The Russo-Japanese War holds distinct lessons for historians and national decision-makers alike. It was a remarkable event in human history that demonstrated two totally different ways of waging war, one the antithesis of the other. In addition to the seven critical points, one is struck by the largely human element and personal character of strategy and diplomacy throughout the war. The Japanese were able to make their largely informal and extra-constitutional system of government work because it was composed of highly experienced and dedicated men who understood their objective and were willing to sacrifice their personal agendas to accomplish the task. Their mission, though the particulars were not shared in a democratic process, resonated within the parliamentary body and throughout their public. They conducted their war with rationality and experience one would not have expected of an industrial state so young.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
R.R. Palmer and Joel Colton, A History of the Modern World, 5th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 640.
2.
Quoted in David Walder, The Short Victorious War: The Russo-Japanese Conflict, 1904-5 (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 56.
3.
Jack W. Tomion, Strategy and Diplomacy of the Russo-Japanese War Reconsidered (Providence, RI: U.S. Naval War College, Advanced Research Program, 1974), ii.
4.
Australian Maritime Doctrine, “Maritime Strategic Concepts,” available at http://www.navy.gov.au/seapowercenter/mardoc/chapter5.pdf, (accessed May 9, 2003). Also see Appendix B of this article for an overview of this conflict.
5.
While serving as Secretary of Defense for the Reagan administration, Caspar Weinberger elaborated six tests for when the United States should use force. First articulated during a speech to the National Press Club in 1984, arising out of his experiences of Vietnam and the bombing in Lebanon, the six tests do not constitute a checklist to justify war; they are benchmarks to assess whether force is the right answer in a particular crisis. They are: (1) The U.S. should not commit forces to combat unless deemed vital to national interests; (2) When forces are committed, do so wholeheartedly and with the clear intention of winning; (3) Clearly define and articulate the political and military objectives and know how the forces so engaged will accomplish those objectives; (4) Continually reassess and adjust, if necessary, the relationship of forces engaged to those stated objectives; (5) Reasonable assurance before committing troops to battle that Congress and the American public support the action; and (6) The commitment of force should be the last resort. These six tests have since become known as the Weinberger Doctrine. Caspar Weinberger, “The Uses of Military Power,”Defense (January 1985): 9-13.
6.
Raymond Esthus, Double Eagle and Rising Sun: The Russians and Japanese at Portsmouth in 1905 (London: Duke University Press, 1988), 12-13.
7.
Sung-Hack Kang, Impact of the Russo-Japanese War on the Northeast Asia Regional Subsystem: The War’s Causes, Outcome and Aftermath (Ph.D. dissertation, Northern Illinois University, 1981), 44.
8.
Walder, The Short Victorious War, 35.
9.
Shumpei Okamoto, The Japanese Oligarchy and the Russo-Japanese War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 37-40.
10.
Also see Walder, The Short Victorious War, 49.
11.
Kang, Impact of the Russo-Japanese War, 66-67.
12.
Esthus, Double Eagle, 5.
13.
Kang, Impact of the Russo-Japanese War, 70-71.
14.
Colin Gray, “The Second Nuclear Age: Insecurity, Proliferation, and the Control of Arms,” in Brassey’s Mershon American Defense Annual: 1995-1996, ed. Williamson Murray (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1995), 139.
15.
Okamoto, Japanese Oligarchy, 47.
16.
Kang, Impact of the Russo-Japanese War, 14-16.
17.
Sandra Wilson, “The Russo-Japanese War and Japan: Politics, Nationalism and Historical Memory,” in The Russo-Japanese War in Cultural Perspective, ed. David Wells and Sandra Wilson (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 164-165. The Japanese government and public did not start taking a true interest in the occupation and colonization of Manchuria until after the war.
18.
Denis Warner and Peggy Warner, The Tide at Sunrise: A History of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-5 (New York: Charterhouse, 1974), 50-51.
19.
A. V. Ignat’ev, “The Foreign Policy of Russia in the Far East at the Turn of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” in Imperial Russian Foreign Policy, ed and trans. Hugh Ragsdale (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 258-259.
20.
Warner and Warner, Tide at Sunrise, 163-164. In all the diplomatic notes passed to the Russian government, Count Katsura made it evident that Japan was willing to trade Korea for Manchuria. The proposal was that Japan would receive absolute supremacy in Korea, while Russia would receive the same in Manchuria. However, the Russians refused to link the two issues, and insisted the negotiations were over Korea alone.
21.
John A. White, The Diplomacy of the Russo-Japanese War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964), 11.
22.
W. Bruce Lincoln, In War’s Dark Shadow (New York: Dial Press, 1983), 233.
23.
Also see Sergei Witte, The Memoirs of Count Witte (New York: Howard Fertig, 1967), 117. Witte presciently wrote in a letter to the foreign minister in 1901, “in the eyes of the Russian people a war with Japan for the possession of distant Korea will not be justified, and the latent dissatisfaction may render more acute the alarming phenomena of our domestic life, which makes themselves felt even in peace time.”
24.
Witte, Memoirs, 127.
25.
Lincoln, War’s Dark Shadow, 233.
26.
Paul Seabury and Angelo Codevilla, War: Ends and Means (New York: Basic Books, 1989), 244-245.
27.
Ibid., 248.
28.
White, Diplomacy, 116.
29.
W. R. Thayer, The Life and Letters of John Hay (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1919), II, 370.
30.
White, Diplomacy, 119-120.
31.
Okamoto, Japanese Oligarchy, 101.
32.
Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: Random House, 2001), 418. The press named Roosevelt’s loose collection of trusted advisors and friends as his “Tennis Cabinet,” since they often met for that game. Several foreign members were prominent among his friends and their opinions and advice seemed to carry more weight than that of his traditional cabinet.
33.
Tomion, Strategy and Diplomacy Reconsidered, 31-32.
34.
White, Diplomacy, 156-157.
35.
Tomion, Strategy and Diplomacy Reconsidered, 11.
36.
Esthus, Double Eagle, 157-158. Katsura, when taking the decision to give up the indemnity, remarked that if they lost this opportunity for peace they would never get it back.
37.
Witte, Memoirs, 125.
38.
Ibid., 123.
39.
Tatsuji Takeuchi, War and Diplomacy in the Japanese Empire (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1935), 149.
40.
Esthus, Double Eagle, 5-7.
41.
Quoted in United States Marine Corps, Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1-1, Strategy (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997), 61.
42.
Weinberger, “The Uses of Military Power,”10.
43.
Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Peter Paret and Michael Howard (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 579.
44.
Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1918), 34.
45.
Joe Strange, Centers of Gravity & Critical Vulnerabilities: Building on the Clauswitzian Foundation So That We Can All Speak the Same Language. Perspectives on Warfighting, Number 4 (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Foundation, 1996), ix.
46.
Corbett, Principles of Maritime Strategy, 35.
47.
Robert L. Kirwan, “Japanese Strategy in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5,”Military Review (February 1971): 74.
48.
Corbett, Principles of Maritime Strategy, 67-70.
49.
Warner and Warner, Tide at Sunrise, 261-262.
50.
Okamoto, Japanese Oligarchy, 101-102.
51.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 63.
52.
Ibid., 129.
53.
United States Marine Corps, Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 3, Intelligence (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997), 1.
54.
Okamoto, Japanese Oligarchy, 86-88. The socialist papers were the sole exception. Governmental control and censorship of these papers increased as the war wore on. Several editors and writers served prison terms for unpopular opinions or dissent with official accounts of the war.
55.
Warner and Warner, Tide at Sunrise, 300-303.
56.
Sidney Tyler, The Japan Russia War (Philadelphia, PA: P.W. Siegler, 1905), 84-85.
57.
Warner and Warner, Tide at Sunrise, 287.
58.
Simmons, Bitter Stain, 37-38.
59.
Warner and Warner, Tide at Sunrise, 190.
60.
Simmons, Bitter Stain, 38-39.
61.
Warner and Warner, Tide at Sunrise, 174-180.
62.
Simmons, Bitter Stain, 38.
63.
“Sank Japanese Merchantman—Vladivostok Squadron then Sailed West through Taugaru Strait—it’s destruction reported,”The New York Times, February 15, 1904.
64.
Robert D. Gourley, The Secret Lessons of the Russo-Japanese War (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps Command and Staff College, 1997), 41-42.
65.
Warner and Warner, Tide at Sunrise, 236-237.
66.
Strange, Clauswitzian Foundation, 11. Emphasis in original.
67.
Ignat’ev, “Foreign Policy of Russia,”256-257.
68.
Kurt Kuhlman, The Renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1905: Britain’s Response to Russian Expansion in Asia (unpublished research paper, Duke University, Jan 9, 1992), http://www.warhorsesim,com/papers/Renewal.htm, pp. 5-6 (accessed Feb. 8, 2002).
69.
Warner and Warner, Tide at Sunrise, 139-143. The alliance only obligated Britain to enter a war if Japan was attacked by a third party, thus ensuring that no European power would intervene on Russia’s behalf without risking war with England. Japanese Ambassador Hayashi wrote, “[the] alliance was really an epoch making event.” Itô, favoring an agreement with Russia instead, was in St. Petersburg while Hayashi was brokering the deal. He lost vital influence due to his anti-war views on this matter.
70.
Walder, The Short Victorious War, 30.
71.
Also see Morris, Theodore Rex, 229.
72.
Tomion, Strategy and Diplomacy Reconsidered, 32-34.
73.
Patrick Morgan, “Examples of Strategic Surprise in the Far East,” in Strategic Military Surprise: Incentives and Opportunities, ed. Klaus Knorr and Patrick Morgan (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1983), 44-45.
74.
“Japan will strike if Russia Delays,”The New York Times, January 4, 1904.
75.
Clausewitz, On War, 87.
76.
Weinberger, “Uses of Military Power,”10.
77.
Tomion, Strategy and Diplomacy Reconsidered, 12.
78.
Simmons, Bitter Stain, 31-35.
79.
Kirwan, Japanese Strategy, 79-81.
80.
See Warner and Warner, Tide at Sunrise, 294. There is some speculation that Togo was not completely honest in his assessment, after the third unsuccessful attempt to block the harbor, that the roads were blocked and that it was therefore safe for the Army to commence landing operations. Togo seems to have made his assessment based on the ineffectual defensive action of the Russian fleet to that time, and took the risk that the Russian fleet would not sortie. He did not, however, notify the Army that he was taking this risk, probably in the knowledge that they would delay the landings.
81.
Wilson, Russo-Japanese War, 165.
82.
Tadayoshi Sakurai, Human Bullets: A Soldier’s Story of the Russo-Japanese War (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 265.
83.
Weinberger, “Uses of Military Power,”11.
84.
Takeuchi, War and Diplomacy, 135-141.
85.
Wilson, Russo-Japanese War, 179-181.
86.
Adrian Jones, “Easts and Wests Befuddled: Russian Intelligentsia Responses to the Russo-Japanese War,” in The Russo-Japanese War in Cultural Perspective, ed. David Wells and Sandra Wilson (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 145.
87.
Lincoln, War’s Dark Shadow, 293-300.
88.
Colin Powell, “U.S. Forces: Challenges Ahead,”Foreign Affairs71 (Winter 1992-1993), 33.
89.
David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals (New York: Scribner, 2001), 74-75.
