Posted on Dec 29th

The shadow of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s death hangs over Northeast Asia as leaders work to reassure each other of cooperation to ensure stability in the uncertain transition ahead. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak spoke by telephone with Japan’s Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, whom just a day or two earlier he had been berating for failure to act on the “comfort women” issue. Lee also spoke with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, whose failure to criticize the North’s 2010 sinking of the Cheonan had left a bad aftertaste in South Korea. But these efforts at developing a coherent strategy were taking place against the backdrop of a China and United States that are still developing their own responses – responses that could lead to further polarization in the region.

And it’s this last reality that could cause increasing frustration among other states that also consider themselves great powers – Japan and Russia. Polarization has advanced relentlessly since the end of the Cold War, and in place of Japan’s cherished dream of “returning to Asia” as its leader, Tokyo now looks in the 2010s to have little choice but to become more deeply enmeshed in the U.S. alliance system.  Russia’s dashed expectations are even more strongly felt; Boris Yeltsin’s Atlanticism and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s newly declared “Eurasian Community” have proven to have little substance in the face of increasingly one-sided Russian dependence on China’s divisiveness.

To read the whole article the Diplomat