Caso studio:La contesa russo-nipponica per le Isole Curili

Università degli Studi di CagliariDipartimento Scienze Sociali e

IstituzioniCorso di Storia e Geopolitica dell’Asia

Marittima

Kuril IslandsSource: www.storicamente.org

Kuril IslandsSource: it.wikipedia.org

Sakhalin IslandSource: www.gonomad.com

Kuril Islands: some data.....•56 volcanic islands•Total area: 10.335 kmq•Population: around 20.000 inhabitants•Native people: Ainu (today disappeared)

Early Relations• 1855: Shimoda treaty; boundary is fixed between the Islands of Iturup (Etorofu) and Urup

• 1875: Treaty for the Exchange of Sakhalin for the Kuril Islands; as product of long negotiations, Kuril Islands became Japanese territory and Sakhalin Island became Russian territory

Russian-Japanese WarSource: www.portunato.it

Russian-Japanese War• Russian-Japanese dispute on Manchuria• February 8, 1904 – September 5, 1905• Port Arthur• Yalu River• Nanshan• Liaoyang• Mukden• Tsushima• September 5, 1905: Portsmouth Treaty

Russian-Japanese relations: 1905-1989• August 1945: Soviet declaration of war to Japan and occupation of Kuril Islands

• Jalta and Postdam conferences: Japan must renounce to Kuril Islands

• 1952: San Francisco treaty; Treaty of peace between Japan and Allied forces, but Soviet Union didn’t sign it; this is the origin of the actual dispute: Japan now refers to the Shimoda Treaty, that assigned the 4 Southern Kuril Islands to Tokyo; in the Tokyo view, these islands had never been Russian before 1945; more, administrative speaking, these 4 islands haf never been Kuril Islands

4 Southern Kuril IslandsSource: letterapolitica.it

Russian-Japanese relations: Trade•Decline of trade relations during 1990s

•Since 2003, recovery and growth of trade relations, excluded the period 2008-2009, due the international crisis

•Total trade turnover in 2011: 29,7 billion USD

•Japan is the second largest Russia’s economic partner following China

Main issues•Energy issue: gold, silver, oil, gas•Military issue: Russian bases (Kunashir and Iturup) since 2011•Nationalism: Putin and Abe•Unsigned WWII Peace Treaty

Bibliografia• Viacheslav Amirov, Russia, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific, Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, 2012, http://www.apcss.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Chapter10.pdf

• Dmitry Gorenburg, The Southern Kuril Islands Dispute, PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 226, September 2012, http://www.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/assets/docs/ponars/pepm_226_Gorenburg_Sept2012.pdf

• Dmitri Trenin and Yuval Weber, Russia’s Pacific Future - Solving the South Kuril Islands Dispute, The Carnegie Papers, December 2012, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/russia_pacific_future_upd.pdf

• Alessandro Uras, La disputa sulle Isole Curili riporta la Russia nel Pacifico, 18 luglio 2012, http://www.meridianionline.org/2012/07/18/disputa-isole-curili-russia-pacifico/