Japan Imposes New Sanctions on Russia but Keeps a Diplomatic ...
New York Times-
“Japan is sending the message that we are not enthusiastic about these sanctions,” said Yoshiki Mine, a research director at the Canon Institute ...
TOKYO
— Torn between maintaining solidarity with Washington and keeping a
diplomatic door open with Moscow, Japan imposed new sanctions on Russia
on Tuesday but kept them more limited than those recently ordered by the
United States.
The
new sanctions indicate that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe felt he needed to
fall in line with the United States, his country’s longtime protector,
analysts said, especially as he tries to fend off territorial claims by
an increasingly powerful China.
Still,
Mr. Abe appeared to be trying to strike a delicate balance not only by
limiting the sanctions, but also by indicating that he had not canceled
an invitation to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to visit Japan in
the fall. Mr. Abe has been pursuing warmer relations with Moscow, in
part, analysts say, to ensure that Japan does not lose out on Russia’s
bounty of natural gas.
“Japan
is sending the message that we are not enthusiastic about these
sanctions,” said Yoshiki Mine, a research director at the Canon
Institute for Global Studies in Tokyo and a former high-ranking Japanese
diplomat. “Japan needs to show it shares the same values as the West,
but it also wants to keep an opening with Russia.”
The
Japanese sanctions will freeze any assets in Japan belonging to two
organizations and 40 individuals connected with Russia’s involvement in
Ukraine. The people named by Japan had already been targeted by the
Americans and Europeans for being involved in Russia’s annexation of the
Crimean peninsula, or in what the West calls Russian-backed efforts to
destabilize eastern Ukraine, according to a government spokesman.
Japan will also restrict imports of products made in Crimea.
Analysts
called the measures largely symbolic since Japan does not import much
from Crimea, and it is unclear how many, if any, assets the targeted
people hold in Japan.
The
latest round of American and European sanctions against Russia went
much further, taking broad aim at the country’s banking, energy and
military technology industries. Japan had imposed relatively mild
sanctions in April that included barring some Russian officials from
receiving travel visas to Japan.
Mr.
Mine and others said Japan’s apparent hesitation over sanctions
underscored how Mr. Abe was being torn by competing geopolitical goals.
On
the one hand, analysts said, Mr. Abe wants to avoid falling too far
behind the United States and the European Union in punishing Moscow,
especially after the downing of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner last month,
which many in the West say was carried out by pro-Russia separatists.
One
of Mr. Abe’s signature goals has been to raise Japan’s profile in
international affairs while also strengthening ties with the United
States. That is the main rationale he has offered for some of his most
contentious policies, in particular freeing the Japanese military from
some of the pacifist constraints imposed after World War II.
But
Russia offers Mr. Abe a rare and tantalizing prospect of achieving a
major diplomatic success at a time when his nationalistic tendencies
have threatened to isolate him and his nation in the region.
Analysts
say Mr. Abe sees a chance to finally resolve one of Japan’s most
stubborn diplomatic impasses, over three islands and a group of islets
off its northern coast that were occupied by Soviet troops after Japan
surrendered in 1945. The islands have been a sore point for almost seven
decades, preventing Japan and Russia from even signing a formal peace
treaty after World War II.
Both
sides have new incentives now to make a deal, analysts said. Since the
disaster at the Fukushima plant in 2011 forced Japan to at least
temporarily end its reliance on nuclear energy, the government has been
seeking new energy supplies, from sources other than the volatile Middle
East.
Mr.
Putin has been looking to Asia for customers for Russia’s gas and oil,
and for new sources of investment in its energy infrastructure to reduce
its economic dependence on Western Europe.
Both
Mr. Abe and Mr. Putin have appeared to signal a greater willingness to
talk about the territorial dispute than their predecessors did. Experts
said there had been expectations that Mr. Abe and Mr. Putin, two leaders
with impeccable conservative credentials, could finally overcome
resistance to a compromise by hard-liners in both nations.
This
helped lead to a noticeable thawing of long-frozen ties, with Mr. Abe
meeting with Mr. Putin five times since taking office in December 2012 —
most recently in February, when Mr. Abe, unlike many world leaders,
attended the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
That
outreach on both sides stands in stark contrast to Japan’s souring
relations with neighboring South Korea and China, whose leaders have
complained bitterly about what they say are Mr. Abe’s revisionist views
on Japan’s bloody wartime empire-building.
But
after the conflict in Ukraine erupted, some Japanese watched anxiously
as Mr. Putin signed a large contract in May to supply China with $400
billion worth of natural gas. Analysts said there were fears that Russia
could retaliate against sanctions by canceling joint energy projects
with Japan, like one to produce liquefied natural gas on the Russian
island of Sakhalin.
“We
see China and also South Korea developing new energy cooperation with
Russia,” said Nobuo Shimotomai, an expert on Russian-Japanese relations
at Hosei University in Tokyo. “Japan does not want to be left behind.”
Russia
has been trying to drive a wedge between Tokyo and Washington, analysts
say. After it became clear last week that Japan was likely to impose
new sanctions, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, called on
Japanese leaders to show more independence from the United States,
while also saying that Mr. Putin’s visit to Japan was still on as far as
Russia was concerned. The dates for that visit have yet to be set.
Russia’s
Foreign Ministry also issued a statement saying that the expected
Japanese move was “an unfriendly and shortsighted step” that “inevitably
harms the entire range of our bilateral relations, knocking them back.”
On Tuesday, Russia canceled talks between the two countries’ deputy
foreign ministers.
But
in the end, analysts said, Japanese leaders decided they had no choice
but to side with the United States. They also said Japan could not
afford to condone a territorial grab by Russia at a time when it is
locked in its own territorial dispute with China over islands under
Japan’s control.
“Mr.
Abe was taking an overly optimistic view of what he could accomplish
with Russia,” said Mr. Mine, the former diplomat. “The Crimean crisis
has forced him to take a more serious look at the geopolitical
realities.”
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