Territorial disputes are complicated by the long-term vicious cycle of “rival” identities constructed by continuous interactions. The purpose of this study is to analyze how Japan’s commitments to certain types of collective identities affect bilateral relations with Russia, using two case studies that analyze how Russian political elites perceive Japan’s position on sensitive issues of international politics. By doing so, the study argues that Japan’s commitments to “Western” collective discourses in the international arena over the past decade have largely undermined relations with Russia, reducing the likelihood of significant progress on critical issues.

The field of international relations (IR) is motivated as much by the institutional dynamics of American universities and the internal rewards structure of tenure, promotion, and merit pay, as it is by wider scholarly recognition. This article discusses how the incentives of the U.S. academe influence IR theory and how it imitates the preferences of American foreign policy. Moreover, this article denotes that IR scholarship has abstracted away from the realities of international affairs and it does not speak of, or speak to those in the far away periphery. It concludes by discussing two promising movements: Global IR and Planet Politics. Global IR involves rebuilding the theories of IR by incorporating contributions from the periphery, whereas Planet Politics is a manifesto for rewriting IR as a set of practices based on the concept of Anthropocene by proposing a new ontology that is driven by the dread of planetary extinction.