America Can Be the Cook That Keeps Kurils Pot From Boiling Over : Geopolitics: Nudging Japan to break impasse with Russia would enhance regional stability and long-term U.S. interests.

Boris Yeltsin’s smashing victory in Moscow changes the atmosphere surrounding his long-delayed visit to Tokyo this week. It has also created a new opportunity for American policy. We now have an opening to try to heal a growing split between American and Japanese attitudes toward Russia because of the impasse over the Japanese claim to four Russian-held islands north of Hokkaido.

Despite the conciliatory gestures Yeltsin made at July’s G-7 summit in Tokyo, the underlying tension between the Russians and the Japanese has not disappeared. This situation has created an ongoing conflict between two important American interests.

One is our vested interest in the survival of a moderate, stable and democratic government in Russia. The other is our equally important interest in preserving the military alliance with Japan--previously, but no longer, predicated on common hostility to Moscow--as a bulwark to the difficult overall Japanese-American relationship. The evolution of events is forcing Washington to confront choices between these two interests.

This need to choose was dramatized in 1992 when for the first time we were obliged to switch sides and line up against Japan on the issue of IMF aid to Russia during the run-up to that year’s G-7 summit. The United States had opposed important Japanese interests before, but it was the first time since World War II that this had been done to help Moscow. The Japanese at the time saw this American policy shift as a betrayal that seriously weakened their bargaining leverage in their territorial dispute with Moscow.

A year later, profound differences remain over what is to be done to help Yeltsin’s Russia through its painful and dangerous transition to a market system. Japan is the only state that has a large pool of capital that might be made available for this purpose--and also the only country that has political, as well as economic, reasons to balk. In the face of a worldwide recession, Europeans as well as Japanese were unwilling to contribute to the new fund to help Russia privatize industry on the scale that Clinton had initially proposed. But only the Japanese foreign minister publicly dismissed the Clinton target sum as “preposterous.” Many in the Japanese elite cannot see the issue of succoring democracy in Russia as Americans do, because Japan still has a specific national interest at stake that Russia has not satisfied.

Japan’s relations with Russia have remained icy since September, 1992, when the passions generated by the territorial dispute caused the last-minute cancellation of Yeltsin’s scheduled visit to Tokyo. Without a territorial settlement, Japan has remained unwilling to furnish significant bilateral assistance to Moscow. Meanwhile, over the last two years, Japan has also fought--as far as it has judged compatible with avoiding isolation from its Western partners--to whittle down all forms of joint, multilateral assistance to Russia.

Two years ago, the Japanese elite for the first and last time was willing to spell out the economic quid pro quo that Japan would furnish if Russia accepted its terms for a territorial settlement. In March, 1991, Ichiro Ozawa, the maverick who recently left the Liberal Democratic Party but who was then its secretary general, got reluctant consensus approval in Tokyo for a $26-billion package to be offered informally to Mikhail Gorbachev in exchange for territorial concessions. By that time, however, Gorbachev had become far too weak politically to accept this deal. It is remarkable that Japan has never repeated this offer to Russia’s democratic leader Yeltsin--even privately.

Meanwhile, the longer the Russian-Japanese impasse goes on, and the longer Japanese and American policies toward their old antagonist remain at cross-purposes, the more difficult becomes the task of solidifying long-term U.S. public support for a military alliance with Japan, which remains very much in our interest.

We should seek to persuade Japan to renew and, if possible, improve the 1991 Ozawa proposal to Moscow. America should also do what it can to encourage the emergence of a coalition in Moscow willing to bear the tremendous political burden of territorial concessions if shown the prospect of a sufficiently massive economic reward. We can try to defuse the opposition of Russian military leaders to such concessions by considering with Japan what confidence-building measures in northeast Asia the alliance can now safely offer to Russia.

At best, progress on both sides will be very difficult. But the process cannot even begin until Japan becomes willing to speak of a quid pro quo in more than evasive generalities. Yeltsin hinted in July that territorial concessions might be possible if Japan did spell out that quid pro quo. Given the defeat of Yeltsin’s most intransigent opponents, we should urge Japan to seize the moment and act.