Disputes over Islands in East & South East Asia: A Solution

Tensions have been mounting between members of the ASEAN, China & Taiwan over competing claims on Islands in the South China Sea For details see

http://meetrk.blogspot.in/2015/07/geopolitics-of-artificial-islands.html

They are not alone. East China Sea is the new theatre of conflict between China, Taiwan & Japan over the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu islands in China) - eight uninhabited islands and rocks with an insignificant area of about 7 sq. km. Likewise Japan & Russia are ranged against each other over the control of islets - called Southern Kurils (Northern Territories in Japan) While Kurils – an island chain - stretches north across the Pacific Ocean from the Japanese island of Hokkaido

to the southern tip of Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula dispute over ownership is restricted to four islands - Kunashir (known in Japanese as Kunashiri), Iturup (Etorofu), Shikotan and the rocky Habomai.

The reasons for claiming ownership is strategic - considering their proximity to shipping lanes & existence or potential for establishment of military bases & economic – availability of fish, gas & oil reserves & the tourism potential. Rare rhenium deposits have also been found on the Kudriavy volcano on Iturup island enhancing its importance further. An understanding of history is necessary to gain an insight into the origins of current claims.

Historical claims of Ownership over the Senkaku Islands

Post the Sino-Japanese war, Taiwan was ceded to Japan under the Treaty of Shimonoseki, in 1895 & the Senkaku islands incorporated into Japanese territory. After World War 2, Japan renounced claims on Taiwan under the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco while the Senkaku islands, came under US trusteeship and were returned to Japan in 1971 under the Okinawa reversion deal. Japan’s claims rest on the fact that neither China nor Taiwan raised any objections to the San Francisco deal then. China with claims over Taiwan suggests that when Japan renounced claims over Taiwan, the islands too, should have been deemed to be returned. Taiwan did not protest then, China avers, because Taiwan's Kuomintang leader, Chiang Kai-shek, depended on the US for support.

Historical Claims of Ownership over the Kuril Islands

Japan ownership of the four southern islands was cemented by the Treaty of Shimoda, in 1855, when diplomatic relations were first established between Russia and Japan.  As per the subsequent Treaty of St. Petersburg, in1875, it was agreed that Japan would give up all rights to Sakhalin on the Kuril Islands. Russia thereafter took control of the islands at the end of WW2 and by 1949 had deported all 17000 residents to Japan. 

Japan renounced rights over Kuril Islands under the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty with the Allied forces; since Russia did not sign the treaty and Japan never recognised the four islands as part of the Kuril chain, the issue continued to fester. While a Japan-Soviet Joint Declaration restored diplomatic ties in 1956 a formal peace deal remained elusive despite Russia’s proposal to return the two islands closest to Japan which the latter rejected because the two islands represent only 7% of the land in question.

Current Problem on Senkaku

The current controversy erupted in April 2012, when the right-wing Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, announced that he would use public money to buy 3 Senkaku islands from their private Japanese owner. The Japanese govt. blocked the move & bought it itself which provoked China to organize both public & diplomatic protests. It upped the ante through incursions into what Japan sees as its territorial waters & escalated the situation further by creating a new air-defence identification zone (ADIZ), in November 2013, which required any aircraft in the zone to comply with their rules which is unacceptable to Japan & the US.

Current Problem on Kuril

Political opportunism & push towards nationalistic jingoism has exacerbated the dispute. Former President, Dmitri Medvedev, became the first leader of Russia to visit the disputed isles, in 2010 & repeated the move again in 2012 prompting an outrage from Japan.  Boosting of Russian defences on the islands in 2011 was not viewed kindly by Japan. The Russia-Japan détente has not been made easier by the recent Russia- China embrace & the September 2010, joint statements committed to “support each other on sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity.”

Analysts argue that the wording is ambiguous on Northern territories while specifically mentioning joint support for their positions on Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, the Caucasus region and former Soviet countries. They buttress their argument further by alluding to the world atlas published by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, that shows the Northern territories as “Occupied by Russia” next to each of the four disputed islands with names in Japanese & not Russian – a stand maintained by China since the 1960’s; therefore it is unlikely that China & Russia would form a joint front against Japan.

However many in Japan fear a Chinese threat.

Resurgent Japan
Post defeat in WW 2, Japan, changed its constitution to a pacifist one that specifically barred its troops from moving beyond its shores. The US entered into a security alliance with Japan & formalised it in 1960 as per which the US is provided military bases in Japan in lieu of a promise to defend Japan in the event of an attack. The current Japanese, PM Shinzo Abe, has sought to add muscle to the military alliance through the proposed “Diamond” project involving India, US, Japan & Australia to counter the growing Chinese threat. He has also proposed a change in Japanese Constitution to allow Japanese forces to be sent abroad which has since been passed by the Diet albeit with the entire opposition walking out. Its passage in the upper house is still due.  If the same is unlikely to pass muster, Abe has proposed military assistance to like-minded countries to counter the threat. Tensions are on the rise since all the countries have taken maximalist positions.

Likely solutions
If the parties to the dispute are keen on a peaceful “Win - Win “solution then the same is not unreachable. A humanitarian outreach to create the environs for a negotiated settlement should be the first step. The outreach by the erstwhile Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is a guiding light.

Requests for visits to the graves of the ancestors of displaced Japanese of the Kuril was first made in 1964 & post a long lull allowed after the visit of then Soviet President, Gorbachev to Japan in 1991.  As a provisional measure mutual visits - without passports or visas - between Japanese citizens and the current Russian residents of the Northern Territories was allowed to enhance mutual understanding to prepare grounds for an eventual peace treaty. Once trust is achieved some mechanism of joint investment & administration could be evolved.

Kurile islanders are Russian citizens but live in hardship since fishing proceeds subject to about 80% tax & appropriated by the Russian govt. causing much local angst. Boris Yeltsin unsuccessfully attempted to change that in December 1992, when he issued an order to create Kuril Islands free economic zone, cut taxes, give rights to keep foreign currency earned through trade and the power to impose quotas on foreign vessels fishing in Kuril waters. The proposal floundered when the Duma balked then & the population shrank by a third following the devastating earthquake in 1994. There is immense sense in reopening the proposal & inviting Japan to invest in an arrangement which allows joint administration of the northern territories by a board with equal membership by both the parties. The Taiwan- Japan agreement offers an interesting template.

In April 2013 Taiwan reached agreement with Tokyo to permit Taiwanese fishing vessels access to fishing areas near the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and inside Japan’s exclusive economic-zone, thereby decoupling the issue of sovereignty & economic rights around the islands. The same template could be employed by China too to freeze the conflict to be revisited at a later state when relations between the neighbours improve.

Michael o’Hanlon, director of research for the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, Professor Akikazu Hashimoto of the J.F.Oberlin University Graduate School and Wu Xinbo of China’s Fudan University in Shanghai have proposed a permanent solution to the Senkaku problem. As per their proposal Japan would continue to retain formal administrative rights under international law which would be a concession by China while Japan’s concession would be to agree to delegate the administration of the islands to a joint oversight board with equal memberships on the Chinese and Japanese sides, rotating chairmanship, and consensus decision making rules. Patrols for purposes of safety, and tours of the islands for reasons of tourism or ecology or history, would be organized and conducted together by China and Japan and regulated by the board; Unilateral patrols around the islands by any ships or planes from either side would end. All patrolling within the 12-mile zone bordering the islands would be done jointly. The islands would be used solely for non-military purposes such as ecological tourism, with all such activities fully regulated by the oversight board.

Apart from the above both sides would promise to raise no further territorial disputes in future by acknowledging the sovereignty claims over all the islands by the other. This shall potentially prevent China from challenging Japan’s sovereignty over any of the Ryukyu Islands in the future. Likewise the two sides would agree to decouple matters of territory and sovereignty, and the Law of the Sea will not apply to any claims to the islands.

Conclusion

This solution if accepted by the effected parties has the potential to reduce tensions in the region & beyond & if successful would also serve as a model to manage disputes over islands across the world.