CERC WORKING PAPERS SERIES
No.2 / 2003
	Yuri Tsyganov
	RUSSIAN POLICY TOWARD NORTHEAST ASIA:
	In Search of a New Approach

 

 

Introduction

 

During the last decade Russia’s ‘Eastern’ policy has developed in a spiral. It has recently returned to the point of enthusiastic expectations by the Russian political elite of new prospects of cooperation with the West and the concomitant decline of interest in Asian affairs. However, this enthusiasm for cooperating with the West is not as great as in the Gorbachev period, when it was widely believed that the competition between the two superpowers could be transformed into a mutually beneficial partnership. While this now appears naïve, it still seems more reasonable than the current hasty concessions Putin’s administration has made in seeking improved relations with the USA and trying to utilise the post-September 11 situation.

 

This convolution in the development of Russia’s foreign policy went through several stages, from an extreme anti-Western approach to a so-called pro-Western ‘romanticism’. While Yeltsin and his circle inherited a pro-Western stance, which became the basis for the ‘Kozyrev doctrine’, a progressive disillusionment with relations with the West, particularly with the USA, pushed Russian foreign policy towards a new anti-Western posture. This peaked with President Boris Yeltsin’s decision to leave the OSCE’s (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) Istanbul meeting in 1999 without signing the basic documents.[1] The period of increased tension in relations with the West coincided with a period of increased Russian activity in East Asia.

 

A reorientation towards Asian nations became a discernable trend in the mid-1990s, and since 2000 it has become one of the major features of Russian foreign policy. Political and security considerations that determine Russia’s policy formulation in the changed national and international environment, and the logic, motives and strategies behind Russia’s efforts to increase its North-East Asian involvement often seem rooted in attempts to counterbalance the global Western influence. This new political course was reflected in three important policy documents published by the Russian government in the first half of 2000: the new National Security Concept (January)[2], the new Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation (April)[3] and the new Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation (June).[4] In these documents, Russia’s leadership announced its major goal as seeking the establishment and reestablishment of Russia’s relations with non-Western countries, particularly the North-East Asian nations. This last goal can be seen as a counterbalance to the current unchallenged dominance by the USA and its allies.

 

It is easy to see in the three documents a desire to respond to the current Western, above all US, domination in international affairs by reminding readers that Russia is still a mighty military power. This fact alone is seen as justifying Russia’s inclusion in the world’s ‘club’ of leading nations. However, there is also an understanding that in order to be ‘one of the influential centres in the multipolar world’. [5] Russia needs support from allies. Consequently, the adoption of the new policy documents was followed by a series of practical steps aimed at fostering Russia’s relations with Northeast Asian countries.

 

In July 2000 Russian President Vladimir Putin made an unprecedented visit to North Korea.[6] The positive and constructive tone of his negotiations with North Korea's leaders was in direct contrast to the inflexible position he adopted later in his discussions with the Japanese leadership, particularly on the issue of the disputed Kuril Islands.[7] The newly-elected President publicly rejected the possibility of returning the so-called Northern Territories to Japan, ensuring the regression of Russian-Japanese dialogue on the issue back to the early 1990s. Of even more strategic importance to Asian developments was the rapidly developing Sino-Russian alliance.[8] In addition to an unprecedented number of top-level political consultations, Russia and China have significantly broadened their economic and military cooperation in the new millennium. And in September 2000 it was announced that after a 30-year break the two countries were preparing to sign a new bilateral Friendship Treaty.

 

Observers noted that Putin’s visit to Pyongyang was an international sensation, since the North Korean capital does not regularly host international high-ranking visitors. Even Soviet officials rarely visited North Korea. Putin’s visit was the first by a Soviet or Russian leader to the DPRK during the entire history of their bilateral ties. It was designed to demonstrate that Moscow is eager to enhance its eastern connections within the framework of so-called ‘positive’ diplomacy. Putin undertook an ‘eastern campaign’ to gain certain foreign policy benefits. The visit to the ‘G7’ Okinawa summit that followed in July 2000 was designed to cause a strong impression: Putin was to arrive at the summit after touring the surviving communist strongholds in Beijing and Pyongyang. This schedule was expected to reveal the existence of a counter to the ‘G7’, with an emphasis on the differences between the groupings: one an alliance of ‘old’ powers, the other of growing ‘new’ regional powers.[9] Putin’s administration tried to play an uninvited role as representative of the Third world to the group of leading Western countries, the ‘G7’.

 

Similar events continued in 2001. For nearly four weeks during July-August, Russia and North Korea staged a re-enactment of Kim Il Sung’s visit to the USSR in 1986. Protected by unprecedented security measures, disrupting normal timetables as it moved along the Trans-Siberian railway, being met with Soviet–style (and, indeed, Korean-style) slogans, Kim Jung Il’s armoured train seemed to turn the clock back fifteen years. In Moscow, Putin and Kim Jung Il signed the Moscow Declaration, in which they declared their intention to support global stability.[10] They also agreed to grant first priority to projects for the reconstruction of enterprises built by ‘joint efforts’. The Moscow Declaration was another official paper that supported Russia’s claim for the active role in international relations. Meanwhile, there was no practical basis to discussions on reconstructing North Korean enterprises built with Soviet financial aid and equipped with Soviet machinery, as well as North Korean hints about resuming military supplies. North Korea cannot afford to pay for supplies, nor can Russia afford to provide heavy Soviet-style subsidies.

 

The attempt to revitalise Soviet-DPRK friendship – or at least the appearance of revitalisation – followed another visit to Moscow by China's President. On 16 July 2001, Jiang Zemin and Putin signed a joint declaration that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) pact between Moscow and Washington should be preserved unchanged, as a basis of international stability.[11] The declaration also called for further reductions in strategic arms and for the creation of a global nuclear non-proliferation mechanism. However, the main point of the visit was the signing on the same day of the Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation. The Treaty is described as an important landmark in the history of the development of bilateral ties indicating that relations between the two countries have entered a new stage.[12] As a framework for Sino-Russian relations in the new century, the Treaty established the main principles, essence and achievements in the development of Sino-Russian ties. It also fixes in legal form the concept of the two countries and their peoples boosting friendship from generation to generation, and never targeting each other as enemies. The Treaty again confirmed that the ties between the two countries are a new type of friendly relations between nations, built on the basis of non-alignment, non-confrontation and not targeting a third country. However, what is of utmost importance about the Treaty is the fact that it resembles the treaty signed by the two nations fifty years earlier, when the two communist countries were openly hostile to the West.

 

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Endnotes