The Russian Far East in the security in Northeast Asia

In this article the author has analyzed the place and role of the Russian Far East in the security in Northeast Asia, and its compliance with the modern Russian foreign policy. We can talk about the security system in Northeast Asia with reasonable relativity, because this system is just being formed. We are talking both about multilateral forums, including, in particular, the subregion countries, and bilateral formats in the context of the problems of security threats. In the frames of all existing region’s organizations and associations the Russian Far East has minimal integration into the security ensuring system of the subregion. Bilateral relations, treaties and agreements are of greater importance to the "security architecture" of NEA. It is useful to consider separately the traditional (military) and non-traditional (non-military) types of threats and interaction of the countries to minimize them. It should be noted that at the moment there are several nodal interstate conflicts in NEA in the field of traditional threats. These are the Taiwan question, and problems related to the DPRK’s nuclear program, and the territorial disputes between China and Japan, Russia and Japan, China and South Korea. There are not so many unresolved conflicts in any other region. If we talk about the economic block of threats to the regional security, we can conclude that the Russian Far East plays a key role in ensuring the regional energy security. All Russian liquefied natural gas has Sakhalin origin and is exported within the subregion. The building of ESPO and gas supplies have made it possible for the NEA countries to diversify the supply sources of energy resources, as well as to get an opportunity to gradually increase the volume of purchases and consumption without further logistical and transport costs. For Russia energy trade in East Asia is also very important. Today, the integration of the Russian Far East in the security system in Northeast Asia is extremely low. The Far Eastern Federal District is actually removed from the interaction with all multilateral institutions and organizations, the work is done purely by the federal leaders in Moscow. The first sign was the holding of the APEC forum in Vladivostok. However, so far, it has not led to a serious positive change.

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