Real Economic Costs: Sun Tzu was prophetic in stating that: “when a country is impoverished by military operations it is due to distant transportation; carriage of supplies for great distances renders the people destitute” (Art of War, p. 74). While no war is cheap, Russia’s cost to wage war so far from her center of power in Europe made all of the ordinary costs of war much higher. All material and equipment contained the added cost of shipping it from the West and the carrying cost of the time necessary to get it into the theater. Also, there was a large cost to maintain a line of communication as long as the Trans-Siberian Railroad. For example, Russia was required to maintain a force of 20,000 boarder guards east of Lake Baikal to protect the line (her center of gravity) from sabotage (Tide at Sunrise, p. 169). Further, there was an added corrosive effect on the Russian economy in the form of indirect costs incurred in securing and servicing the inflated debt necessary to pay for the War. By March 1905 Russia was near bankruptcy, with only enough money to continue the War for another two and a half months (Strategy and Power, p. 405).
Political Costs: There were internal and external political costs to the War for Russia unique to its remoteness from Saint Petersburg. Internally, the people were already in a pre-revolutionary state and the distant expedition only served to fan the flames of discontent. The Japanese threat was so remote that there was little popular support for a war over essentially commercial interests in Asia. And, the steady string of humiliating defeats at the hands of the Japanese (considered an inferior race) only served to magnify the Russian people’s dissatisfaction with the Tsar (Strategy and Power, p. 403).
Russia’s poor military performance served as catalyst for the political cancer afflicting the country, which Japan exploited by funding dissident groups. The result was widespread demonstrations in the Capital demanding an end to the War, among other things. On January 22, 1905 (Bloody Sunday), as many as four thousand protestors were killed or wounded by the Imperial Guard. The incident seriously damaged the Tsar’s international standing and contributed to revolution in August of that year that lasted well into 1907 (Strategy and Power, p. 403).
Externally Russia was in large part perceived as the aggressor in the War, fighting a tiny nation far from its traditional sphere of influence. The combined effects of this attitude, competing Asian interests of other European powers, and Russian defeats, destroyed Russia’s capacity to borrow internationally to finance the War. As a result, Russia’s ability to project power evaporated with her credit (Strategy and Power, p. 405).
One might argue that Russia possessed armed forces in the Far East nearly equal to those of Japan; and, therefore, the effects of time and space do not explain Russia’s poor performance in the War. However, such an argument ignores the following two important facts. First, Russian forces in the theater were poorly trained, equipped, provisioned and led. Numbers count for something, but not nearly as much as one might think when Japan’s best forces were fighting Russia’s worst. Second, this argument completely discounts the fact that Russia still had to sustain those forces with supplies from the distant West. As Japan had hoped, Russia was not prepared for war. Accordingly, Russia suffered the worst effects of time and space in the initial months as men and material were injected into the supply line.
INTEGRATION OF LAND AND SEA POWER
As stated above, Russia needed to mitigate the negative effects of time and space on her operations. However, in failing to integrate land and sea power she lost her prime opportunity to do so. “A major defect of the war effort, it was believed, had been the lack of coordination between the army and navy, which had drafted their plans in mutual isolation” (Strategy and Power, p. 409). In essence, parochialism and interservice rivalry caused Russia to fight a superior opponent with one arm tied behind its back. The simple failure to conduct joint planning surrendered the strategic initiative and control of the Yellow Sea to Japan, a critical mistake. Russia should have made two aggressive uses of the Pacific Fleet to buy desperately needed time for the Army: (1) interdict Japan’s sea lines of communication (SLOCs); and (2) conduct joint operations with the Army in littoral areas.
Interdiction of SLOCs: Because Japan controlled the Yellow Sea she was able to execute her primary plan for landing armies at Chemulpo (Inchon) and on the Liaotung Peninsula. This rapidly brought Japanese ground forces into contact with the Russian Army, threatened Russia’s lines of communication, and effectively surrendered the Korean peninsula without a fight. This was a critical mistake in that Russia could have fought a delaying action across Korea, trading hundreds of miles for needed time, by forcing the Japanese to land at Fusan (Pusan). She could have achieved this by aggressively using the Pacific Fleet to attack, or merely threaten, Japan’s SLOCs (her center of gravity). As Dennis and Peggy Warner point out, if Japan failed to exercise control of the Yellow Sea, the alternate plan was to conduct landings at Fusan, “but any operation through Fusan promised to be time consuming” (Tide at Sunrise, p. 169). This would have placed Japanese ground forces an additional 650 miles from Port Arthur, space Russia could have traded for needed time at little cost to herself using cavalry and irregular forces.
Raids on Japanese shipping would also have greatly contributed to operations ashore. The achievements of the Vladivostok Squadron in the Spring and Summer of 1904 clearly serve to underscore that fact. The Squadron sank several enemy transports in the Sea of Japan, killing thousands of troops and sending tons of highly valuable war material to the bottom (Tide at Sunrise, p. 284-285). “The loss of arms, locomotives, and Krupp siege guns intended for the bombardment of the Port Arthur fortress was a serious blow for the Japanese”, as it “would have hastened the fall of Port Arthur by many months” (Tide at Sunrise, p. 285). As a small island nation, Japan had a severely limited capacity to replace such losses, and in the case of the Krupp siege guns, no capacity at all. Accordingly, a few successful raids by the Vladivostok Squadron produced dramatic economic and strategic costs to Japan, buying the Russian Army months of precious time.
Joint Operations: The Fleet should also have supported operations ashore by conducting joint operations with the Army in Japanese rear areas. Corbett explains that the value of such amphibious threats is ‘. . . out of all proportion to the intrinsic strength employed or the positive results it could give . . . Its value lay in its power of containing [a] force greater than its own’ (Some Principles, p. 67). The British had earlier demonstrated the effectiveness of this tactic against Napoleon. Accordingly, Russia would have profited much had she simply stolen a page from the British play book. Leveraging forces in this manner would have slowed the Japan’s advance and depleted limited Japanese resources, again at small cost to Russia.
In the alternative, one could argue that a fleet-in-being at Port Arthur, and operations of the Vladivostok Squadron, did effectively integrate land and sea power. It forced Japan to divide its fleet, maintaining one near Port Arthur at great cost to herself, and little to Russia. However, the greater weight of evidence supports a contrary conclusion. The fleet-in-being strategy may have been a valid strategy had the Baltic Fleet arrived in a timely manner, but it was quickly apparent that this was impossible.
CONCLUSION
To defeat Japan, Russia desperately needed time to bring its might to bear in distant Manchuria. Toward that end, every opportunity to delay the Japanese advance had to be exploited. However, Russia’s failure to integrate sea and land power squandered her prime opportunity to disrupt Japan’s plans and obtain time. This critical error enabled Japan to bypass Korea, immediately threatening Russia’s center of gravity and ultimately dooming the Russian cause.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Clausewitz, Carl von. On War. Michael Howard and Peter Paret, eds. and trans. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976.
Boulding, Kenneth. Conflict and Defense. New York: Harper, 1962.
Sun Tzu. The Art of War. Samuel B. Griffith, trans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Warner, Denis and Peggy. The Tide at Sunrise: a History of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905. London: Frank Cass, 2002.
Fuller, William C. Jr. Strategy and Power in Russia, 1604-1914. New York: Free Press, 1992.
Corbett, J.S. Some Principles of Maritime Strategy. Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1988.
