Echoes of Cuba

Other Soviets on other islands

A Soviet military buildup on an offshore island uncomfortably close to home. Sharp internal disagreement among rival politicians and policymakers over just how much of a "threat" the buildup posed. Government demands for a Soviet withdrawal, brusquely rejected by Moscow.

A replay of the Soviet-troops-in-Cuba affair? Not exactly, but the controversy surrounding new military preparations on the tiny Soviet-held island of Shikotan off the coast of Japan did bear some striking similarities. In Tokyo last week Japan's top defense official, Ganri Yamashita, reported to the Cabinet that over the past year the Soviet Union has deployed up to 12,000 combat troops on Shikotan and two other isles in the southern Kurils, less than twelve miles off Japan's northeastern shore. The division-level force, he said, was equipped with tanks, SAM antiaircraft missiles and about a dozen Hind assault helicopters.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry expressed its "serious concern" over the island force and "the hope" that the Soviets would withdraw it for the sake of "neighborly relations." Soviet Ambassador to Tokyo Dmitri Polyansky, however, rejected the protest as a "reckless act of interference in Soviet internal affairs." That added insult to injury, because Tokyo disputes Moscow's claims over the islands, which have been occupied by Soviet troops since the end of World War II.

Eager for new spending appropriations, officials of Japan's self-defense forces stressed the potential "Soviet threat" to Japan's main northern island of Hokkaido. But Premier Masayoshi Ohira, who was busy with the final stage of Japan's election campaign, tried to play down the controversy. Among other things, he feared that a strident debate over the islands would further poison Soviet-Japanese relations, already damaged by Tokyo's friendship treaty with China last year. Accordingly, his Foreign Minister, Sunao Sonoda, dovishly cautioned against "overreaction," sounding very much like U.S. officials on the Cuban issue.

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