MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

ACADEMY OF DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT – INSTITUTE OF SKY POLITICS

Recalling the Eastern Economic Forum – 2018

From 3 to 6 September 2024, the IX Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) will be held in Vladivostok. The organizer of the forum is Roscongress. The Executive Secretary of the Organizing Committee is Anton Kobyakov, adviser to the President of the Russian Federation. The theme of the forum is "The Far East – 2030. Joining efforts, creating opportunities".

Speaking of opportunities, one ought to recall the IV Eastern Economic Forum, which was held in Vladivostok on 11–13 September 2018. With the main theme – "The Far East: expanding the boundaries of opportunities".

Six years ago, the key event of the IV Forum was the plenary session with the participation of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, the Chairman of the PRC Xi Jinping, the President of Mongolia Khaltmaagiin Battulga, the Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe, and the Prime Minister of the Republic of Korea Lee Nak-yon.

At that time, the leader of the PRC, Xi Jinping, put forward a fresh strategic initiative that radically changes the geopolitical landscape in the Asia-Pacific Region.

Xi proposed creating a "Sphere of the Economy of Shared Benefit of Northeast Asia" (东北亚经济共享圈) comprising five countries whose leaders arrived at the EEF. The PRC, Russia, Japan, Mongolia plus both Koreas – these are all the countries of Northeast Asia.

The geopolitical meaning of Xi Jinping's initiative is to tear Japan and South Korea out from under the dictatorship of the USA and to create in the northeastern part of the Pacific Ocean the Future of Shared Benefit (共享未来) of the Asian cycle of capital accumulation of the new era of the information society that has arrived.

Xi Jinping's call was not heard in Russia. The opportunity to seize the future as part of the five countries of Northeast Asia was missed by Moscow.

At that time, the friends of the US dollar and the champions of New Russia won in the Kremlin – lovers of London clubs, Paris boutiques, villas and yachts in Spain, Italy, the Canary Islands, the merrymakers of Courchevel...

Russia failed to "expand the boundaries of opportunities" in 2018. Now, in 2024 at the EEF, Russia has decided to "join efforts and create opportunities" in the Far East until 2030, no longer with Northeast Asia, but with India and the countries of the South Seas, without the technologically advanced Japan and South Korea.

If in 2018 a conscious historical turn of Russia to the East had occurred, if the clear progress in relations with Japan that was emerging then had not again been blocked by the heralds of the "yellow peril," – then by the decisive stage of the Third World War of a new hybrid type, Russia would not now find itself in strategic solitude on the rift between a hostile West and a hostile pro-American Far East.

It is noteworthy that EEF-2024 will begin on 3 September, when the peoples of the Asia-Pacific Region celebrate the day of Victory over Japan. The USSR was also a victor.

However, neither the Soviet leadership nor the leadership of New Russia managed to take full advantage of the fruits of the Victory over Japan. There was not enough common sense, political will, and resolve to go for a compromise in accordance with the spirit of the 1956 Soviet-Japanese Declaration on the cessation of the state of war.

What was at issue was the conclusion of a peace treaty with the Soviet side's promise to transfer to Japan the islands of Shikotan and the chain of the Habomai rocks.

On 14 November 2004, on the eve of the visit to Japan of the President of the Russian Federation V. Putin, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Sergey Lavrov stated that the Russian Federation, being the successor of the USSR, recognizes the 1956 Declaration and is ready to conduct territorial negotiations with Japan on that basis. But their affair did not go smoothly.

Xi Jinping's 2018 proposal to create a "Sphere of the Economy of Shared Benefit of Northeast Asia" proceeded from the fact that, in the conception of Chinese sages, the core of Northeast Asia is the "advanced region" of Chinese Manchuria, which in its peaceful economic expansion draws into a system of ties Russia, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan.

Here it should be recalled that during WWII imperial Japan was building a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere» (Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere) of countries of non-Western civilizations.

A comparison of the hieroglyphic names of these "spheres of common good" of the Asian peoples of the East and North of the Pacific zone eloquently points to the common goal of uniting their forces and means into a common framework of confrontation with the "collective West." In essence, Xi was talking about an offensive against the "rotten Western democracies," now under the leadership of the "Red Dragon."

When Russia of the democratic choice quietly gave China the islands on the Amur and Ussuri rivers (including the blood-soaked Damansky Island) and now cannot stop rejoicing over relations "better than which there have never been" (hushing up the "Great Friendship" under Stalin and Mao), our overly zealous patriots, having launched a campaign of protest around a compromise fixing the territorial results of WWII with Japan, did everything possible to preserve disagreements and push Japan, out of revenge for defeat in WWII, into becoming an open enemy of Russia.

Be that as it may, the fate of Putin's Long State is now being decided in the confrontation with the collective West on the Ukrainian Theater of Military Operations, and therefore the EEF-2024 discussion platform merely covers the rear, distracts attention, and masks the main questions of global transformation with pseudo-successes.

Here it would be worth heeding the genius of Lenin: "Politics cannot but take precedence over economics. To reason otherwise means forgetting the ABC of Marxism."

Executed by Andrey Petrovich Devyatov No967 of 01.09.2024