More to Russian-Japanese onsen summit than meets the eye

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has the calculated approach of a chess master when it comes to foreign policy, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is not without skill in this regard. So why would the two embark upon what has been described as an exercise in futility by holding an expectation-raising summit meeting in Japan last week?

Both leaders were well aware of the delicate nature of the issues involved, and that the dispute over ownership of four tiny Russian-held islands off Japan's northern tip of Hokkaido has defied solution for 70 years. Why, then, would they waste their time on a meeting which, predictably, was not going to produce significant results?

The answer has to be that there were other issues at stake and that last Thursday's summit in the south-western Japan hot-spring resort of Otani Sanso was designed with purposes in mind other than simply progressing on resolving the territorial issue. These have to do with the changing geopolitical calculus in East Asia and on the Eurasian continent.