Intriguingly, Ural Federal University<\/a> recalls that \u201c[i]n late 2018 the Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed with the proposal to recognize the Ainu as an indigenous people of Russia, which fueled concern among the Ainu living in Hokkaido (because \u2018Russians\u2019 might be granted more privileges \u2013 for example, group rights to fishing).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n With Moscow\u2019s subsequent commitment to the \u201cpreservation of the native lands and traditional ways of life of minority groups\u201d in its 2020 Arctic strategy, and invasion of neighboring Ukraine two years later, one can now reasonably reinterpret Putin\u2019s 2018 recognition of the Ainu as indigenous to Russia as a pretext for yet another territorial expansion \u2013 one far from Ukraine, extending Russia\u2019s ongoing eight-decade occupation of the southern Kurils to the island of Hokkaido, with its vast lands, increasingly strategic waters, and seemingly unlimited green energy and data center potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I first learned of Putin\u2019s 2018 Ainu recognition from Jeffry Gayman<\/a>, an Associate Professor at Hokkaido University on the Research Faculty of Media and Communication and Graduate School of Education (Multicultural Education Course), when visiting Hokkaido to present a guest talk at its Arctic Research Center in 2019 on indigenous foundations of Arctic sovereignty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, I began to understand Putin\u2019s Ainu recognition through a new, worrisome lens. One that illuminates recent diplomatic and strategic trends \u2013 notably Moscow\u2019s diplomatic and strategic alignment with Beijing, and consequent intensification of joint operational activity in and around Japan\u2019s northern territories \u2013 in a new and troubling light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Russian territorial expansion to Hokkaido could strengthen Moscow\u2019s position relative to both China, should their strategic alignment run its course, and the West. <\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n A war for the eventual \u201creunification\u201d of the Ainu homeland is thus now easier to envision, much the way the Kremlin perceives its war in Ukraine as a just and necessary war of sovereign restoration, fueling its determination and helping to ameliorate its high toll in losses of troops, equipment, and treasure, much to the surprise of many critics of Putin\u2019s war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n History has shown us time and again that Russia, if anything, can be a determined military opponent, and more than fickler democratic states can stomach steep military losses when the wholeness of mother Russia is perceived to be at stake. Through this lens, a war for the eventual \u201creunification\u201d of Hokkaido with Russia, and \u201crestoration\u201d of the unity of the Ainu homeland, is not only possible but perhaps even inevitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even if victory seems unlikely in such a war, Russia\u2019s capacity to bog down its opponent in a seemingly forever war of attrition marked by little in the way of battlefield advances at an inexplicably high cost in losses could in fact be Moscow\u2019s end game. Creating a frozen conflict that forever paralyzes Japan and its western allies while holding the line of contact well within a militarily contested island of Hokkaido \u2013 and thereby keeping the Northern Sea Route (NSR) open for business as Japan fights for its national survival \u2013 could be a logical expansion of Russia\u2019s current war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With the historic deployment of North Korean troops to the conflict earlier this year, and the expansion of Ukraine\u2019s retaliatory deep strikes to targets in the Russian Far East, such an expansion of Putin\u2019s war to Northeast Asia has in significant ways already begun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is such a scenario imminent? No. But could it nonetheless become inevitable? Perhaps so. At the very least it is something to worry about, and to plan to forestall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That Russian president Vladimir Putin described the Ainu as an indigenous people of Russia further reinforces Hokkaido\u2019s (and therefore Japan\u2019s) Arcticness, much the way the long presence of indigenous Unangan (Aleut) reinforces the Aleutians\u2019 (and by extension, America\u2019s) Arcticness, and the long presence of Inuit reinforces Canada\u2019s own Arcticness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This leads us to a necessary reconceptualization of Arctic sovereignty through a converged lens blending Westphalian and \u201cpost-Westphalian<\/a>\u201d precepts (borrowing a term coined by Jessica Shadian<\/a> on the emergence of a distinctively Inuit polity in the Arctic that possesses traits of both a sovereign and transnational nature, and which I have discussed elsewhere at length<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Japan does not stand alone, and has its own hand to play, evident in its alignment with the democratic Arctic Council members on indigenous issues, and in its own distinctive whaling diplomacy.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n These interesting but much overlooked pronouncements recognizing the Ainu people \u2013 whose homeland, since World War II\u2019s end, has been partitioned by Russia and Japan \u2013 as indigenous to Russia, certainly caught the attention of Tokyo, and may well have accelerated its pace recognizing Ainu as an indigenous people of Japan, which had been incrementally advancing since 1997.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This left Japan vulnerable to a more pro-active (and, one can argue, more Machiavellian) approach by Moscow on Ainu rights issues, potentially planting a seed for an eventual sovereign claim by Russia over Hokkaido as part of \u201cRussia\u2019s\u201d Ainu homeland, and thereby providing a possible pretext for a subsequent war of \u201creunification\u201d and \u201csovereign restoration\u201d with the Ainu conveniently portrayed by Putin as indigenous to, and thus an historical part of, Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some have speculated that Putin had been considering Hokkaido for just such a war before selecting Ukraine as his initial target for imperial re-expansion, leaving Hokkaido as a potential second front, with a dusty, unimplemented Soviet-era war plan from the waning days of World War II ready to go.<\/p>\n\n\n Indeed, according to a March 1, 2023 article from the International Research Institute on Controversial Histories (\u201cLeave the Ainu issue unattended and Hokkaido will become a second Ukraine<\/a>\u201d):<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn December 2018, it was reported that Russia\u2019s President Putin intended to acknowledge the Ainu people as indigenous Russians. Furthermore, in April 2022, vice-chairman of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament, Sergei Mironov reportedly stated, \u2018to certain experts, Russia owns all rights in Hokkaido.\u2019 Also in April 2022, \u2018According to Regunam News, political scientist Sergei Chernyakhovsky maintained that \u2018Tokyo improperly retains Hokkaido, which was politically Russian territory.\u2019 Referring to the assertion made in the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between Japan and Russia concluded in 1855, the report stated: \u2018There the Ainu people lived. They are the same people that live in Sakhalin, in the suburbs of Vladivostok and in the south of the Kamchatka Peninsula and are one of the peoples of Russia.\u2019 Let us put President Putin\u2019s assertion in the current context. In September 2022, he stated a new diplomatic policy, called \u2018Russia\u2019s World\u2019 and stipulated that Russia will intervene in countries in support of Russian inhabitants. And according to another report, Russia planned to militarily intervene in Hokkaido before it invaded Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Amidst the present circumstances in Ukraine, and with Russia\u2019s continued occupation of the entire Kuril Island chain since the final hours of World War II, even if these are not mainstream views, they may nonetheless serve as a harbinger for future concern and consideration. After all, Putin\u2019s interest in conquering Ukraine by force also likely had origins well outside of the mainstream of political, diplomatic and strategic thought before becoming state policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Should Russia turn its attention next to Hokkaido, it will be driven in large part by Russia\u2019s concerns over China\u2019s military rise and the threat Beijing could ultimately present to Russian sovereignty in its vulnerable Far East. While Moscow and Beijing are now closely aligned, it would be shortsighted to presume this alignment will remain enduring given their past enmity and the potential for a future breakup. According to the New York Times<\/em><\/a>, recently acquired and independently authenticated intelligence documents from Russia reveal deep concerns in its FSB counterintelligence community about Moscow\u2019s alignment with Beijing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These documents also describe Russia\u2019s efforts to counter the many emergent long-term threats China could pose against to Russian interests, including future assertions by China of territorial claims intent on redressing unjust historical treaties that codified imperial Russia\u2019s 19th century expansion onto Chinese-controlled territories: \u201cMr. Putin and Xi Jinping, China\u2019s leader, are doggedly pursuing what they call a partnership with \u2018no limits\u2019. But the top-secret FSB memo shows there are, in fact, limits. \u2026 In public, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia says his country\u2019s growing friendship with China is unshakable \u2014 a strategic military and economic collaboration that has entered a golden era. But in the corridors of Lubyanka, the headquarters of Russia\u2019s domestic security agency, known as the FSB, a secretive intelligence unit refers to the Chinese as \u2018the enemy\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\nFrozen Conflict as a Strategy for the Warming Arctic: Hokkaido and the Ainu Homeland as a Contested Military Frontier<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Ainu Recognition and the Geopolitics of the Indigenous Arctic<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Speculation, Historical Claims, and the Doctrinal Framing of Hokkaido<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Russia\u2019s Far East Calculus: Hokkaido, China, and Strategic Vulnerability<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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