| Vol. 5, No 3, September-December, 1997 |
The return of the irredentist Northern Territories or the Southern Kurils is, for Japan, a sine qua non condition for the negotiation of any important pact or agreement with Russia. These territories constitute 4,996 Km' of inhospitable volcanic land, Whose strategic value has remained obsolete since the supre-macy of aviation relativized the otherwise-indisputable importance of naval power.
Its current importance lies in a delicate factor of incalculable consequences: political capital. That is, in the unpredictable effects that a change in sovereignty would provoke in the domestic policies of both countries. Due to the pride and national honor, one can easily see why both sides use such high degrees of caution and prudence in order to show that they are neither weak nor defeated in any sense. Russia and Japan are obligated to teach an agreement that has neither winners nor losers, or better said, one in which both countries appear as winners before their respective national audiences.
In a summit celebrated in Tokyo in April 18th, 1991, Gorbachev and Kaifu, agreed -as in this last one- to accelerate negotiations which had been postponed several times since the end of World War ll. The demise of the USSR in December of this year paralyzed this initiative.
In a UN Security Council meeting in January 1992, Yeltsin and Miyazawa decided to meet once again in Tokyo, but at the last minute Yeltsin canceled the date. This failure to meet, perceived as a cultural offense in Japan, has once again stalled negotiations, though the move are motivated primarily by internal convulsions faced by both countries. At the time, Japan was losing political stability because of the debacle of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), or Jiminto, the representative majority since 1955 to 1993, and ¡t was entering into a period of economic crisis that continues to endure. At the same time, the Russian Federation, in its transition toward capitalism, was living a chaotic and unstable situation, heightened by threats of a coup and tending to generate national discontent and social violence.
With internal problems eased, Yeltsin and Hosokawa met in Tokyo one year later -October 13th, 1993- and agreed to reactivate -again- bilateral relations. This time, they decided to separate the territorial dispute from all technical and economic agreements, though these latter items remain languishing due to disinterest on the part of the Japanese. Russia also apologized for the 600,000 japanese prisoners killed in Siberia over the years, and promised to remove military personnel from the territories in question, recognizing bilateral agreements made prior to 1956. However, Japan offered very cautiously and wisely a small bit of help, hoping for greater concessions in the future.
The Krasnoyarsk summit celebrated in November 1997 between Yeltsin and Hashimoto seemed to tie together these elements. However, the Asian scene, given the monetary and economic crisis faced by the principle clients of Japan -which receive 45% of its exports- has experienced some superficial changes which may favor, in the future, the lucrative understanding sought by Russia.
Stagnant or in recession since April 1991, the Japanese economy is abandoning its traditional role of economic motor. At the moment, the only feasible economic solution is that of always: increase exports. The question is, to where?
Japan has traditionally avoided falling into any type of excessive regionalism that might negatively affect its international possibilities. Its expansion throughout the world and throughout the Pacific Rim has continued to increase year after year. South American markets, though structurally weak, will absorb in the short term a higher volume of japanese exports. But those markets which, despite the risks, offer a greater potential for absorbing new and massive Japanese exports, in both the medium and the long term, belong to China and Russia. lt would not be strange that in the next few months, if the current situation persists or worsens -a situation dreamed of by Yeltsin- Japan promptly becomes closer to its traditional enemies. For that reason, a peace treaty with Russia seems more plausible today.
The recent Chinese-North American summit, celebrated during the visit of Chinese President Jiang Zemin to the United States between October 23 and November 3 of the past year, has been judged as the first meeting between superpowers of the 21st Century. The decision to convene occasional meetings and to connect a red phone between both capitals would seem to signal a relationship of global significance, quite analogous to that maintained between Washington and Moscow during the Cold War.
With these summits, Washington attempts to include the emerging power in a set of similar international agreements, as part of so-called A constructive engagement. lt is also a strategic piece which aims to avoid part of the dispersion of power which current technological mediums grant to organisms without frontiers operating in the great space of Eurasia and in the Middle East. The disintegration of the USSR and the rise of militant Islamic fundamentalism in Asia favor this path. On its part, Peking lacks any other alternative aside from t hat of getting closer to Washington. A large part of its modernization success and its acceptance by international organisms depends precisely upon this rapprochement.
From 1979 until now, the reforms promoted by Deng Xiao-Ping have succeeded in capturing both technology and capital from the great North American multinationals, trading in return the introduction of a favorable image of China in the public opinion on the other side of the Pacific, from California to Washington. At the same time, in the cities of the People's Republic of China, pop culture, the lifestyle, and the university education of the United States have been considered as windows to the world. With the diffusion of television series, the learning of American English, tourism and the increasing proliferation of fast food chains, has significated that the cultural impact of the United States becomes incontestable.
A profound mutual disenchantment was spring out by the repression of the student movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The resulting diplomatic cold shoulder and com-mercial boycott from the West, added to the fall of the Berlin Wall, were perceived by Peking as an attempt by Washington and its allies to uproot the very foundations of the socialist camp.
Still, despite the idealism, indecision and inaction characteristic of the region, Realpolitik does seem to be imposing itself in the Pacific. The recent Chinese-North American summit was the first celebrated in the United States since 1985. Among the achieved agreements, the Chinese promise to not supply nuclear materials to Iran and Pakistan, and the reaffirmation of Peking's availability to act in the peace process of the two Koreas, resulted apparently far more important to Washington than the occasional denouncing of the situation in Tibet or of the violation of human rights. The Chinese have become accustomed to the electoral seesawing of the various North American administrations, the existence of different pressure groups and a hostile Congress. For that reason, a Chinese lobby was established in the city of Washington itself, accompanied by the active presence of the Chinese-North American Business Council. The Jiang-Clinton summit also, saw a rise in the sales of US-manufactured nuclear products to China, and the creation of an atmosphere favorable to a future series of agreements involving multinationals.
Nonetheless, Washington did not cease to advance its policy of inclusion and contention within China itself, as it does every time that it defines the limit of its vital interests not only as being in the Persian Gulf, but also in the China Sea and even in Central Asia. Still, precisely in these last two scenarios the US and China could collide with or confront each other. The conversion of Central Asia within a short period of time into a region of both geopolitical and economic importance was previewed, an environment where various powers most likely will compete.
To conclude, from the point of view of immediate concerns, things seem
splendid for the superpower of the 20th Century. According to current projections,
no rival will emerge that could threaten the status of the US as global
power for at least one generation. lt is also difficult for Peking to raise
its indicators of military, economic, technological and cultural power to
the levels of those of Washington within three decades. Nor does ¡t
seem likely that its standard of living will come to approximate that of
the West, at least not for the next fifty years.
Fifty years after the Pact of Rio de Janeiro, it seems that Washington is writing a new policy with regard to South America, particularly the Southern Cone: a "divide and conquer". The agitation for Brazil to receive a permanent seat on the UN Security Council; declares. "non-NATO strategic ally" status for Argentina; and, finally, makes possible the recent sales of sophisticated weaponry to Chile, thus completing the picture of this policy. Barring the possibility that MERCOSUR comes to constitute an effective balance of power vis-á-vis the United States, the latter will continue to have some aces up its sleeve, and the ABC of MERCOSUR will dissolve in the same way as its predecessor.
At the beginning of the century, it seemed that the growth of the "giant of the North" would be opposed and tempered by an alliance between Argentina, Brazil and Chile in the Southern Cone, or the "ABC". This idea continued to circulate throughout the century, but its effectiveness was nullified due to the scant amount of cooperation between those countries and, later on, the total disparity in size among them.
Since the end of the eighties, the combination of redemocratization, the end of the Cold War in the continent, and the implementation of widespread economic reforms, which implicitly carry with them a high but variable degree of acceptance of globalization, have illuminated an economic interrelation and cooperation heretofore unseen on the continent.
Nonetheless, two factors work against any possible production in South America of an association similar to that of the European Union. First, the pressure from and the catastrophic legacy of the post-Second World War era do not exist there as they do in Europe. Secondly, the grand majority of the exchange of ideas and goods are not realized among MERCOSUR nations, though it has been increasing, but rather between those countries and the great developed spaces of the world.
Finally, in the last decade, the countries in question have expanded immensely their ties with Asia. In the particular case of Chile, its exports to only Japan have exceeded those to the United States in some recent years.
The current crisis in Asia, looked at in the medium term, cannot be anything but an inevitable and temporary setback on a road which naturally has many ups and downs. These processes, of developing links with Europe and Asia, diversify in the long term the options of the Southern Cone in a way that, in the case of abrupt necessity, Washington would not necessarily be able to count on the region as it has since the Second World War.
The policy of the three South American countries still advances very tentatively, and ¡t lacks institutionality, both in terms of cooperation among the countries and in terms of the maturing of ties between them and the primary centers of global power On the other hand, something similar could be said of Washington, which has always shown a wavering attention toward the region. Recent actions are due less to a detailed policy than to the occasional arbitrary decisions emanating from the North American capital, acting as a substitute for the coherent action which its political system cannot admit for the moment.
The United States shows its interest and flings about its "gifts" as part of its own necessity to ensure its power is not forgotten, but ¡t also has not lost sight of the fact that for the moment, no danger could emerge from this zone which would challenge its position or its society, the drug trafficking question apart. The different "offers" to Brazil, Argentina and Chile are partly a "game" of distraction and partly "bureaucratic" decisions which follow the changing inertia of interamerican relations in the nineties, yet they also appear unfortunately to be the fruit of a master plan.
The ABC countries do not act to counterweight Washington, but all their
recent activity is a testimony for the day in which development, if ¡t
arrives, leaves them transformed into modern societies. They must also advance
in terms of cooperation, a road not lacking some important and intimate
reservations, but reservations which can nevertheless be overcome. Whoever
wishes to define the current stages in a quick and high-sounding way would
be wrong. Not only in this region, but also throughout the world, the international
system transforms itself slowly, to the point that one can see that the
first decade of the next century will not be vastly different from the current
one.