Abstract: | The advent of Mikhail Gorbachev’sNew Thinking has produce a Soviet strategy toward East Asia that seeks a détente with China and Japan. An essential part of this task involves settling the territorial disputes that both countries have with the USSR. Present negotiations on the Sino-Soviet border have produced compromises, yet differences remain. Intractable positions by Japan and the USSR on the Northern Territories issue have resulted in a standstill that has prevented formal negotiations. This article analyzes the strategic-miliatary choices that Soviet leaders will have to make as they address the territorial disputes, examine possible compromises and their consequences for Soviet security, and assess the overall prospects for settlement. Rajan Menon is associate professor of international relations at Lehigh University and author ofSoviet Power and the Third World (Yale University Press, 1986). During the 1989⊋ash;90 academic year he is serving as a research scholar at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and as a Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellow on the staff of Congressman Stephen J. Solarz (D-NY). |