ABSTRACT
As the twenty-fi rst century begins, intellectuals have been debating over the past several years what sort of period the global community is entering. ‘Post-Cold War’ is the term generally settled upon, but various other designations, such as ‘the New World Order,’ ‘the End of History,’ and ‘the Clash of Civilizations,’ have been used to describe the world system as it enters the third millennium AD Some people feel that the Cold War has not truly ended, and that the collapse of the Soviet Union served as a mere respite from an East-West confl ict, in which the eastern half has merely shifted some 4,000 miles farther to the east from Moscow to Beijing. Whichever argument is most valid, the world community is clearly in a transitional period marking not just a new millennium but also a new political order. And yet two countries, Japan and Russia, are mired in an acrimonious territorial dispute that dates from the Second World War. The two nations still have not signed a peace treaty, more than six decades after the Pacifi c War ended. Why have the two nations failed to normalize relations, and move forward into the twenty-fi rst century to meet the new challenges confronting each one at home and abroad? Why, incredibly, are the two nations still unable to sign a peace treaty ending the Second World War, despite the domestic changes in each country and the global changes that have transpired since the end of the Cold War?
