Washington lost no time in entering the fray. Hillary Clinton's spokesman, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip Crowley, stated on November 1 that "We do back Japan regarding the Northern Territories," [13) employing the Japanese government's name for the islands.
In the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty the U.S., while not recognizing Soviet rights to the Kurils, did accede to Japan losing any rights to them as well as to Russia's Sakhalin island to their northwest. In fact the treaty, to which Washington was a signatory, explicitly states that "Japan renounces all right, title and claim to the Kuril islands, and to that portion of Sakhalin and the islands adjacent to it over which Japan acquired sovereignty as a consequence of the Treaty of Portsmouth of 5 September 1905," signed after the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War. [14] Sakhalin is rich in oil, natural gas and coal. Japanese designs on the Kurils may not be limited to those islands but include the entire Sakhalin Oblast to which they belong.
The State Department now openly expresses its support for Japan's claims on Russian territory while it repeatedly confirms its willingness to honor a bilateral military agreement to back Japan in an armed conflict with China over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands.
U.S. backing for Japanese claims on the Kurils has now progressed from tacit to explicit commitment, part of a policy of World War Two revisionism also evident in Washington's actions in Eastern Europe from the Baltic Sea to the Balkans which aim at undoing the results of the Yalta and Potsdam conferences and the entire post-war system of international relations.
After the break-up of the Soviet Union and during Russia's debilitated state under the Boris Yeltsin presidency in the 1990s, the first moves were made to do to Russia what had been done to the Soviet Union: Fragment it. From the Kuril Islands to the North Caucasus, from the Arctic to Kaliningrad and the Republic of Karelia, parts of post-Soviet Russia were coveted by neighboring states or otherwise targeted to be wrested from the country.
Japanese claims, though, have been even more brazen in recent years. In July of 2008 the Japanese government published new textbook guidelines directing teachers to instruct students that Japan has sovereignty over the Kuril Islands. A Russian commentary at the time remarked that in "maps published in...regions of the country even the whole territory of the Kuril Islands is marked as Japanese.
"Such kinds of territorial disputes had long been dubbed as 'cartographic aggression.'
"For example, if Japan does not want to settle an old dispute with China over the Diaoytai Islands, also known as the Senkaku Islands in Japanese, it may mark the territory as Japanese." [16]
In November of 2009 the Japanese government reiterated the accusation that "the Russian Federation is illegally occupying four northern islands." [17]
The Russian Foreign Ministry responded by labelling as "unacceptable" a document issued by Tokyo identifying the alleged "illegal occupation by Russia" of the Kuril Islands, stating:
"We consider it necessary to stress that the Southern Kuril Islands are an inseparable part of the Russian Federation territory on legal grounds based on the WW2 results in accordance with the legally binding agreements and treaties between the ally states, as well as the UN Charter that was ratified by Japan." [18]
Last month then-Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada spoke of the Kurils being "illegally occupied by Russia."
When similar statements were made by Okada's successor, Seiji Maehara, chairman of the international affairs committee in the Russian State Duma Konstantin Kosachev remarked:
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