Moscow Mulls Reaction to Japan’s Expanding Military Ties With United States

Executive Summary:

• Moscow has reacted angrily to Japan’s agreement with the United States to set up a joint military command to counter Russian, Chinese, and North Korean moves. Russian commentators see this action as threatening Tokyo’s commitment not to use force offensively.
• This reaction builds on Russian anger about Japan’s increasing sanctions against Russia, Tokyo’s decision to provide Ukraine with offensive weaponry, and from Moscow’s perspective, Japan’s growing anti-Russian involvement in Ukraine and Central Asia.
•  As a result, relations between the two countries have plunged to the worst level in decades, opening the door to a harsh Russian response and putting on hold any possibility of signing a peace treaty, as the two countries have technically remained at war since World War II.

At a meeting in Tokyo on July 28, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and their Japanese counterparts, Yoko Kamikawa and Minoru Kihara, respectively, announced that the two countries had agreed to establish a joint force headquarters in Japan to improve defense coordination. They also discussed the US commitment to “extended deterrence,” a diplomatic term for employing nuclear weapons to prevent any attack on the two countries. In a joint statement, the four officials expressed concerns over China’s growing assertiveness in the region, declaring that it represented “the greatest strategic challenge” facing the region and the world. In addition, they condemned Russia’s “growing and provocative strategic military cooperation” with China (The Japan Times, July 28; Fondsk.ru, July 30). Despite the obvious focus on Beijing, Moscow has reacted angrily to the meeting and its outcomes as if Russia, rather than China, were the primary target.   

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was the first Moscow official to react to the Tokyo declaration. He bemoaned the fact that “unfortunately, the current leadership of Japan has completely joined those in the collective West who are unfriendly to Russia and that this cannot fail to inflict harm on our bilateral relations” (Regnum, July 29). Peskov specified that in the first instance, the recent developments would lead to a downgrading in the reception of a Japanese delegation in Moscow this week. The Russian official, however, attributed this downgrading more to a decision by Tokyo to urge Japanese citizens not to visit Russia than to the joint declaration (Izvestiya, July 29).

Andrey Nastasyin, deputy spokesperson in the Russian Foreign Ministry, was even more to the point. He said that the Tokyo agreement was a sign that “the United States and Japan are preparing for a possible armed conflict in the Asia-Pacific region under the pretext of threats from Russia, China, and North Korea.” Nastasyin added that “Russia will take adequate measures in response,” though he did not specify how Moscow planned to react (RIA Novosti; Vedomosti, July 31).

The comments of Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, picked up by a Beijing outlet, suggest that the response may first come in the form of new personal and business sanctions. Russia has just imposed sanctions on 13 Japanese officials and businesses, while Japan has imposed more than 1,000 on Russian personnel and firms (Brief24.ru; Sila-rf.ru, July 30). In the wake of the Tokyo declaration, Moscow may thus redress that imbalance, especially given Russian concerns about the collapse of bilateral trade and anger at Japan over Ukraine and other issues.

Russian trade with Japan reached $35 billion in the last decade. However, following the Kremlin’s expanded invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and Tokyo’s decision to end most-favored nation status for Russia, trade fell to just over $10 billion (Bruegel, May 23). That trend shows no signs of changing. One Moscow security analyst says this is precisely why the Kremlin may finally adopt a much tougher line on Japan. Those who have advocated a softer approach to Japan, he says, can no longer invoke Japanese economic strength and Moscow’s ability to take advantage of it to push their cause (Fondsk.ru, July 28).

Moscow has other reasons for being angry at Japan. Tokyo has become increasingly active throughout the post-Soviet space in ways that the Kremlin views as anti-Russian. Japan has been particularly active in Central Asia, where Russian influence is waning (see EDM, September 14, 2021, May 2, 2023; Orda.kz; Nikkei Asia, August 1). With respect to Ukraine, Japan has become increasingly supportive of Kyiv. Between 2014 when Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed Crimea and 2022 when he began his expanded invasion, Japan limited itself to sanctions against Russia and providing Ukraine with purely economic assistance. As the war has gone on, Japan has been increasingly willing to provide weapons, even offensive ones, despite Russian outrage (The Japan Times, June 14; NHK, August 1). Moscow has responded with sanctions of its own and most prominently by suspending an arrangement that allowed Japanese citizens to visit the cemeteries of their ancestors in the disputed Kurile Islands (RBC, August 1).

Relations between Moscow and Tokyo have always been complicated by the dispute over ownership of the Kurile Islands. This ongoing disagreement has prevented the two side from concluding an official World War II peace treaty (see EDM, January 24, March 19, 2019). Due to Japan’s support for Ukraine and its ever-closer ties with the United States, those tensions were very much in evidence even before the new US-Japanese defense accord. In February, for example, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev denounced Tokyo’s claims on the Kuriles, declaring that “we do not give a damn about ‘the feelings of the Japanese’ concerning the so-called ‘Northern Territories.’ They’re not disputed but part of Russia” (The Moscow Times, January 30).

Many in Russia share Medvedev’s view, and they are now using both the intensifying sanctions war between the two countries over Ukraine and the agreement of Tokyo and Washington to set up a joint military command in Japan to push their views (Fondsk.ru, July 24). These commentators present the latter as a dangerous Japanese departure from its constitutional commitment not to use military force except for defensive purposes—something Moscow has always considered the bedrock of its relations with Tokyo (RIA Novosti, May 23; Fondsk.ru, July 28, 29).

Nikolai Patrushev, former head of the Russian Security Council and now an assistant to Putin on naval matters, is leading this trend of opinion. In an article in Rossiyskaya Gazeta on July 25, just three days before the Tokyo agreement was inked, the Moscow hawk said that what the United States and Japan were doing was part of a broader North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) effort to surround and weaken Russia. He asserted that Moscow would take such threats seriously and work to counter them (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, July 25). The Russian official claimed that NATO wants to supply Japan and its other allies with more naval vessels and other weapons and even to have them build their own to help the alliance in its conflict with Russia. He argued that Russia has no choice but to build a large navy and take other unspecified steps to counter this “provocation.”

Patrushev’s position is not the only one Putin will hear. Moscow security analyst Anatoly Kokoshin, in presenting a similar position, suggests that Putin will be more inclined than in the past to accept it. “Unlike in previous times, when [Russian] politicians who sought to ‘be friends with rich Japan’ preferred not to take notice of its revival as a new threat to the region,” now even the Foreign Ministry “regularly voices” concern about how Tokyo now constitutes “a military danger” to Russia, something the new US-Japanese accord will only increase (Fondsk.ru, July 28). If that proves to be the case, tensions between Russia and Japan are going to rise still further, and the threat the United States and Japan are seeking to counter is likely to become ever more real.