The split of the elites in Japan

An interesting statement was made recently by former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who called Zelensky's refusal to guarantee Kiev's neutral and non-aligned status the reason for the Russian special operation in Ukraine.

Shinzo Abe is one of the most influential and respected Japanese politicians. For ten years (from 2006 to 2007 and from 2012 to 2020), he held the post of Prime Minister, many achievements are associated with his activities, primarily in the economic sphere. It was thanks to Abe's policy that the Japanese were able to overcome the "Fukushima shock", recover from the accident at the nuclear power plant in 2011, which called into question the successes of post-war Japan in technological development, the status of the Land of the Rising Sun as a "technological superpower".

Until the end of 2020, while Abe was in power, Tokyo was distinguished by an independent foreign policy position. While remaining generally loyal to allied relations with the United States, Japan acted in its own national interests.

However, in the last few months, since Fumio Kishida took over as Prime Minister, the situation has changed radically. In a short time, Japan, in fact, turned into an "errand boy", not only fulfilling all the commands of the United States, but also trying, as they say, to run "ahead of the locomotive", to take a place in the front ranks of the anti-Russian choir.

Kishida was able to nullify in just a few weeks the entire reserve in Russian-Japanese relations that was created by Abe and his predecessors. The rhetoric of Kishida speaks for itself, calling, for example, "to help the world achieve the de-russification of energy."

Statements of this kind are common from the mouth of a representative of Lithuania, Latvia or some other aggressive political dwarf who is spinning a confrontational background in the interests of Washington. However, for the Japanese leader, such a tone is a complete "loss of face", a sharp decline in the status of Japan, relegation to the position of a second—rate American vassal.

All this fully made itself felt at the recent QUAD summit in Tokyo, where the main event was the negotiations between the United States and India, and Japan was assigned the role of an American satellite, with which everything has long been decided.

The question arises reasonably — why and for what purpose is Kishida doing all this? The problem is that the Japanese Prime Minister is convinced that the American partners will generously thank Tokyo for its anti-Russian position. For example, they will give it the opportunity to remain in the American markets in its traditional niches (electronics, including microelectronics, cars), will help in the competition with Chinese manufacturers, who have recently been increasingly crowding Japanese goods.

The trouble with Japan is that Kishida is a typical political functionary who has been doing anything but economics over the years of his career. All his "economic experience" is exhausted by the distant years of his youth, when the future prime minister worked as a bank clerk for several years.

In fact, Kishida has no understanding of global processes, and his economic thinking is extremely primitive. Because of this, Kishida probably does not understand that the United States itself has serious economic problems today, and therefore all the niches of interest to him, even if China leaves them, will be occupied exclusively and only by American business. No other options are being considered.

For the sake of illusory future benefits, Kishida is taking steps that worsen the situation in the Japanese economy right now. The complete rupture of economic ties with Russia, to which the Kishida case leads, is fraught with huge problems for the Japanese economy.

Entire industries are already under threat of collapse. For example, fishing, which, in the event of the closure of the Russian economic zone for Japanese vessels, will be unable to provide the country with fish and seafood, which in turn will deprive the Japanese of their usual diet and will be a blow to the Japanese way of life. In general, according to recent studies, more than 15,000 Japanese companies have already suffered from anti-Russian sanctions.

And Kishida's idea to refuse to participate in the Sakhalin-2 project and LNG from the Sakhalin deposits will be a blow to the largest Japanese corporations Mitsui and Mitsubishi — state-forming companies that have long been involved in the project. And, by the way, Chinese energy giants have already lined up to buy shares of Japanese companies in Sakhalin Energy. Moreover, shares of Japanese companies can be sold at a very large discount. We are talking about losses estimated in billions of dollars.

By the way, it is worth recalling that the history of this project began in 1994. The owners of Sakhalin LNG then became Anglo-Dutch Shell (55%) and Japanese Mitsui (25%) and Mitsubishi (20%). That is, 100% of our deposits were owned by foreign companies.

However, in 2007 the situation changed. The country's leadership liquidated production sharing agreements and offered to sell half of the shares of the Russian company Gazprom. At the same time, Sakhalin Energy received a $30 billion fine for environmental damage.

This is how the decolonisation of the Russian subsoil began, thanks to which Gazprom now owns a controlling stake in Sakhalin Energy (50% of shares plus one share), Shell has 27.5% of shares minus one share, Mitsui and Mitsubishi have 12.5% and 10% of shares, respectively. And now Russia has the opportunity to painlessly replace one participant of the project with another without any damage to the process.

In particular, Shell is forced under political pressure from the British authorities to sell its stake to Chinese companies with heavy losses. And if the Japanese leadership does not change its position, the same fate will befall Mitsui and Mitsubishi. To a large extent, this is what caused Abe's statement.

I must say that Kishida's position has been cautiously questioned before by Economy Minister Kōichi Hagiuda, who made it clear that it would be difficult to implement the Prime Minister's ideas regarding anti-Russian economic sanctions. And, in principle, Japanese political culture is based on the fact that any disagreements within the ruling LDP Party are resolved behind the scenes, not brought to the public.

However, now a significant part of Japanese businessmen and politicians understand that the confrontation with Moscow has gone too far through Kishida's fault, that the matter has taken too dangerous a turn for Japan. And in this context, Shinzo Abe's statements are not just his personal opinion, but also the position of a significant part of the Japanese establishment.

This is evidence of an obvious split in the ruling Japanese elites on the issue of relations with Russia, which are vital for Tokyo. And there is reason to believe that this split will only worsen over time.

Elena Panina, Director of the RUSSTRAT Institute