Japan's southernmost islands from invasion, which could come only from China. In this light, moves to reduce tensions with Russia in the far north will allow Japan greater strategic flexibility vis-à-vis China.

Yet it is the strategic reality in East Asia that such developments are responded to almost immediately by countermoves. Just weeks after completing the pipeline deal, Moscow announced large-scale military exercises with China set for 2005, a first for the two nations. One is reminded of late 19th century Europe and its abundance of competing, overlapping military alliances and relationships. The reason then was the breakdown in the Concert of Europe; the reason now is the lack of a concert in the first place. The United States may have averted a great power conflict for over half a century, but its presence will not provide a long-term solution. That most countries in the region are uneasy with China's lengthening shadow bolsters the opportunity to create a viable regional security architecture.

There is currently no sustained move toward order in East Asia, rather there are the subdued rumblings of great powers beginning to search for strategic advantage and potential partners. While the likelihood of an explosion tomorrow is slim, like all neatly stacked tinderboxes, the spark could come from any one of a multitude of directions. In which case the present Russo-Japanese thaw will be one day be remembered as the calm before the storm.

Mr. Auslin teaches history at Yale University, where he directs the Project on Japan-U.S. Relations, and is the author of "Negotiating with Imperialism" (Harvard, 2004).

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©2005, Project on US-Japan Relations