Free Republic

The Russian-Japanese relations are going through tough times. There is no war, but there is no peace treaty either. The current state of affairs has to do with the fact that the Russian state border in the Kuriles was not recognized by Japan and a number of other countries. Over 65 years this border has not been legally protected. These islands can be called a conflict and destabilizing point in the Asia -Pacific region. The Russian and Japanese leaders discussed issues of bilateral relations on October 7th. According to the press-secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov, the parties paid...

As Americans turn their attention inward, China and Russia are beginning to make geopolitical moves that evoke nothing so much as the environment of the 1930s. I have written elsewhere about China's dispute with Japan over the Senkaku Islands and Beijing's resort to a direct confrontation over them in September. Russia added to Japan's troubles last week, when Dmitry Medvedev planned to make an unprecedented visit to the Kuril Islands in the north, which have been disputed by Japan and Russia since the end of World War II. Medvedev's trip was curtailed by bad weather on this occasion (a verifiable excuse, incidentally)....