The Human Face of the Kuril Islands Dispute

Link please.

Thank you. Now I know where you are getting your information from:

“During the 1956 peace talks between Japan and the Soviet Union, the Soviet side proposed to settle the dispute by returning Shikotan and Habomai to Japan. In the final round of the talks the Japanese side accepted the weakness of its claim to Etorofu and Kunashiri and agreed to settle for return of Shikotan and the Habomais, in exchange for a peace treaty. However, the Americans intervened and blocked the deal.”
-Wikipedia

The then US Secretary of State John Dulles did make a ‘threat’ that if Japan gave up its claim against the USSR for the southern Kurils, then the United States might feel obliged to retain Okinawa in perpetuity. He didn’t however “block the deal” because the he didn’t have the power to do so. Japan could have ignored him and went through with the deal anyway, so to say the US blocked the deal is not accurate. It gives the impression they did it by force or authority, neither of which happened.

Dulles was simply pointing out that if Japan gives away territory to Russia, then it may as well give away territory to the US too. From what I understand about Dulles, he was pretty heavy handed in his diplomacy, but he simply didn’t have the power or authority to block the deal, nor did he have the authority to keep Okinawa.

Wikipedia is a great source of information for ‘fast and dirty’ ways of finding information. I would be cautious about relying on it too heavily for finer details however. It is always worth your time to click on the citations to try to determine if what is posted on Wikipedia is fact or opinion. Often it turns out to be fact. This is not one of those times however. The concept that “America blocked the deal” is purely opinion.

“Citations” and “sources” are the same thing, which is exactly what I was commenting on. The “blocked the deal” that you quoted was someone’s *interpretation* of the event. If you read about what actually happened I think you’ll discover that describing it as being blocked by the US is very misleading. So yes, I am going to argue about the meaning of the word “block”. Block has a forceful connotation, as if though the USA had forcefully stopped it from happening. That is not what happened at all.

The US didn’t threaten to retain Okinawa, Dulles did. The “threat” you mention was a hollow one. The context in which it was used was as an example to dramatically highlight why Japan would be making a mistake to give in to the USSR and forfeit what rightfully belonged to them, NOT a direct threat to do something that Dulles didn’t even have the authority to do.

If you still disagree that is fine. I’d be delighted to entertain the concept that “the US blocked the deal”, but I would have to ask that you provide more evidence to support this argument than a Wiki page because at this point I still contend that is a very inaccurate description of what happened.

Here is one link that supports my claim:
http://www.d1074152.mydomainwebhost.com/projects/russia/node/355

Nope, you didn’t provide anything to support your assertion that the threat made by Dulles, the secretary of state, is divorced from the position of the state. It’s an absurd statement to begin with. That’s not a dig at you, it’s just true. The fact remains that the US threatened (through Dulles) to keep Okinawa if Japan accepted Russia’s proposal to get back Shikotan and Habomai. That made Japan withdraw from the deal. Call it whatever you like.

Your interpretation that Dulles’ threat wasn’t coordinated with the government and the administration is completely unsupported. Whenever you hear a country’s foreign minister make a threat, you can be sure the threat is coming from the country’s government. You don’t need to make sure it’s not a personal gaffe, if a foreign minister makes such a gaffe contrary to the official position, he’ll be fired immediately. The fact that the threat wasn’t withdrawn is further proof that it’s the government’s position. The fact that Japan was about to make a deal and after the threat it suddenly decided not to, makes the situation pretty clear. The US interest to keep Japan in its orbit of influence and prevent a warming of relations with Russia makes it logical that the US would want to stop the deal by threatening to keep Okinawa, instead of just sitting idly by and expecting someone to make a gaffe.

Whether the word of choice is “block”, “stop”, “derail”, “sabotage” or “influence” this depends on how you feel about it. It isn’t so important that one word would change the meaning of what happened – that the US threat to keep Okinawa was The factor that made Japan abandon the deal to get back Shikotan and Habomai.

But your source doesn’t say what you’re saying, and it doesn’t link to or quote the actual document. They even admit Dulles made the threat to keep Okinawa in perpetuity. They didn’t claim Dulles’ threat was any different from the US position, all they claim was that the threat was within a framework of “helpful consultations”. It’s still a threat and it’s still the official position of the US. Your link does not make a point that it’s not the official position.

The US made it clear to Japan that it would keep Okinawa in perpetuity if the deal went through.

If you’re ready to make such a leap of interpretation from the same paragraph you and I are reading, and if you’re ready to conclude that the words “we might feel obliged to keep Okinawa in perpetuity if you agree to keep only two of the islands” are not really a threat, that they don’t mean much, or that it’s purely “Dulles’” threat and has nothing to do with the US administration, I don’t think there’s much more to say here. In my view, the meaning and the origin of the words “we might feel obliged to keep Okinawa in perpetuity if you agree to keep only two of the islands” is pretty clear, and Kaczinsky’s veiled allegation that it doesn’t represent a threat, is as oblique, as it is unsupported by any concrete evidence. For example, no evidence whatsoever is presented that the US administration has ever expressed any opposition to the words of its top diplomat, or that the “warning” or “threat” did not influence Japan’s decision. It’s pretty clear that Dulles was an agent of the US administration and his threat is also a threat by the US administration. The statement was never retracted and its legitimacy and official character was never disputed. If you can’t agree on that much, I’m sorry, you’re just being stubborn.

Japan could of course have accepted the Russian proposal as it intended, by saying to the US “fine, keep Okinawa if you want”. But the reason why it didn’t is clear as day – America linked the Southern Kurils to Okinawa and threatened to keep Okinawa in perpetuity if Japan agreed to the Russian proposal. Argue about semantics as much as you want, but it’s not very convincing. Arguments out of authority are also illogical, so no matter who Vlad Kaczinsky is, if he doesn’t support his allegation (if that was an allegation at all), he is simply wrong.

“What part of the world’s immigrants are “uneducated peasants””

Um, a whole hell of a lot of them? And it has been that way for a very long time. My grandparents, who emigrated to America, were largely uneducated and dirt poor – “peasants”. So were the grandparents or great-grandparents or great-great-grandparents of a very large number of Americans. Most immigrants don’t pack up and move just because they’d like to see what life is like on the other side of the world – those type of people do exist, yes, but most do it because they are desperate for a better life. Any kind of better life.

“where exactly has sharia law been implemented by immigrants on any public level?”

ENGLAND

And there have been pushes for allowing it, as in legally recognizing it, in Canada as well. Granted, it still applies to muslims only, but they’ve got their foot in the door now. I have heard that Muslim cab drivers in New York violate laws and ordinances regarding helper dogs and can get away with it. Muslims consider dogs “unclean”, and civil law be damned we can’t insult a person’s backwards cultural beliefs by forcing them to comply with our society’s laws, now can we?

You can bet they intended to keep it. It’s normal for losers in wars to lose parts of their territories. My own country (Bulgaria) lost almost half of its territory after WW2, because we were on Germany’s side, even though we didn’t actually help them in any way. Japan on the other hand, was one of the main aggressors and yet it lost only a few small islands.

The US threat to keep Okinawa if Japan agreed to take back Shikotan and Habomai, obviously ruined the deal. I don’t understand why Russia is the one being demonized for agreeing to return two of the islands?

Tell me, in which major war in the past 1000 years has the loser escaped with all of its original territory?

When you start a fire, you gamble with your own life. You should be angry at your militarist politicians for putting your territory at risk. They gambled. They wanted to steal foreign territories. They lost. You should be grateful that only a few small islands were taken, you could have suffered a much more horrible fate. And you should be happy that Russia is still ready to give back Shikotan (色丹島) and Habomai (歯舞群島).

Russia didn’t violate the the Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact. The pact had a term of 5 years (expiring on April 13 1946), but article 3 said that it could be denounced one year before it expires (April 13 1945). At the Yalta Conference (February 1945) Roosevelt asked Russia to break the pact and enter the war. But Russia waited another two months and denounced the neutrality pact in April 1945 and entered war with Japan on August 8.