Sarah Paine: prediction

Transcript context

…ith Europe in the west and whatever the Japanese think they're doing. That triggers a Russo-Japanese arms race and Russia, the eye of Mordor, turns from Europe to Asia. That's going to be problematic. So now my transition sentence, I've done part number one. Not only did Japan Westernize its institutions in order to overturn the balance of power, but it also mastered grand strategy and integrated multiple instruments of national power. Here we go on that one. Marshall Yamagata, who was the writer of war plans for the very successful Sino-Japanese war, predicted another war within the decade. The Russo-Japanese war came right on time. In the meantime, Japan prepared for war. It integrated such instruments of national power as diplomacy, intelligence, military, economics. I'm going to go through each in turn, starting with diplomacy. Here you have Sun Tzu, who's China's big guru, Art of War, who's talking about how it's really important to disrupt alliances. In modern terminology, that would be isolating the adversary. That might be a good thing to do. That's the purpose of the Anglo-Japanese alliance. How does that work? Its terms say that if more than one European power comes to Asia to fight Japan, that means Russia plus one European buddy, then Britain is going to weigh in on Japan's side. Britain is the number one power in Europe, so why would you ever want to help Russia out? It won't go well with you if Britain is on Japan's side. This alliance goes into effect from 1902 to 1907. It's a five year event. It opens a window of opportunity for Japan to sort out its empire in Asia. But the Trans-Siberian Railway, when it gets completed, is going to threaten to close that window. Here's why. The Trans-Siberian Railway in those days, it's not north of the Amur, it's actually straight through Manchuria. This Chinese Eastern Railway, it's Russia's bid for empire, trying to control Manchuria. It was unfinished. It hadn't been double tracked. That means you're always having to push trains off so other trains can pass them in the other direction. It's missing its Lake Baikal link. Don't think lake, think Switzerland. Lake Baikal is about the size of Switzerland. The Boxer Rebellion—the Al Qaeda of their day and I'll get to them—had destroyed much of the track, really upsetting the Russians. As a result of all of this, at the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War which began in 1904, the carrying capacity of that railway was only 20,000-40,000 men per month to the front. By the end of the war, the last battle, it's 100,000 men per month. If those numbers had been available at the beginning of the war, Japan would have faced numerically superior Russians from start to finish and would have been in a world of hurt. So Japan has got a window of opportunity that it's worrying about sorting things out in. In addition, Japan engages 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. 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.…

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