Geography doesn't change, but the interests of states do, and so does technology. The three part series will look at how each part of the East Island chain relates to the security interests of Japan in the post Cold War strategic environment. The analysis will move north to south. Part One deals with North Asia. Part Two examines the South China Sea. Part Three looks at Australia. Each part will examine how the end of the Cold War has changed the strategic geography of the various links in the chain.
Russia： end of the line
Russia, having been almost knocked out of position at the top of the first island chain, is now little more than an interested onlooker. Those Japanese who see Russia as a threat are still fighting the last war, with the risk that they will fail to deter the next. As a consequence of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's frontiers have been rolled back dramatically. They are now approximately where they were in the Caucasus in the early 1800s, in Central Asia in the mid 1800s, and in the West approximately 1600. 4 The withdrawal of Soviet forces from Mongolia represented a retrenchment of Russian power in the East commensurate with that in the West.5 Russia is also in economic and political crisis.
A Russian army unable to defeat the Chechens is unlikely to threaten Japan, especially with the Russian Pacific Fleet resting off Vladivostok, no longer 'Ruler of the East'. Talk of a 'strategic partnership' between Russia and China is also exaggerated, except for its arms sales dimension.6 Trade between them is insignificant, and China wants and needs no allies. And by selling sophisticated weapons to China, Russia is cutting its own throat.
Geography utterly exposes Russia in the Far East. Russia has not been weaker there since 1918-22, and both China and Russia know this. Russia's small and shrinking population in the Far East is concentrated in border areas. Its maritime provinces hang off the edge of East Asia like rotten fruit. Local Russian politicians worry, for example, that China seeks to use the Tumen River project as a way of breaking through to the Sea of Japan. Manchuria was cut off from the Japan Sea as a consequence of Russian territorial expansion last century. One day, as Mao Zedong warned, China will present Russia with the account for the Chinese territories lost to the Czars. Not yet though, because China is pointing east and south strategically, and does not want trouble now on its 6,400 km border with Russia.
