No Man's Lands - A Thought

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, I attended a noon luncheon at the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Japan featuring presentations by Katsuhiko Togo, a renowned and controversial former Director-General of the Treaties Bureau (where only the absolutely brightest career diplomats serve) and Park Il, professor at Osaka City University.  Their presentations focused on the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute and possible ways the South Korean and Japanese governments can climb down from their current enervated excited states.

Among the proposals floated by Mr. Togo was a new general code of  conduct for all of the players in Japan's territorial disputes.  Insistence that no territorial dispute exists over such-and-such a disputed territory, thus preventing the two governments even having discussions over the territories, should be abandoned.  "There is no territorial dispute so we have nothing to talk about" is the attitude adopted by South Korea over Dokdo/Takeshima and Russia over the Southern Kuriles/Northern Territories.  It is the brick wall Japan's diplomats or politicians run into when they try to engage their counterparts in discussions over these islands.

This stance is also the one taken by Japan over the Senkakus.  Under Togo's proposal, Japan would abandon its insistence that the Senkakus are indisputably Japanese territory, allowing discussion with the Chinese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong governments over the status of the islands.

Such an approach would be both intellectually consistent and absolutely wrong.  Opening up the sovereignty over the Senkakus to discussion thows away one of Japan's ace cards.

The Senkakus are indisputably Japanese territory. We know this by inference.

How? Let us take a tour around the Pacific.

Name: Clipperton Island
Controlling State: France
Population: 0
Garrison soldiers: 0
Nearest inhabited land: Mexico

Name: Baker Island
Controlling State: U.S.A.
Population: 0
Garrison soldiers: 0
Nearest inhabited land: U.S.A., Australia

Name: Minamitorishima
Controlling State: Japan
Population: 0
Garrison soldiers: 0
Nearest inhabited land: Northern Marianas Islands, Wake Island (U.S.A.)

The sovereignty of none of these islands is contested. They are also not protected by standing forces, though a standby barracks was constructed on Minamitorishima in 2011.

Call me off my rocker -- but a sure way to indicate a lack of confidence over one's hold upon a Pacific island is to put soldiers on it or colonize it. By contrast, by leaving an island or a set of islands alone, allowing no inhabitants, unapproved visitors or soldiers on it or them, the more confidence you can exude that your claim is valid.

Why then put the Senkakus on a par with the heavily militarized Dokto/Takeshima, Southern Kuriles/Northern Territories, and the garrisoned islands of the Spratlys and the Paracels?


Later - Togo-sensei has published a written treatment of ideas regarding Japan's three major territorial disputes on the NBR website:

"Japan’s Territorial Problem: The Northern Territories, Takeshima, and the Senkaku Islands" (Link)

Later still - Someone has do a history of the Togo family, though it is difficult to imagine that Togo-sensei himself does not have already have a thick manuscript and the support documents in a fire-proof safe at home. If there were ever a "well, you do not see that every day" story, the saga of the Togo family is it.

Your Serve, Region

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko gave a live press conference last night, outlining what his government is doing regarding the territorial disputes with the Republic of Korea over Dokdo and China/Taiwan/Hong Kong over the Senkakus. (J)

The approach the Noda government will take is quite simple: it will assert its claims, which it has heretofore done quietly, mostly in the form of including the disputed territories in official maps, wherever appropriate in its interactions with the international community, leaving international opinion to judge the validity of Russian, South Korean and Chinese/Taiwanese behavior.

This approach is in line with the standard procedures of normal democratic states. Authoritarian regimes can enforce, as Deng Xiaoping suggested, the sweeping of competing claims under the rug for later, wiser generations to resolve, with the obvious postscript: "In the meantime, let's stay in power by letting our people make money." Democratic states cannot -- voters like problems resolved in clean, simple and tidy ways.

Adjusting to the new stance will lead to some fumbling. Even foreign policy experts will not "get it" -- see this CNN op-ed by Jimbo Ken, where he argues at the beginning that status quo policies are no longer operative, only to argue at the end that the conduct of relations between Japan and China needs the kinds of personal relations that lubricated and protected the status quo approach.

However, the chances of the new assertiveness' succeeding in freezing further escalation of territorial disputes are at least 50-50. All the governments in the region ex Japan remain at least semi-authorian -- the exception being Taiwan, which has opted out of the current round of the fighting over the Senkakus despite being led by a man whose law degree is based upon studies of Chinese claims in the East China Sea (E and E). The semi-authoritarian regimes can still rely upon considerable powers of persuasion to repress populist behavior - if the regime in question wants to do so. China has deployed both its 50-cent Party of Web commentators and its police forces (E) in a short-circuiting of anti-Japanese mob action in relation to the visit of Hong Kong activists to the Senkakus. That the South Korean president has gone in the other direction, choosing to heighten regional tensions rather than use his presidential powers to tamp them down, over a territory where South Korea has dug-in military forces, is...to be honest, not something I do want to delve into right now because it will be, inshallah, discussed in a future op-ed for Al-Jazeera.

The takeaway from last night's speech is that the balls are now in the courts of the nations surrounding Japan. The government of this blessed land is not going to keep quiet, as was demonstrated in the most recent Defense White Paper where the government put it writing That Which Must Not Be Said: that the civilian government of China and the People's Liberation Army may not be reading from the same piece of sheet music.

It will be up to the governments in the region, coping with their own internal instabilities and tensions, to come up with new narratives to cope with Mr. Noda's New Reality.