South kuril islands disputes

The islands are highly productive due to its prime location that supports varieties of marine life. The region is a harbor for may economic activities such as fishing, tourism, mining, commerce, harnessing wage energy among others. This work focuses on the disputes among Japanese and the Russians on the ownership of the Kuril Islands and various efforts that attempted to resolve the differences. Kuril Islands Disputes The very first information about Kuril relates to Japan in 1637 right after the expedition. Maarten de Vries led the Dutch team explored the island in 1643. The ruling favored the Japanese side by giving a directive to Russia to surrender all parts of the Kuril Islands to Japan. in return, the Russian Empire took control over the whole of Sakhalin.

Disputes did not end at this point as Japan and Russian continued to battle over which regime is powerful than the other. The beginning of the 19th century marked the end of Russo-Japanese conflicts (Brown 83). The two antagonists signed another agreement known as the Treaty of Portsmouth. Towards the end of the same year, a military campaign called Kuril Landing Operation started off to liberate the Kuril Islands from the Japanese. Since the war already weakened Japan, it had to give away the land. The disputes heightened to higher levels. Tokyo allies restricted the Japanese control of the islands of Hokkaido, Shikoku and the Lesser Kuril (Kuroiwa 188). Early 1946, the Soviet Union proclaimed all the land within Kuril Chain. US and Britain agreed that the sovereignty rights could not be granted to any county that failed to sign the San Francisco document Japan (Goodby, Vladimir and Nobuo 27).

This statement meant that the islands did not formally belong to the Soviet Union. The Soviets refused to put a signature to this document because the congregation did not include several other countries which were victims of Japanese Regression, for instance, China. In 1952, the US Congress affirmed that Russia did not have title to claim ownership of Kuril (Gelman 44). The US maintained this view until when a peace treaty brought the two nation together on the disputed Northern Territories. This attempt was to try to weaken the Japanese strengths and make it vulnerable to attacks aimed at reclaiming back the chain of islands. In the same year, Japan and Russia signed the Moscow Declaration that brought peace between them that since that never existed since 1945 though it did not resolve the Kuril dispute.

The two nations agreed to have regular diplomatic talks geared towards a peace treaty. In the 1990s, the territorial disputes still fueled conflicts between the two nations and they always existed in a cold war. The Russians did not show many concerns on the Islands and failed to recognize the Kuril disputes (Glaubitz 36) officially. The status of these islands remained unchanged until the 1990s when the cold war ended. During this period, the Soviet Union claimed the entire series of islands and considered them integral to the Russian Empire. Despite these concurrent disputes, there existed economic ties between the two sides that made the region realize growth. After the Soviet Union dissolved, the Russian ended the Communist rule. As a result, the stability of the chained islands declined, and the two nations started mechanisms to resolve the difference (Hasegawa 78).

This visit yielded positive outcomes where the two nations became committed and worked together after the peace treaty of 2000 (Kato 207). Former Japanese leader, Yoshiro Mori and Russian President Putin signed a joint agreement in Tokyo on peaceful coexistence issues. Under the accord, they expressed their commitment to ending the disputes on the Kuril Islands based on other existing contracts such as Moscow and Tokyo declarations. A statement issued on March 25, 2001, after the two leaders met again confirmed their pledge to peace treaties (Williams 24). Every newly elected leader in both Russia and Japan would call for negotiations to arrive at a stalemate on the issues concerning the disputed series of islands. The 2010 visit by the Russian president stirred up the disputes when he publicly declared that South Kuril is critical region to Russian territory.

Leaders from Japan regarded this visit as impermissible rudeness and closed their embassy in Moscow. The disputed became fueled by the Russian prime minister who announced that President Medvedev had planned more tours to the Kuril Islands. In 2013, Putin made a visit to Japan accompanied by other diplomats where they discussed consented a joint agreement. This accord argued that the lack of a functional structure peace pact between Japan and Russia had forced the two sides to have disputes over the Kuril since 1945. Some diplomats from Japan made statements that Prime Minister Abe has pledged not to deploy the US soldier on the Islands on the condition that Japan is allowed to control some of the islands. Once again, the two leaders showed commitments in intensifying the negotiations for a peaceful relationship while at the Buenos Aires G20 Summit in December 2018.

On January 14 this year, top and senior diplomats from Japan and Russia held negotiations and agreed to launch new economic projects on the islands of Kuril. However, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister revealed that Moscow would not debate on its sovereignty and control over the southern Kuril Islands (McKirdy). Lavrov stated that Russia is trying, by all means, to increase the ties among the two nation, although their differences still exist on the issues. Works Cited Arai, Nobuo, and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. "The Russian Far East in Russo-Japanese Relations. " Politics and economics in the Russian Far East. Changing ties with Asia-Pacific (1999): 157-186. Blackwill, Robert D. Gelman, Harry. Russo-Japanese Relations and the Future of the US-Japanese Alliance. Rand Corp Santa Monica CA, 1993.