Sarah Paine: evaluation

Transcript context

…es in a really big military buildup. It gets a really big indemnity from the First Sino-Japanese War and it spends it. That spending was finished in around 1901, meaning it's about ready to go to war. At the time the war breaks out, Russian naval assets in Asia were about ¾ those of Japan, but Russia was scheduled to surpass Japan's naval assets by about 1905. Again, you could see this window of opportunity threatening to shut. So if you look at it, Japan's window of opportunity of getting its empire, if that's what it thinks it wants… You've got to have treaty vision in place. You've got to isolate Russians, make sure that there's going to be no other power interfering in these things. You’ve got to have your rearmament program. But look, this window is very short. It's going to close in 1905-ish. When you think of windows of opportunities, what they mean is whatever it is you plan to do has to be completed before it slams shut. If you're on the wrong side of the window, which is what happens to Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War, you are in a world of hurt. In addition, what it means is that actually time is on the side of your adversary. It is a sign of weakness, not strength. But the Japanese are looking at the Russians who are procrastinating. The Japanese are telling them, “Hey, we will trade recognition of your dominance of Manchuria if you'll recognize our dominance in Korea.” The Russians didn't want to do anything. They're procrastinating and trying to go beyond this window. The Japanese are thinking, “We’ve got to sort it out before that happens.” Another element of national power are psyops, as the US military likes to call them, psychological operations. The Japanese were engaged in a really wide array of them both at the front in Russia and across the Russian Empire. At the front, the Japanese were secreting in all kinds of postcards for their Russian recruits there, showing the great life of the POW and rather posh Japanese accommodations, as opposed to the really bad life of getting disabled or killed in the front. Meanwhile, I think there were only three European countries, including Russia, that lacked a legislature in this period. I think Montenegro is one of them and maybe the Ottoman Empire might be the other one. Japan had a legislature. The Russian population's sick of it. The war wasn't going well. They start hitting the streets in the Russian Revolution. Japan wants to advertise that to the troops. You want things to be stirred up in Russia so that Russia has to pull troops back into European Russia. So they're doing all of that. Then there’s this gentleman. He was a colonel back in the day, Colonel Akashi, but he's a general by the time this picture is taken of him. He's working in the Japanese legation in Stockholm. He's busy cutting checks to Finnish and Polish revolutionaries who are part of the Russian Empire and want out, trying to stir things up there to have Russia forced to pull the troops 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. 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.…

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