Sarah Paine: evaluation

Transcript context

…ps out of Asia. Then the Japanese have this gentleman in there, and employing a lot of other people. Yuan Shikai goes on to be key in overthrowing the Qing dynasty and becomes China's first president. But back in the day, he's running reconnaissance missions for the Japanese and telling them what the Russians are up to. When little detachments of Russian troops try to go out and about, these people are harassing them, which doesn't help Russian morale. Also, the Japanese are being really good about purchases from Manchurians. They aren't just taking things from people, they're actually paying. So they're triggering an economic boom in Manchuria, which means locals like them. Then the Japanese also figure out how to tap into Russian fleet communications so they know where the Russian fleet is, which is most convenient. So this is the information element of national power. Then there's economics. Two-fifths of this war for the Japanese side is paid for with loans. If they don't get the loans, they can't wage the war. In fact, one of the reasons Russia has to call it quits at the end of the war is when it tries to raise a final loan. It failed. No one will pay for it. But the Japanese loans depend on battlefield success, as do interest rates. So if you are successful in the field, the interest rates go down. Japan is doing quite well with all of this. So if you sum it all up, the Japanese use diplomacy to isolate their adversary with this UK alliance. They use all these psychological operations to promote revolution and desertions. They're using the military instrument to fund their rearmament. Then they've got the economics going with all of these loans. The US military is really partial to a Reagan-era acronym of DIME. D is for diplomacy, I is for information, M is for military, E is economics. It sounds like a bad cheerleading routine. It's inadequate. It may be a place to start. It's cute and all that stuff, but cute does not mean complete. Think about it. One of the most important factors in this war bar none, certainly for Russia, is railways. I don't see an R in there or anything. By all means, this is better than only looking at military factors, but it's incomplete. portant factors in this war bar none, certainly for Russia, is railways. I don't see an R in there or anything. By all means, this is better than only looking at military factors, but it's incomplete. So, I've talked about Japan's Westernization. I've talked about its mastery of grand strategy. Now here's my third reason for how they overturn the balance of power. It has to do with pegging the culminating point of victory in the Russo-Japanese war. Now for a commercial break, I'm going to give you some terminology: “culminating point of attack” and “culminating point of victory.” They're different. Culminating point of attack is an operational term. If you do not reach your culminating point of attack, it means you could have gone further. The culminating point of attack applies to a single battle or a set of battles, which would be called a campaign. If you don't go far enough in your battle, you could have taken more territory, whatever it was you were after. If you go too far… Imagine you're going deep into whatever territory it is. Your lines are ever more extended. Your enemy's lines are probably being shortened. Your supply problems are getting worse, theirs might be getting better. If you go way too far, your enemy will launch a counterattack that will send you much further backwards than if you'd been a little more cautious about how far you went. So that's an operational term. The strategic term is the “culminating point of victory” and it concerns the objective for which the war was fought. Japan is fighting this war in order to protect its sovereignty, and become a great power to do that. If you don't reach your culminating point, you could have gotten greater winnings. If you go too far, typically what will happen is you will trigger a third-party intervention. What may have been feasible before that third party joined the party may no longer be. So this is the point of the terminology. Commercial break is over and let's get going on the Russo-Japanese war. Here's a nice map of it. It starts out with a Japanese surprise attack on Port Arthur. Lüshun is the modern name, I'm using a traditional name. It's on the Liaodong Peninsula. This is the main Russian base. The Japanese have to get those ships in base and sink them, even better. Their supply lines are in danger if that navy's out and about. Simultaneously they land an army in Korea that's going to go northwest into Manchuria. If you look at the railway line, it goes Port Arthur all the way to Harbin up there. That's the east-west junction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. In those days that's the Chinese Eastern Railway. I've only listed a couple of the major battles, but basically it's going up the railway system from Port Arthur upward and you got the Battles of Liaoyang and Mukden. Japan has got only four armies until the very end of the war when it gets a fifth. As long as Port Arthur has ships in it, one army has to be stuck there besieging it. Japan's theory of victory in this thing is to have an annihilating battle. That's what Bismarck had done to the French in the Battle of Sedan. ships in it, one army has to be stuck there besieging it. Japan's theory of victory in this thing is to have an annihilating battle. That's what Bismarck had done to the French in the Battle of Sedan. So the Japanese really need to get that army out of Port Arthur so that it can concentrate on these other battles. What happens is Russia keeps losing the battles, but it has an orderly retreat moving ever further northward, extending Japanese lines. That's an overview of how the war goes so you can orient the rest of the conversation here. If you look at the invasion routes that Japan uses and in the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, they're remarkably similar because guess what, the geography hasn't changed. If you want to send an army into desired locations, it may well have to take similar routes. The British, the French, the Americans, and the Japanese had studied very carefully the First-Sino Japanese War. But apparently the Russians didn't waste their time on it because here's what's up. If the Russians had studied it carefully, they would have known the Yalu River is lethal, to send an army across that if there's an army waiting for it on the other side. The Russians also would have realized that this Fenshi Pass and Motien Pass—Motien means literally “scratch the skies”—that if you're prepared there, you're going to ruin an army coming through. Of course the Russians aren't prepared there. They also would have known that the Liaodong Peninsula—it has a very narrow neck. If you cut the narrow neck right where Dalny is, a big commercial port, you're going to get that port which is connected to the railway. You're going to be able to supply your armies going right up north. In addition, it means you're probably going to get Port Arthur, the big naval base as well, because it's basically been turned into an island and you'll probably get that. So the Russians should have figured out that but they didn't. The Japanese literally blast through these locations. Here is the key to reducing the fleet in Port Arthur. Since the Russians wouldn't sortie, they're just sticking in harbor, the Japanese have to figure out a way to do it. Here's how it works. They have to get a bunch of these 11-inch howitzers in place. Japan didn't own many of these. They're really heavy. It's really hard to transport them with horses and things. They've got to put them behind the hills in Port Arthur. Then they've got to take the high point. It takes them a while to figure out that they needed to do this. It’s a 203-meter hill. You put a spotter on 203 Meter Hill. This thing starts firing shots and the spotter starts radioing in how you have to adjust the line of fire in order to hit the ships in harbor. So that's what's going on here. Here you can see the narrow neck there above Dalny. You can see it's a big port. We've put a lot of ships, but it’s not a very protected port. The star is where Port Arthur is and that is a protected port where you want to put naval vessels. You can see it takes the Japanese two months to work their way down the Liaodong Peninsula to get themselves in position to blow away the ships in port.…

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