 I'm Andrew Weiss, I'm Vice President for Studies here at Carnegie and again I'd like to, as we've done earlier, express our appreciation to the Susakala Foundation and to Admiral Blair for having the vision to put on this exciting event today. We have three very good speakers for this next session which is going to look at the regional security environment in Northeast Asia and how the Russian-Japan relationship is being affected by those significant changes in East Asia that have been alluded to in the first panel between ambassadors Togo and Panof. Three speakers agreed to speak for about say seven, ten minutes each to sort of set the tone then we'll have a short discussion among the four of us before opening things up for for the exchange with you and the audience. We'll start things now with Professor Izumakala from Chihuahua University and after that Vasily Koshin who's an analyst at CAST, Russian I guess I'd say think tank or defense contractor depending on your perspective which studies region and former Russian diplomat and Professor Georgi Tolerayas. So with that Professor Izumakala, floor is yours. Good morning everybody and thank you Andrew for a nice introduction. My name is Yasu Izumakala, I'm a professor at Chihuahua University and I'd like to extend my gratitude and appreciation to the Sasagawa Foundation and the Carnegie for inviting us all and it's actually nice to be back here because back in February this year I was here invited by my friend Jim Schoff who's sitting right here to talk about Japan-Russia relations and it was an interesting experience because 90% of my speech was about you Japanese-Russian relations but most of the question I got was about comfort women so you know thinking about that the fact that the whole conference today is devoted to the Japan-Russia issue is really great. So yeah we can talk about that later okay. Okay today I'd like to present the strategic and security viewpoint of Japan-Russia relations from the Japanese perspective of course this is my personal observation so I hope that we can discuss you know how it converges or diverges from the views that's going to be presented by Russian colleagues afterwards okay um well you know after the Ukrainian crisis and and even the Russian intervention in the Syria some people may sort of question like why is still the Japanese government under Prime Minister Abe still sort of trying to seek the better relationship with Russia but I would like to sort of rephrase the question just for salt experiment and why shouldn't Japan okay why should not after all the Cold War is over for more than 20 years or 30 years and there's no security obstacle in a way to resolve the territorial issue which Ambassador Togo and Panof already mentioned that there's no sort of a security perception between Russia and Japan anymore and the economic and energy aspect is also promising between the two countries especially after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima and the former residents of the four islands the Japanese former residents uh do they really care about the sovereignty issue well actually no uh my friend Aki Iwashita whose name just came up in the previous session now teaching at the Hokkaido University his research and uh some of the interviews that my students actually conducted with the former residents basically shows that they really don't care too much about that they only care about the freedom of visiting to be able to to visit their previous homes or something like that so you know you know there are some reasons why Japan Japan is still interested in better relationship with Russia and hopefully trying to resolve the territorial issue that said of course the uh the initiative that came with the rise of Abe to power again in in 2012 really sort of heightened the interest in seeking the breakthrough between Japan and Russia and the main reason which I guess is obvious already is about the strategic perspective especially the rise of China okay well rise of China is of course the the probably the most important security challenge to to Japan and this influences Japan's approach to Russia in uh mainly three ways I would argue one is basically uh sort of simple balance of power consideration uh as China's power rises and Japan's power relatively shrinks it's important for Japan to reach out more friends in the region as well as the United States and of course Russia sit to the north of China and China and Russia could be a nice sort of counterweight vis-à-vis China I'm not saying that the Russia and Japan would create a sort of anti you know China coalition or you know Japan is trying to contain China or anything like that would be stupid I'm just saying that it's the fact that the Russia remains very independent of the Chinese influence that's very important for Japan okay and secondly the rise of China sort of creates the situation in which Japan the strategic uh well some people call the Japan the strategic pivot towards the south of course the still security challenges remain in the Korean peninsula with North Korea as it is but because of the increasing Chinese maritime activities and problems in the south uh Japan's sort of strategic focus is gradually but steadily for shifting towards the south and as it happens the problem in the north mainly the northern territory issue and Russian sort of continuing you know military sort of conducts in northern part becomes a kind of irritant in a way and so it's kind of reasonable for the Japanese government to try to resolve the issue in the south so that it can focus more on the south okay the third and this is something that I didn't develop too much in the paper that I presented conference but probably the rise of China creates a situation in in Japan that the Japanese government or Japanese politicians politicians could use that issue to explain to the Japanese domestic public that maybe some kind of territorial compromise is necessary between Japan and Russia because the issue regarding China is so huge in the public eyes these days that you know they can use rhetorically I mean they meaning Japanese politicians they they can use that issue politically to to sell when it's necessary to the Japanese public that well we gonna have to cut the deal with Russia well so let's do that okay so so uh that these are the the the reasons why the rise of China is important um the other important reason why the other administration uh is so interested in uh improving relation with Russia is the leadership issue uh I understand how the Mr. Putin is viewed in this town uh but uh in Tokyo uh Mr. Putin was surprised surprised is regarded as uh the the Russian reader who is personally interested in improving uh the relations with with Japan and also interested in resolving the territory issues and that's important uh therefore uh there is a sort of incentive for the Japanese government to to try to do the best it as it can to to move things forward when he's in power and especially when he has grips on the domestic situations um uh this while the leadership factor is important in in Tokyo too uh Mr Abe uh well uh is the the part of the LDP factions led by the former prime minister Mori and Mori was of course the Putin the partner when he was a prime minister uh and even before that Abe uh was the secretly over his father that then uh foreign minister uh Shintaro Abe back in the late 1980s when Japan was starting to explore uh approaching the Russia during the Gorbachev era okay so so from that kind of experiences he probably was determined to move forward on Japan relations and at the same time uh the fact that he is supported by the the kind of a group you know whom you might call nationalist in Japan uh might be a helpful issue because uh here you know Nixon going to China kind of a dynamic dynamic could work because uh when the Japanese government needs to resolve the territory issue it has to seek some sort of compromise as I said and then excuse me the kind of people who criticize uh the Japanese government for any kind of compromise on this issue would tend to be the same kind of group who would support Mr Abe so uh those kind of criticism could be muted if things happen during the abyss uh sort of run okay uh so those are the Japanese views okay so how are them uh Russia views toward Japan I mean this of course is my personal observation of how Russia looks towards Japan and uh uh here uh I think the security issue has become more important than before that's definitely one aspect and as some people have already mentioned the rise of China is creating some concerns at least in Russia as well and especially China's expansion into the the Arctic Ocean also creates a kind of you know situation in which Russia feels that the you know it could be encircled uh by by China so uh this this sort of new security angle uh uh possible Japan Russia cooperation has been emphasized especially by the Japanese Russia experts uh many of them uh but at the same time I would argue that there are some divergent views uh between Japan and Russia vis-à-vis China because simply put China is very important for Russia uh more important for Russia than maybe for Japan uh it's true that Russia may be feeding some kind of a security concerns from China but at the same time China is just next to Russia and it's it would be very very bad idea for Moscow to worsen the relationship with China in its attempt to to move closer to Tokyo okay and uh China becomes even more important when Russia's relationship with the west uh is bad and it is very bad now so uh simply speaking I mean for for Russia uh well Russia has a lot more to gain or to lose from its relationship with China than for Japan and Japan needs to recognize that okay so what are the implications of these factors for Japan and the US-Japan relations uh first I think it's reasonable for the Japanese governments to pursue the the better relationship with Russia and hope to resolve the territorial issue uh but at the same time uh Japan needs to be pragmatic about the cost and benefits of what it could gain from better relationship with Moscow as I said there's a limit to which Russia can move in sort of this Russia-Japan-China triangle and and if Japan or Tokyo expects too much from Russia that's not going to work and uh most likely I would argue that you know the better relationship with Tokyo would enable Russia to sort of you know bargain better you know to to enhance the bargaining position vis-a-vis China so it helps Russia in a way uh in a way that you know it can deal with China uh from from the better improved positions but you know not probably as much as Japan might hope uh so um Japan needs to be pragmatic and realistic about that but at the same time as I said uh because of the outstanding issues I mean Japan should pursue uh any you know the the window of opportunities to to improve relationship with Russia uh Mr. Togo said you know the dual strategy probably it doesn't work uh on both on neither side and maybe true but uh uh you know the important thing is the timing and uh probably uh how you know as the way things going in Ukraine and in Syria it's not the right time probably but you know the you know the the it needs Tokyo needs to seek the the better time maybe uh but it really has to be sensitive about the the possible opportunity okay the second implication for the US Japan relations uh this is the issue I would think that uh the the policy coordination between the two capitals Tokyo and Washington need to be smooth and it has to be not one way but two way street and in addition this policy coordination I hope uh is not just about sort of exchange of information about what to do and what the government did to Moscow or something like that uh but uh I hope that you would start to raise the sort of joint assessment of uh the possible relationship or the nature of the relationship between Moscow and Beijing uh because this is strategically significant um well back in February I interviewed some people think tank people or people in the government and I realized that the sort of underlining assumption in the United States is that you know Russian and Chinese relationship are not going to move too close because they have inherent problems between the two maybe true okay but interestingly I would argue that the same assumption is held by Tokyo but the Tokyo's policy goes into the different direction and Tokyo believes that the I mean Moscow and Beijing are divided therefore Tokyo sees the opportunity to to sort of lean Russia away from China or something of that nature okay so it seems that the both capitals seems to sort of uh look at the same assumption without you know examining what it really is empirically and moving on to the policy of their own respective preferences uh so therefore I mean that's exactly where uh Japan and United States should start and uh I would argue that probably at least the United States and Japan would sort of view these sort of strengthened or closer strategic realignment between Beijing and Moscow not in their interest so that's probably where it should start okay last the implication for the regional security um of course for Japan the United States Japan alliance is a cornerstone of its security strategy and uh and probably Russia may not see it that way uh but at the same time uh US Japan security alliance is not necessarily a threat uh to Russia so in that regard um I would think that the uh the this sort of existing sort of alliance system in East Asia uh could sort of coexist with some sort of different security dialogue or framework which might include Russia so you know if it's possible I mean we could create some sort of multilateral sort of security uh dialogue or maybe track to you or something like that uh where some issues uh can be discussed okay thank you thank you very much my name is Vasily Kassan I work for Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies this is a defense industry related consultancy in Moscow and also in the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of Russian Academy of Sciences uh thank you for this excellent opportunity to discuss the security policy of Russia with you um I'm more concentrated on the defense related side of this thing so I will start with um like general description of our position in Asia Pacific currently Asia Pacific is the least problematic region of the world as far as Russian security interests are concerned uh we are now facing continuous military buildup in the Eastern Europe we are expecting major security problems in Central Asia and their active military preparations for this we are engaged into in a limited war in Middle East uh in uh in Asia Pacific we are not part of any uh local conflicts and or rivalries we are not closely aligned with anyone as far as Asian politics concerned we have only one territorial dispute with Japan which is safely frozen and even in the longer term the only country which can potentially pose any kind of threat to Russia is China and Chinese threat is considered as something of extremely low probability almost impossible under current political regime in China we do have active military planning for this possibility and both Russia and China are engaged into very large-scale intelligence activities against each other but uh we don't see that any real threat from Chinese side is likely in the foreseeable future under current political regime the concerns are caused by the transitional nature of the Chinese political regime possibility of unexpected changes uh rising nationalism and other negative factors which can take place like in a matter of 10 years or even longer perspective uh of course Russia is conducting necessary preparations for this we are monitoring the changes in the Chinese nuclear posture which are significant and which are affecting our nuclear planning but basically the main concerns are not related to the military field the main concerns of Russia are related to our ability to conduct independent policy in the Asia Pacific while in the on the global arena we have and we will continue increased cooperation with China on a number of international issues like Iran, Syria some global governance issues we are not interested in closely aligning with China in pacific Asia we are not interested in becoming part of Chinese conflicts with the regional powers there are examples very clear examples of our independent policy for example we are the country which is arming Vietnam uh Vietnamese military build up is uh um uh continuing thanks to our weapon systems we are still the main defense industry partner of India the Chinese are not always happy with that still we are capable of continuing in this direction however uh the key question is how long we can continue and stay away we uh we don't have any clear position on South China Sea issue and we are not supporting any side East China Sea issue the same but uh everything has its limits uh if we talk about Russian turn to the east uh you know there there are discussions if it's even happening but in in fact it started uh like 15 years ago like in 2000 the whole volume of Russian Chinese bilateral trade uh was something like eight billion dollars per year now it's about 90 billion dollars at that time China was little more than four percent of Russian trade value now it's closer to 12 percent and after rubble devaluation and decline in our trade with European Union uh Chinese share increased the in nominal terms trade with China declined but the Chinese share in our external trade increased uh what is happening now our trade uh since we are commodity exporting country our trade with Asia Pacific which is the future for our economy depends on construction of uh very large-scale infrastructure projects including pipelines seaports railroads etc uh it's going slowly it cannot go fast but uh if during the next decade a majority of these projects will be binding us with China uh that will necessarily leads to lead to certain political consequences it will be much more difficult to maintain independent policies uh in this situation uh and then uh that bring us to uh clearly a common interest between Russia and Japan it's in everyone interest uh that Russia maintains uh current neutral status in Asian politics and remains passive and we are interested in keeping low profile ourselves although there there can be some uh declarations uh summit activities and etc we are not interested in actively participating in any of the complicated issues complicated political and territorial issues in this region uh that means that we need to have alternative economic partners in the region and we need to avoid uh over reliance on economic relations with China the the only possible counterbalance in this in this area is Japan of course and developing uh developing economic relations and security dialogue with Japan is is necessary both for us and for the Japanese side of course it is um this process is currently slowed uh almost stopped or slowed down because of the situation of Ukrainian crisis and continuing downturn in our relations with the United States still uh both Russia and Japan will take any possible effort as as I understand to overcome this in the longer term um I should say that we have uh some new possibilities precisely because of the Ukrainian crisis uh in in general uh because of this crisis Russian government got huge political capital which it can spend uh it's huge huge level of support uh internal politics is a defining factor in our um discussions on on territorial issues with Japan um now at least there is some political capital which could be spent on it if there is some understanding of um possible future results um Japan is also becoming more and more and more important partner for Russia in technological field because the relations with our with Germany which used to be our key partner in the developed world are um suffering even now greatly from the Ukrainian situation so uh we should see the current crisis basically as an opportunity for everyone to move forward with our relations with the Japanese and maybe slowly but surely we can turn to a more productive uh track uh thank you very much it's an honor to me to speak in this audience uh especially after such uh distinguished speakers and uh it makes my task harder because uh all the things that I think have already been said uh so I have to uh to clarify first my message and this message is very clear for Russia it's turned to Asia turned to the east is a historic necessity not of just years or decades or maybe for centuries to come uh that's my first point second is that uh for Russia economics are more important in Asia than political security issues but one cannot be so be sought without another and third is that so far Russia policy in the east is more or less China oriented and this is not effective the policy should be diversified and Japan is one of the obvious uh obvious uh addresses of such diversification in fact uh these turned to the east and Vasiliy's right started long ago and uh although the uh uh Soviet and then Russian policy uh was not was mostly west west and u.s centered and uh Asia uh I think always played the secondary role although Ambassador Panof uh who is my former boss might not uh agree to that but I think that still in 1990s uh we could not overcome this uh this disparity and still the Asian policy remained secondary and uh we were rather passive in in in Asia so the current shift is maybe the biggest one in the foreign policy of Russia after the breakup of Soviet Union but at the same time it was prepared I'm sorry it was it was prepared for the for a long time some years ago uh a term uh Euro-Pacific power was coined meaning that Russia is not Eurasian uh if we speak about civilization or a background but rather geographically it's a resin power in pacific and it's also resin power in Europe so these both of these aspects should be taken into account and Russia should so forth as a bridge and as an active player in both of the region it's it bothers with uh so um Russia has some ideas on the security architecture in Asian the pacific uh that has been for a long time uh a matter of Russian conceptual approach uh for example it's date back so to Gorbachev ideas of upon uh Asian security and uh recently uh there were initiative for new security architecture in Asian the pacific uh it was first uh it was first uh was by uh together by uh Russia and China and then later uh there was uh an idea proposed by Russia China and Brunei to negotiate first of framework uh principles of security and cooperation in Asian the pacific and later have a bind and legal treaty which is pretty far off these days but at least it's not impossible in Asia unlike with situation we have a middle east and west later the action plan was was presented by Russia which is based on the very uh on the on the ideas that can be really argued with about the problem is how to get there of course so such a Russian approach and Chinese approach they contradict the US concept of the security system the haven't spoke uh system uh although even the closest areas of US feel increasing strain uh because of that and we uh we know about the most sort of policy of Japan uh South Korea is trying to to get some kind of uh equality between its uh American and Chinese direction of foreign policy uh but anyway when we speak about Asia Asia for Russia is a little bit abstract notion Asian the pacific is too big for Russia to well to be at all the places at the same time and for us the northeast Asia is the gate to Asian the pacific and this is where our interests may coincide with that of other actors in the area we are mostly interested in economic area like energy logistics arms and technology expert but we also need to address the security threat as I mentioned uh so uh if we speak about territorial issues in Russia Russia tries to distance itself from the uh from both territorial issues and regional debates on on history as well it was already mentioned here that we have no no position that on the South China Sea conflict it's uh the policy's absence of policy uh we are not trying to support uh any side on the historical debates even when Putin was in China for the military parade which was perceived in Japan as an anti-Japanese he didn't use this opportunity to point some fingers although obviously we're against what we call falsification of history uh so the only conflict which we are directly involved in not the conflict but rather the settlement of the conflict is the Korean one maybe I'm a career specialist by by my education and spent many years in Korea maybe because of that I think this is important but but I do believe that Russia can play its role in in in in Korea for that we should recognize that for for one thing that only political and diplomatical means can be used for solving this issue and that unfortunately North Korea is here to stay and it's a bigger nuclear in North Korea I think it's very important for Japan as well and this is one of the areas where we lack cooperation and discussions I believe that the six-party talks of some kind of multilateral talks should be resumed and resumed with a broad agenda than just North Korean nuclear issue and only in the process of such of such negotiations we can find some compromise with the current North Korea regime because we don't expect to have anything else in the foreseeable future and make it less belligerent and make it less less the situation here less dangerous dangerous also if we speak about North East Asia there are ideas to start regional cooperation with the so-called soft soft issues like disaster management organized crime terrorism health cyber security etc. etc. migrations financial stability and for example the idea of South Korea which is promoted by the current administration of Napsi and of North East Asia business cooperation initiative I think it's it is something that we should both look at so as I mentioned in the beginning Russian policy in the far east shouldn't be in office they shouldn't be China centered and that obviously brings for us the necessity to participate both in multilateral multilateral structures like the ones mentioned here and to build up barrage bilateral relation with the original powers when we speak about multilateral structures unfortunately there's too many declarations must less less action for example Asians took with great dissatisfaction our non-participation of the summit level in the station summit which we tried so hard to enter to and well this this year it happens again and when we speak about the countries which are most important for us there is the list that I think is not not inclusive but this is some somewhere we could start with and also we are very much interested in in the regional economic group hands for me it's especially the China Japan South Korea South Korea well possible free trade area which Russia should pay more attention at especially in the view of the recent summit not summit well leaders meeting in Seoul of China Japan South Korea I believe that we should pay more attention to that maybe try to find some kind of observer status or try to be a part of this of this regional process and for all these I believe that we need to enhance our cooperation with Japan discussion with Japan so that our the whole agenda shouldn't be kidnapped just by territorial issues which has been case for well for the for the whole history of the after our relations and well one idea is to broaden the agenda by multilateral issues like I mentioned here by the issues of both security and soft issues multilateral cooperation and I think that's a kind of separate rec for that might be introduced between the governments of two countries thank you so I'll start the discussion period off with a couple of questions and then open things up to the floor I'm curious if our Russian colleagues Vasily and Georgie could talk about the cognitive dissonance between the very high-minded way that that you have portrayed Russia's interests in Asia and what I see is much more of a kind of impulsive and emotional and improvised response to the events of the last two years where there's almost been a jump and a sort of we need to do this and a kind of catching up on an issue where frankly there had been very little dynamism for the past 10-15 years and I'm just curious how you would if you look at the way it's being handled does it make you feel that we're in a period where the long-term view that you're describing is going to prevail or will we stay in this period of constant improvisation and catching up you know we have a problem Russian I don't know how to translate it but it sounds like that there would have been no luck if we were not unlucky in certain places we were unlucky to have this rift and collision with the west so obviously this gave a push the ancient policies that gave a push for the ideas and concepts which have been long in place and both for politician and Russian businesses when you cut off a financing from Europe when the people are just cannot go to Europe or to be asked for that matter if they all the cooperation is becoming more and more limited and if we feel the dissatisfaction and distrust by our partners in the west well the obvious way out is go to go east and ball for personal for and for business reasons when you when you have a market which hasn't been yet developed and you can do something about it and you have no alternative that's what you do so I believe this is that it was of course impulsive but we had a long preparation for that and to be a more important part of Asia of course the crucial thing for Russia is to develop its forest there have been a lot of progress and we now have another one but this time I believe it's a little bit more well founded and it's there is more investment into the in the well special economic zones and we have very active minister for forest and development who is trying to push things there and who's very active in cooperation with the original countries so unlike for the well last maybe 25 years something's happening on the ground not to the extent we would like to but anything but but there is some progress and I do believe that that should be a long-term trend although unfortunately I don't want to be the permanent frost in the relation with the west to be the condition for such a trend but I do believe that the our relations with Asia will develop faster than with the west and that well maybe well 20 20 years from now we have what we call them more more equality of the two eagles assembly I think that we should make clear distinction between real Russian foreign policy and the the rhetoric and propaganda side of foreign policy in reality turned to the east started in the late 1990s during the last years of Yeltsin's presidency we do have steady growth of trade with China which is outpacing our trade with the west by a significant degree but this cannot be fast why because Russia is a commodity exporting country if you are a commodity exporting country you are dependent on very expensive infrastructure which means that every infrastructure project must be negotiated especially with Chinese for something like five seven years and then you it takes like seven or five years to build it the main before the current crisis we managed to build east Siberia Pacific oil pipeline and agree on it extension we managed to make significant progress on power of Siberia gas pipeline and of course it was signed already after the start of the Ukrainian crisis but like 90 percent of the work was done before also if we not just look at the economic side the joint military exercises ground forces exercises yearly once large-scale exercises started in 2005 naval exercises started in 2012 also before the Ukrainian crisis when no one could foresee it so it is a gradual process which cannot be too fast just because we are constrained by infrastructure primarily and Chinese are very difficult partner for negotiation like for everyone you cannot negotiate infrastructure project fast but what happened what happened after the start of the Ukrainian crisis is huge rise of rhetoric and a number of new projects on industrial field to substitute former imports from Europe and United States in electronics industrial equipment and stuff this is the only new like major development other projects would continue even without the Ukrainian crisis professor as a maca I believe both you and Togasan talked about a fear of Russia becoming a junior partner to China or a sort of under China's wing part of what I pick up and maybe it's a superficial Washington perspective is a sense of China being preoccupied by other challenges particularly the economic crisis the leadership challenges inside of China so there's not as much energy or desire to do much beyond the kind of PR value and propaganda value that the past two years provided where do you think Japanese thinking will evolve if in some ways China looks at Russia with less excitement and is almost sort of you know this is a second level third level priority for them does that change you think the strategic calculus that you talked about at the beginning about looking for ways to build closer ties to between Moscow and Tokyo does it become less relevant if if China is sort of discarding it as an important opportunity is Tokyo potentially discarded right so what's going to happen with China and you know the basically the answer is nobody knows but I think it's a it's a safe sort of assumption that even with the slower lows China's significance will remain you know China will not continue to grow like eight percent ten percent annually but you know four percent five percent annual lows are still significant so in that sense I don't think the the the security challenge coming from the China's position I think will persist in so in that regard strategic sort of provocation of Japan when it looks toward Russia probably unless Russia becomes suddenly sort of aggressive part of the problems in the possible I mean it's a problem in the western front and also towards Central Asia so so that is a problem but that kind of a problem is not caused yet in the as in Pacific area from from Russia so I mean as Ambassador Togo and Ambassador Panofu already explained at least so far Russia and Japan do not see each other as a security threat and that would create I think the sufficient incentive for Tokyo to seek primarily the the resolution and hopefully second order effect will be the better balance among the China Japan Russia so I hate to quote the famous American political philosopher Woody Allen but he had this great insight which was that 90 percent of life is just showing up that you just need to be in the room and when you see the pattern of Russian not showing up and being in the room at the apex summer and at the east Asia summer it's hard to take some of these long-term trends and say that you can deliver on them if your leaders are not going to make the personal investment I'm just curious if Georgie and Vasily could talk a bit about this Russian desire to not be part of the big security discussion they're obviously very big security challenges in east Asia right now that the countries in the region are focused on and for Russia to say oh that's not our business we just are here to sell arms and make money on infrastructure and energy to me there's a big contradiction if if you take Woody Allen seriously which I think we have to well I would rather say I have no comment on that because I've said that well not sure no show for all the support meetings especially in the eyes of Asia is a huge huge shortage of attention and that's nearing in fact the insult I don't know where it happens at least all the experts and all the people who are related have been have been urging our well President Putin to be part of this this discussion maybe it's too far maybe there's preoccupation with other issues but I do believe it unless this is overcome we cannot be serious enough about we'll turn it turn into east and I hope that this situation will work as well as what I can say let's do it well and non-presence on this particular activities was most likely a mistake although maybe there are some circumstances we don't know but most likely it was a serious political mistake however we well we should avoid any active participation in in which could potentially lead us to taking sides in these discussions and we are not in in general we are not interested in showing off we are interested in getting in getting results which have nothing to do with this with the nature of these discussions okay well with that let's open things up for questions two ground rules it needs to be a question I three one it needs to be a question two if you could identify yourself in the affiliation and three if you could wait for the microphone before speaking start over here yeah thank you i'm mark tokyo the korea economic institute i've got a question for there are two russian panelists the question is do you understand the u.s military presence or presence in northeast asia the u.s japan u.s r and k military alliances as being stabilizing or destabilizing is it better if u.s presence continues or diminishes that it's mostly the a deculsion that should be addressed to chinese because they are mostly concerned about the chinese the u.s presence sees it as a potential threat especially things like the anti-missile defense development well beefing up the security cooperation including well japan australian usa these things they do make chinese nervous and in this sense they're destabilizing and it also leads to arms race in the in the region and which again which again causes response from the us and i and i do believe this this spiral should be somehow stopped so i do not think that it is technically possible or realistic to expect us withdrawal from asia military withdrawal for example well speaking about career well the whole concept of the career security is based on the us presence there but i don't think that this is a factor which is very much conducive for cooperation in in asia so um well uh uh in u.s military withdrawal from east asia means u.s political withdrawal from east asia and that means that u.s sees us to be a superpower so it's something unavoidable it doesn't affect our interests it's mainly problem for for the chinese and i i i i don't think russia will be interested in taking very active position on this admiral bar see a question for our russian uh panelist uh izumi kawasan in his paper showed this uh increasing pattern of um russian uh sea and air violations of or not violations or let me put it the other way japanese intercepts of russian activities how do you square that with the relatively benign and normal picture of russian policy in asia that um that that you portrayed because certainly uh that is that is part of what's whipping up japanese suspicion of of uh of russia as it is worldwide and yet it doesn't really accomplish much militarily i can tell you as a guy who used to run those kind of operations so what's going what's going on um yes uh i think this is by product of general huge growth of activity in the russian military we we have very significant growth in flying hour at sea rate for the ships the uh intensiveness of uh training has been growing quite fast uh since 2009 and uh i think this is more a byproduct of these activities maybe uh this should be discussed with the japanese and be subject for um some negotiations but um i don't think that russia uh really wants to pressure japanese uh in on militarily or politically by these activities we have this huge growth of uh training all around the the border you can see basically the same in eastern europe in uh everywhere and maybe we need to make certain adjustments because you have when you have very fast uh growth of such activities first you have greater number of accidents and second greater number of various mistakes that's sometimes unavoidable so i'm glad you mentioned the mistakes and the risk of accidents and the possibility for dialogue but my understanding at least if you look at the european side of this is that requests for those kinds of dialogue and worry about mistakes have both been moving in other directions there's the western desire for a conversation has been rebuffed by russian counterparts and there's been a series of incidents which i don't need to rehearse but in the Baltics and in Scandinavia that make one very nervous uh and it seems like we're we're just seeing the same pattern of signaling of some kind of strategic signaling here as opposed to just a natural uh increase in military operations is there a signal no well what i wanted to say is that uh you said that showing off is the most important thing i don't say showing up showing up and showing off okay and showing off and showing up so i don't say that russians want to show off with their jet fighters instead of their well dignitaries but uh i want to say that the russian military especially in the far east they want to show up and show off to the bosses that they're not just sitting idly but they're doing something that they need also investment promotions etc etc so if something's happening in europe it has to be something happening in here although the situation here is much less dense than well the potential for in europe sir uh thanks to the tokyo foundation i'd like to make a short comment on that with a question yes but it needs to be a question yes okay okay okay excuse me so just add a question at the end of the comment i mean the uh you know in order to clearly more clearly understand the current trend of the boss country's efforts to improve the relationship uh i think that we should pay attention to the not the administration but the previous administration the end of the the previous administration in my view in 2012 that was the kind of tiny point of the japan russia relationship i was then i was a member of the study group on japan russia relationship gathered by the cabinet secretary at dpg government and we closely watched what is going on in japan russia and one turning point was uh in july uh foreign minister uh genba visited the sochi and met the labroth and the puchin and it was interesting about that before that before president puchin uh received received that they are uh vietnam's president and the russian government sent uh nuclear partnership to japan in october 2012 and uh nuclear partnership after visiting tokyo he went to vietnam as uh basilika she mentioned that vietnam in japan is kind of the uh countries that uh russia uh could show that some kind of independence policy to a china in this sense uh this kind of trend of japan russia relationship started not under the abbey administration but uh under the previous administration alex scuba i'm alex scuba for the corning in nomen uh vasili you mentioned that after uh our adventure in kremia russia has some political capital to spend uh do you feel the desire of putin government to spend it on russia japan relationship because what do you hear in muska conversations with the economic block like a lot of high-level people would hope that vladimir vladimir which could spend these on structural reforms of which we were talking about for the last five years at least and nothing had happened so do you feel this desire to spend in our foreign policy things um i think that the key obstacle to uh any territorial resolution was feared from both governments of being accused of being weak we can recall our territorial um uh agreement with china which was hugely successful for us but the the criticism in the russian society was huge in fact the agreement was hugely damaging for putin's credibility and russian government's position in in the country although for russia it was clearly victory uh of course the any possible uh agreement with the japanese would be even more complicated and uh in this situation it it is quite good that you know we had kremia we had kanbas war we had syrian operation when we you know it's it's hard to doubt that you are not it's hard for anyone to doubt your uh you know toughness and ability to be um very assertive so yes in in this situation you can make certain concessions um you just need to see what the results are and also we should remember we should always remember the another positive example of territorial negotiations involving russia uh a couple of years ago we had very successful solution of our dispute with norway it didn't involve any islands but there was huge area of of the sea which was rich with natural resources and we just quietly negotiated and solved this and uh this happened because uh there was no unnecessary um no unnecessary attention from the public to the negotiations and the agreement was rather complicated they couldn't understand it so if there is political will and we can make the agreement as complicated as possible so no one can read it through like six thousand you know pages like you know uh then maybe we can reach certain results all the way in the back yes sir thank you very much paul joyo and i i wanted to follow up on the comment about showing up and showing off um i find it a bit troubling to indicate that uh is the implication of that statement that the russian military is outside of the full control of the political and diplomatic uh capabilities of the state to be able to engage in such reckless behavior as challenging the territorial integrity of uh of another country no no of course not that's that's not what i meant and it's it's not done on purpose uh believe me and of course the uh in full control of the political leadership please please do do not make any implications like that sir uh gill rosam and the asan forum from our russian speakers i'm wondering if uh russia is signaling with pressure to japan by the visit of prime minister midget to the islands and then the declaration that a military base is is going to be established on the islands uh there are also hints of other types of pressure isn't is this a strategy to warn japan of worse to come and does anyone really have a good sense of who's driving this who's planning whatever these measures are uh and and could also comment on the on the timing of them because on the japanese side they were hoping for a meeting with president putin this year and those activities have made it much more difficult for the japanese side um yes first of all i should uh note that military base on the south korea island existed always since since the so since the early soviet period uh the the 18th uh division there was established decades ago uh what happened during the last several years the uh there were several uh uh programs of the armament of these units which uh were publicly declared before they were not publicly declared at this situation uh certain political figures especially including our current prime minister medvedev uh saw it as a way to show everyone their toughness and patriotism but um what is happening in reality is absolutely normal process of replacing all old equipment in these units to the new one the the the size of our forces on south korea islands is not changing considerably uh we are not uh making any military pressure on japan there is growing pattern of our activities it's growing everywhere in europe it's different i would agree because in europe we are maintaining certain level of tension in response to uh u.s behavior in eastern europe which we find unacceptable and uh uh increased pattern of our exercises will just continue as long as uh u.s presence in bolting states and poland continues at at current level with japan it's absolutely different uh there used to be unintended small violations but um you know when when the general pattern of exercises is like becoming more intensive that becomes more frequent probably we just need to discuss that and uh agree on certain code of conduct okay do you want to add to that okay but but just to pin you down is i can't remember which of your papers talked about the good cop bad cop aspect of this which was that medvedev has closely identified himself with the cure aisles and has crossed over certain patterns of behavior by being there physically and showing up is that is that a signaling or is that just a pet you know it's a pet issue that he's adopted it you ask me yeah well simply said i had no answer for that uh of course that kind of activity this kind of visits are all decided at the highest level he's not doing that by himself and uh if this is considered a normal thing well uh maybe it's it's better to uh send the medvedev who is uh well in the russian establishment sort of a dove rather than uh some some kind of a hawk which would be even more important would have more negative implications but uh well if they don't need to make a statement there is a need to do it thank you yes sir uh steve winter's consultant i i get to the russians would you imagine that there's a perception in japan or could be a perception in japan that china and russia the militaries in particular now are operating in tandem for example the press reported weeks and weeks ago that maybe there was an informal agreement russia would sort of take care of the atlantic and the mediterranean whereas the chinese would be focusing on a pacific despite the fact of course chinese and are doing exercises in a mediterranean and russians are doing exercise with chinese in the in the north but nevertheless there was this report that there was this well we've only got 50 ships that's the russians and you've got so many ships and you know the americans have more than both of us and so forth and so on so sort of a division of labor and then the perception well russians are being aggressive well we've got chromia and now china is being aggressive child china see it's a sort of sort of like working in tandem sort of covering the whole periphery and of course probably the response of japan to that is is to focus on trying to develop some connections in uh southeast asia but but can you see a certain rationale for that so when you say that oh well we've got this sort of we don't want to get involved in all this trouble in asia and so forth and so on well yeah because your part of the tandem is to focus on the other side and also the missile shield russia's pressuring the u.s. on the missile shield and the european allies whereas china's pressuring the missile shield in terms of what the u.s. is trying to build in south korea so forth and so on so i i think that might be the perception um well first of all i should say that uh i i don't think uh any such uh division of labor and joint uh line towards japan is possible uh first of all we should note that the japanese the chinese are still not recognizing our claim on south korea islands and we are not recognizing their claim on senkaku islands it would be just logical if we wanted to establish a common line towards japan on territorial issue that we would first recognize each other's claims no it's not happening and it's not even discussed only some national nationalistic chinese writers are suggesting that but their minority in russia no one is even talking about that uh we we don't we don't have any significant security issues in asia pacific we do have them in eastern europe and central asia so this is where our activity happens as for uh missile shield well it's quite natural that uh uh uh both russia and china being nuclear powers want to prevent or at least don't like us establishing a strategic missile defense of course this issue is much much more significant for the chinese because their nuclear forces are smaller and less sophisticated than ours but still of course we both are concerned and on this issue we of course we have been working together for for many years since 1990s i think we were coordinating our positions on missile defense that that's natural just like on many many other international issues um yes you're here to join out of that uh yes i just wanted to add that well this is a kind of well theory university professors uh love to formulate which i also haven't to be one but in reality in reality that's not how the things are done every every government has limited resources and it spends its resources both political and military and it spends its resources on the issues that are most important of course europe forces much more important and uh south china sea is much more important for china and uh there is a general uh not understanding but a normal practice when uh even at the united nations when for example korean problem is discussed we give chinese the first you know the the all the possibility to be soloists when series discussed they give us as a member supplement member of the united nations but there's nothing artificial about that that's just the normal you know balance and power in the in the whole of the ratio please thank you very much i have a question to uh professor poloria particularly in relation to the slide uh which you are showing over there uh i assume that this gives the kind of major perspective of the views of the regional cooperation from russian perspectives but it seems to me that there is one organization which is missing there and this is conference on interdependence and confidence building measures in asia sika that is certainly china-centered organization but in order to understand what china is trying to do i have always thought that this sika could be could have an important because it precisely overlaps latest chinese vision of one road uh one better than one road it connects uh Beijing to to to uh europe but then then how russia views this organization and clearly russia is number two if china we can call china number one in this organization do you play certain importance to this organization well for one thing there's such a well spaghetti ball of of organizations in asian the pacific that you well cannot enumerate and you cannot well sometimes separate the functions of all of them we found we will well sort of made our mind that east asian summit mechanism should be central and asian uh centrality as asian at the private seat in asia the city are talking about it's more well uh related to central asian and not so much asian the pacific that's why i didn't mention it but well this whole whole issue of one belt one road concept and irish bridge it's uh it's too too big just to start discussion now i think because it's a little bit of a different uh issue jeffrey hornung sasukawa usa it seems like a lot of the the discussions that we have when it comes to security we talk a lot about the the differences between uh japan and russia and possible areas of tension or confrontation i want to switch that and ask about a possible area for conversion of interest the arctic russia is a member of the arctic council japan now is one of five asian observer states in the arctic council do you see any possibility of russia and japan cooperating on issues of the arctic such as possible development uh code of conduct maybe when the ice melts more any any areas that you see that the two countries could actually come together uh in this uh area facility yogurt i am basically not like closely following our relations with japan on arctic so i think well you know arctic arctic can this is a uh a very delicate issue and i don't i also don't know the exact uh you know uh state of affairs in relation with china and japan uh but uh you know i think that there should be more cooperation on the on the steerscale called global commons not only arctic but well other issues and this is uh that was one of the message messages i put in my presentation that the agenda of russia-japan relations uh shouldn't be kidnapped by by bilateral issues that it should it should be broadened for more uh multilateral issues and soft issues which can be discussed without that kind of animation uh we have when we discuss territorial issues or non-existence of territorial issues let me uh okay um my well my knowledge about this issue is also limited but uh uh i i think it was russia that that supported japan's membership in the arctic council and that was viewed as one of the signs from from tokyo's viewpoint uh that russia is somehow sort of worried about china's entering into the arctic ocean i mean could be right could be wrong you don't know um actually before coming here i had a chance to to talk about this arctic issue with the the energy expert and according to these people as the way the price of oil goes right now uh the development in the arctic is a kind of no starter right now so uh maybe that sort of dynamic is kind of like stalled at least right now so i'm conscious that we have about five minutes left so i'm going to take the next uh three questions together if i could so all the way right there in the back hi mark manion from the congressional research service uh izumi kawa sensei can you hear me a little bit loud okay um i'm curious now that russia's isolation has started to ease up um how specifically do you see that japan can reduce russia's dependence on china i'm just particularly interested in in specifics in other words how does japan really have enough influence to uh to change russia's uh you know strategy a global strategy and steve bank yes i was somewhat uh confused by your statement that russia did not support china's position on the senkakos because five years ago a president medvedev and hujintao signed an agreement where both sides claimed to recognize the others territorial claims stemming from the second world war which implies japan china's support for the russia's position on the corals and russia's support for china on the senkakos does that does your statement mean that russia has walked away from that and um you sir here one last question i am young kim our g w u to what extent if any does the liberal tensions between russia i mean china and japan serve as a constrained on russia from developing closer relations with uh japan as a macabre um how could japan support the reducing russia's dependence on on china well uh one specific way i guess i mean this is more of the economics rather than the security is probably you know the uh sort of increase in the energy uh cooperation especially japan is interested in importing natural gas for these reasons uh it's been difficult to to reopen the nuclear reactors even though it has started and so that's one way one specific way but more generally i think well i think my colleagues here from russia has already uh pointed out that the diversification of russia's options in the far in the age of pacific uh is is important and and japan can be an important player in that regard i guess going back to uh the professor kim's question i'm not sure uh how uh i'm not sure if i understood your question correctly but uh well i mean the china factory is really second in terms of uh the driving the japan's uh policy especially prime minister abbas policy called washer and i guess we can talk about that way yes uh during uh president medvedev's visit to china and uh during some sub-second uh joint declarations with on a number of times mentioned that we recognize the results of the world war two and uh there there was a number of statements of on east history of world war two but we never recognized each other's uh territorial claims chinese never recognized and you can just look at any chinese map our claim uh chinese map uh mentioned quail south quail islands as uh occupied by russia or controlled by russia uh the same as with senkaku it's like it's the the state of the affairs and uh yes i should say that uh of course chinese well chinese factor is not the only one which lead us to uh increased relations with japan japan is now uh probably uh probably currently japan is our best partner uh among g7 because the relations with europe are more or less more or less undermined by the ukrainian crisis ukrainian crisis is something as a factor is something which will stay with us for decades it's permanent so there will be always significant difficulties in our deals with europe we need partner in technology uh investment and that is why japan is increasingly important japan and south korea and uh these two countries are uh like direction of growing diplomatic activity for us so i think that's a hopeful note and i i think that we should stop there i appreciate the contributions from from all three of you i i think jeff will come up in a second and describe where we go next but thank you all three for this really stimulating panel okay everyone uh just to let you know where we're going from here from 12 30 from now until 115 we will have lunch served outside here and i ask you to uh come back here at 115 we have a wonderful luncheon addressed by uh yugin rumour the director and senior associate of the russia and eurasia program here at carnegie thank you so the next session yeah lunch yeah lunch is right there