Japan's New World Role by Joshua D Katz & Tilly Friedman-Lichtschein

Author:Joshua D Katz & Tilly Friedman-Lichtschein [Katz, Joshua D & Friedman-Lichtschein, Tilly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social & Cultural Studies, General, Political Science, International, Social Science, History, Asia, Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780429709258
Google: 2oi6AAAAIAAJ
Goodreads: 15305044
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2019-04-02T04:00:00+00:00

CBMs Agreement as a Political Instrument

Nearly all arms control or disarmament overtures combine a serious effort to reach some sort of an agreement with a propagandistic appeal to impress the public at home and abroad with its peace-oriented intentions.94 In the case of Japan and the Soviet Union, CBMs are designed to function as a political instrument of diplomatic change directed at breaking a major impasse in relations. Moscow would benefit greatly from CBMs with Japan, both in symbolic terms and in a concrete political and economic sense. In this regard, the Soviet CBM proposal ought to be viewed as just another in a series of proposals which has included the Asian collective security system and the treaty of goodneighborliness.

CBMs in the Far East were first proposed by Leonid I. Brezhnev in his speech on 23 February 1981 at the 26th Party Congress, when the general secretary made it clear that "the Soviet Union would be prepared to conduct concrete talks on CBMs in the Far East with all interested countries."95 Despite the fact that "Peking hastened to call our proposals propaganda," Konstantin U. Chernenko, Brezhnev's longtime protegṕ and once a prime candidate to succeed him, expressed the USSR's determination to stick to the proposal one month later— at the 111th anniversary celebration of Lenin's birth. In his initial overtures, Brezhnev clearly gave the impression that the USSR was interested in having a CBM arrangement in Asia on a collective basis. He invited "all interested countries" to discuss the proposal, particulary mentioning "the USSR, China, Japan" and even the United States, which has, in Brezhnev's words, "a military basis there."97 It is, of course, hard to determine whether this was a reflection of Brezhnev's real intentions, simply rhetoric, or a sort of ballon d'essai, as was the case of his earlier Asian collective security proposal, which was first proposed on a multilateral basis but later recast in bilateral terms. In any event, Brezhnev's position shifted very rapidly on the application of his CBMs proposal from a collective to a bilateral scheme. This transition was signaled in the communique issued after the meeting in the Crimea in August 1981 between Brezhnev and the Mongolian party leader, Yumjaagiyn Tsedenbal, which stated: "The application of these [confidence-building] measures is possible on a collet: tive basis, with the participation of all the interested sides." The document added that "It is also possible on a bilateral basis."98 As expected, it soon became clear that, while the Soviets continue to claim that they are advocating an application of CBMs in the Far East on a collective basis, what they are really envisioning is obviously a conclusion of an agreement on CBMs on a bilateral basis, particularly with the PRC or Japan. The well-known Tashkent speech of 24 March 1982, in which Brezhnev made diplomatic overtures to Tokyo and Peking, evidently marked a clear step in that direction. Emphasizing that the proposed CBMs in the Far East did not necessarily imply the immediate collective involvement of all

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