The decades preceding the onset of hostilities in the Russo-Japanese War found the Russian Empire on its heels, owing to military defeats, domestic uprisings, and the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. When Alexander III died prematurely, he was succeeded by his 26-year-old son, Nicholas II, who would be the empire’s final monarch. Although his rule was characterized by indecisiveness, Nicholas did appear set on following Russia’s centuries-old “almost religious obsession” (Kowner, 1998, 213) of expanding eastward to the ocean. The Japanese empire, by contrast, was following the opposite trajectory in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The Meiji Restoration saw Japan taking measures to modernize itself to better compete with (and protect itself from) Western powers, a process that forced the formerly reclusive nation to engage with the world in a way it had previously avoided (Kowner, 2006; “Russo-Japanese War,” n.d.). Japan had watched the world’s colonial powers force open its Asian neighbors through unequal treaties—as Japan had itself been forced open in 1858—and was determined to not only keep itself from being colonized by soft or military power, but to join the colonial club itself, beginning with Korea (Ericson & Hockley, 2008).
The two nations were set indirectly on a path to conflict by the events of 1897, when Germany used the robbery and murder of two German missionaries in Shandong Province as a pretext to advance its own regional aspirations (Ericson & Hockley, 2008). Acting on orders from Kaiser Wilhelm II, German naval forces seized the port at Qingdao, one of several ports in the province’s Jiaozhou Bay (Ericson & Hockley, 2008). This was only the latest of many concessions that European colonial powers had been wresting from the Qing Dynasty over the latter half of the nineteenth century; Nicholas felt that the Russian Empire had been left out of the colonial scramble to divvy up China’s resources, and, upon learning of his German cousin’s move, was determined to reverse the trend (Ericson & Hockley, 2008; “Russo-Japanese War,” n.d.).
Russia initially announced that it would send forces to Jiaozhou Bay to protect its own access, but quickly changed tack when it appeared that Germany would not back down, and opted instead to take control of Port Arthur, another port in the region (Ericson & Hockley, 2008). This may have averted conflict with Germany, but served as a provocation to Japan. Japan had won control of the Liaodong Peninsula, including Port Arthur, following the close of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5, but a “Triple Intervention” staged by Germany, France, and Russia had forced Japan to abandon the port in return for an additional cash payment (Ericson & Hockley, 2008; “Russo-Japanese War,” n.d.). The blatant hypocrisy of seizing the port with a flimsy rationale so soon after it had denied the same right to the victor of a regional military conflict did not seem to enter into Russia’s thinking, and speaks volumes to the way the European powers viewed the Meiji Empire.
The Russian Empire’s Far East policy was hardly concrete. Although there was a general consensus that Russia needed to maintain influence in northern China to speed the completion of its Trans-Siberian Railway, multiple factions within the government diverged on how overt that influence should be, and the means by which it should be achieved. Some of the more hawkish voices advocated for joining forces with other nations, including Japan, to forcibly wrest control of the regions it desired; others, notably Russian Finance Minister Sergei Witte advised using more indirect means, through financial and cultural expansion in the region (Ericson & Hockley, 2008). This latter approach won out in the short term, and the first few years of the twentieth century saw Russia solidify its ties to the Chinese government. This period of cooperation (if it could be called that; the Qing Dynasty was not really in a position to resist) included Russia gaining a shortcut for its railway through Manchuria and the signing of a secret Sino-Russian pact to frustrate Japanese inroads in the region, but was undercut by the Russian occupation of Manchuria during the 1900 Boxer Rebellion (putatively in support of its Chinese ally) (Kowner, 2006). This occupation, which placed Russian troops conspicuously near the Korean border, would ultimately be the final straw for Japan.
The Russian occupation of Manchuria illustrated Nicholas’s indecisiveness, as well as the extent to which the empire had overplayed its hand in the region. Two factions within the government argued back and forth, with hawkish generals on one side arguing that Russia should continue to hold Manchuria, and more cautious advisors—chief among them Witte, still advocating soft power in lieu of military force—urging the tsar to immediately make good on the 1902 agreement Russia had signed calling for an incremental withdrawal of troops (Ericson & Hockley, 2008; “Russo-Japanese War,” n.d.). This was crucial not only in avoiding war with Japan, the Witte faction suggested, but also in quelling the growing discontent at home, where support for military adventurism was nil (Ericson & Hockley, 2008).
As Nicholas vacillated between one camp and the other, the date of the promised withdrawal came and went. Meanwhile, Russia’s colonial rivals raised pressure on the tsar by publicly backing China’s territorial integrity, while taking every opportunity to undermine Nicholas through private diplomacy. Japan continued attempts to broker a deal with Russia directly, going so far as to dispatch its former prime minister to the Russian capital, where he was warmly received and feted before being sent on his way without a deal (Kowner, 2006). Even as it pursued one final round of negotiations with Russia, the Japanese government moved to further isolate Russia by securing England’s guarantee to intervene on Japan’s behalf should any other nation side with Russia in a potential Russo-Japanese military conflict (“Russo-Japanese War,” n.d.). Following another round of Russian provocations—chief among them appointing the leading hawk Admiral Yevgeny Alekseev as viceroy of the Far East, as well as demanding a 25-year lease on the Liaodong Peninsula (“Russo-Japanese War,” n.d.)—and Russia’s continued indifference to their proposed negotiations, the Japanese government broke off diplomatic relations with a telegram that underlined “the Imperial Government’s […] right to […] consolidate and defend their menaced position” (Ericson & Hockley, 2008). Within forty-eight hours, Japanese naval groups would launch a surprise attack on Russian forces at Fort Arthur.
The origins of the Russo-Japanese War can be viewed through the lenses of several theoretical frameworks, though it might be helpful to begin with a broad and perhaps obvious statement: both nations were operating from assumptions shaped by a Realist worldview. Given that this occurred in a pre-League of Nations world, one of the central tenets of Realism—the absence of a formal central authority (Cashman, 2014; Slaughter, 2011)—was the status quo. Not that the League of Nations or its successor would ever become the sort of all-powerful hegemon that could create a truly unipolar world, but it might have provided more deterrent to Russia’s expansionism than the simple disapproval of its peers (in light of Russia’s present-day operations, perhaps not). The zero-sum understanding of interstate relations that undergirds Realism (Cashman, 2014; Slaughter, 2011) was at play, as the two nations’ territorial ambitions overlapped to a degree that made conflict at some level—if not necessarily military—inevitable.
A more specific subset of Realism helped determine the shape of inter-colonial relations in the region. Defensive Realism, and the premium it places on polarity, or stability through the balance of power (Slaughter, 2011), had helped keep the peace among colonial rivals not only as they picked apart the Qing Dynasty but across their colonial empires. One author described the same system but by a different name:
“the ‘diplomacy of imperialism,’ the mechanism for resolving colonial disputes that had evolved during the late nineteenth century [was] based on an implicit calculus involving a prior presence in the region, relative military strength, and at least the appearance of a sense of fair play […] this system kept the powers from fighting each other over disagreements on other continents” (Ericson & Hockley, 2008, 12).
This “diplomacy of imperialism,” or application of Defensive Realism, could be seen in Russia setting its sights on the port at Fort Arthur, rather than the one at Qingdao, in response to Germany’s objections. Had the tsar seen fit to extent that same inter-colonial courtesy to Japan, it seems plausible that war could have been averted. But Russia was not alone in its misperception of Japan’s ambitions or abilities (Fearon, 1995).
The key role that this misperception played in the lead-up to the Russo-Japanese War makes it natural to consider it in the context of James Fearon’s “Rationalist Explanations for War,” in which the author argues that two of the common models set forth by Rationalists—rational miscalculation due to a lack of information, or due to an incorrect assessment of relative power—are underdeveloped in that they don’t take into account the role of private information that is withheld during pre-conflict communication (Fearon, 1995). Fearon actually uses the Russo-Japanese War as an example in this regard, arguing that Japan’s superior intelligence gathering gave it an advantage in weighing the two nations’ relative military strengths (Fearon, 1995). This reading of events would imply that, without access to this private information, Russia’s miscalculation was therefore rational; this does not seem to take into account, however, the fact that the world had seen Japanese forces rout those of the Qing Dynasty only a few years earlier, and several Western nations had worked with them as members of the Eight Nation Alliance that put down the Boxer Rebellion (Kowner, 2006). The fact that the colonial powers took Japan’s victory over China solely as proof of China’s weakness rather than Japan’s strength—or discounted that strength since it was not proven against a western military—suggests that Russia’s miscalculation was informed more by its Eurocentric worldview than by the lack of available information.
Like any conflict, the Russo-Japanese War can be considered through all levels of analysis; choosing the most useful level is a challenge. Beginning from the top down, the international, or systemic, level of analysis would put the focus on Russia and Japan’s overlapping territorial ambitions in the region, as well as, perhaps, on the Western colonial powers’ collective and racially-driven failure to recognize an emerging equal. But other European nations managed to pursue footholds in the region without stumbling into war with Japan; Russia’s strategic interest might have been more acute than its colonial rivals, given its geographic proximity relative to theirs, but there was a lack of diplomatic clarity that seemed specific to Russia. Since this level of analysis tends to assume a certain uniformity among nations, it would be more helpful to move down to the state level of analysis, which better allows for the consideration of individual states’ unique characteristics (Singer, 1961).
A state-level analysis of Japan in the period leading up to the war reveals a society working feverishly to play catch-up to a broader world it had been forced to join via the coercive Treaty of Amity and Commerce (or Harris Treaty) of 1858 (Jacob, 2016). Once it had successfully put down a series of rebellions headed by samurai displaced by the dissolution of the shogunate, the Meiji government was able to turn its full attention outward, toward a policy of territorial expansion that had less to do—at least initially—with imperial ambition than it did with national security “and transient needs” (Kowner, 2006, 32) Already rankled by Russia’s role in denying it the spoils of victory following the Sino-Japanese War, Japan was further alarmed by Russia’s seizure of Fort Arthur, and viewed its unfinished railway as a means of cultural and financial colonization (“Russo-Japanese War, n.d.). The Japanese military began to buttress its forces, and government-sanctioned right-wing secret societies began to foment anti-Russian sentiment at home in order to gain domestic support for a potential war, even as the government pursued a public course of diplomacy (Jacob, 2016).
The extent to which the Japanese government pursued a single course of action with regard to countering Russia’s regional influence—diplomacy, military preparations, and internal consolidation working in concert—stands in stark contrast to the piecemeal, capricious, and often contradictory fashion in which the Russian government operated during this period (Ericson & Hockley, 2008). In considering Russia’s actions through a state-level analysis, some have suggested the scapegoat/diversionary theory applies, and that Nicholas deliberately courted war with Japan as a means of shoring up public support at home (Cashman, 2014). Indeed, his minister of the interior is quoted as saying, in 1903, “what this country needs is a short, victorious war to stem the tide of revolution” (Levy, 1988, 668). If this was true, however, the tsar would have been pursuing such a course against the advice of several other ministers, including Witte, who had continued to advocate for soft power specifically “for the sake of the domestic situation” (Ericson & Hockley, 2008, 14). Either way, the delay in making good on Russia’s 1902 promise to withdraw from the region—which gave Japan ample time to prepare itself for a potential military confrontation—is attributed not to any strategic ploy, but to characteristic indecision among the tsar’s advisors and Nicholas himself.
Taking the analysis one step (or half-step) further down, the sub-state level allows a closer consideration of the group decision-making models each nation was employing. Japan’s careful and singular course of action appears a version of the Rational Actor Model: with their goal—the preservation of their cultural and territorial integrity, and the promotion of their right to expand—clear in their minds, the government then identified and ranked their means of achieving this goal, while continuously assessing their results and adjusting accordingly. This could be seen in their pursuit of diplomacy as a first option, even as they simultaneously prepared for a military conflict, considered a less attractive option given their estimation of a 50% chance of success (Fearon, 1995), as well as their later decision to accept mediation as their war gains peaked to what they believed to be the optimal level (Kowner, 2006). If theirs was not a purely rational choice—if their decision to launch the initial attack was a failure to solve Fearon’s “War Puzzle” (Fearon, 1995)—then it might at least qualify as bounded, or “imperfect rationality” (Cashman, 2014, 121).
Russia’s group decision-making could hardly be characterized as rational. Rather, it carried many of the hallmarks of the Bureaucratic Politics Model, with the government functioning not as one but as a series of “organizations and individual actors who hold differing opinions about government policy options and who compete with each other to influence decisions” (Cashman, 2014, 132). Some of Nicholas’s advisors seemed to have not only their own opinions, but their own motivations. A prime example is Sergei Witte, who had been one of the government’s most influential and consistent advocates for non-military solutions. While Witte may have been sincere in his belief that such actions would backfire both internationally and domestically, it is also worth noting that Witte had been in charge of the railway project in the north, where he had been slowly accruing so much influence (and such a large personal security detail) that some referred to it as “Witte’s kingdom;” the presence of the Russian military undercut Witte’s authority in the region, providing another plausible reason for his steady calls for military withdrawal from Manchuria (Ericson & Hockley, 2008, 15). Witte’s main rival (and most hawkish advisor to the tsar), Admiral Alekseev, would himself be appointed the empire’s Viceroy of the Far East when Witte fell out of favor and was removed from his post (“Russo-Japanese War,” n.d). Competing interests within the Russian government had great incentive to push their own lines of thinking, for Nicholas did not delegate so much as he granted personal fiefdoms.
It is the individual level of analysis that helps make the most sense of this conflict, specifically in the character of Tsar Nicholas II. Although the underestimation of Japanese will and ability was near-universal among Russia’s colonial peers, it was especially pronounced in the tsar himself. Some have attributed Nicholas’s low estimation of (and possible antipathy toward) the Japanese to his survival, at age twenty-two, of an assassination attempt by a sword-wielding policeman in a village near Kyoto as he traveled, at his father’s behest, to lay the first stone in the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway terminus in Vladisvostok (Kowner, 1998). This is called into question, however, by those who note the lack of any documentary evidence of such a causal link; they describe “his genuine attitude toward the Japanese [as] a mixture of Orientalist fondness and racial hatred” (Kowner, 1998, 212). In other words, the same sort of condescending racism with which the vast majority of the white Western world viewed anyone not of their ilk. (Nicholas’s racial hatred was not quite as pronounced as that of his cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who berated the tsar for his perceived timidity in the face of the “Yellow Peril” (Ericson & Hockley, 2008)). But however widespread the racist sentiment at the time, in an autocratic society, the personal biases and heuristics of the individual exercising absolute power are imbued with disproportionate relevance. The underestimation of Japan may have played out at the international level as well, but it was at the individual level that this underestimation sent the Russian Empire stumbling accidentally into war.
An even more damning individual trait was Nicholas II’s indecisiveness, which gave Japan ample time to assess its odds and take the necessary steps—including launching a preemptive attack on an unsuspecting target—to improve them. This inability to settle on a course of action seemed a permanent feature of his personality, and expressed itself even in instances in which he appeared to be making a decision. In 1903, the tsar removed the cautious Witte from the Finance Ministry and seemed to be finally siding with the Manchurian hawks, announcing that Russia would not only keep its troops in the region, but would actually increase the number to deter any foreign competition; however, he announced at the same time that Russia would do so “in connection with our final decision to comply with April 8, 1902” (Ericson & Hockley, 2008, 18), which called for the complete withdrawal of those same troops. It is not surprising that Japanese diplomats found their attempts to negotiate with the tsar’s government frustrating, bewildering, and ultimately useless.
After a year and a half of war, both nations were inclined to accept U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt’s offer in 1905 to broker a peace. Although Japan had stunned Russia and the world by winning several decisive battles, particularly at sea, it had suffered significant military losses itself in the process, and its coffers were depleted; government advisors believed that Japan’s advantage had peaked, and that waiting any longer would reverse its gains and give Russia time to reinforce (Kowner, 2006). For its part, Russia had not only been embarrassed on the world stage, but was facing the 1905 Revolution (“Russo-Japanese War,” n.d.).
Each side approached negotiations with its own priorities: Japan wanted recognition of its influence over Korea and southern Manchuria (including its rail line), war reparations, and control of Sakhalin Island, which it had taken from Russia during the war (Ericson & Hockley, 2008; Office of the Historian, n.d.). Russia (represented by Witte, back in Nicholas’s good graces) also sought Sakhalin Island, steadfastly refused to pay reparations, and demanded the right to maintain a regional fleet (Ericson & Hockley, 2008; Office of the Historian, n.d.). The question of influence in Korea and southern Manchuria was decided in Japan’s favor, but both reparations and the control of Sakhalin Island remained sticking points. Roosevelt proposed that Russia pay a backdoor reparation by purchasing half of Sakhalin Island from Japan (this would also have the added bonus, from the American perspective, of keeping either party from becoming entirely dominant in the region) (Office of the Historian, n.d.). Japan relented, and the two nations split Sakhalin Island with Russia paying nothing.
The terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth were extremely unpopular in Japan, where the public felt the lack of any financial or territorial gain were not reflective of the nation’s status as undisputed victor; this resulted in multiple riots and helped seed anti-American sentiment in Japan (Kowner, 2006; Office of the Historian, n.d.). While Roosevelt’s mediation may have protected American interests in the region in the short term (and won him the Nobel Peace Prize), there was no guarantee that supporting Japan’s claim as victor wouldn’t have yielded greater benefits over time. Further, denying Japan favorable terms in spite of its clear victory only created the impression in Japan of yet another unequal treaty foisted by a Western power on an Asian nation.
The Treaty of Portsmouth addressed the nominal origins of the Russo-Japanese War, inasmuch as it served to officially delineate Japan’s and Russia’s regional spheres of influence, which had previously overlapped in the perception of each. (If the root cause of the conflict’s escalation from diplomacy to war can be attributed to Tsar Nicholas II’s personal limitations, then it was not something that could be addressed by any treaty.) The results of the Treaty of Portsmouth, and their imposition by a third party, probably do not qualify as the sort of peacebuilding that characterizes positive peace, nor would Japan’s bitter resentment at what it considered unfair terms. However, the following year saw the two countries enter into new bilateral negotiations at Japan’s suggestion, aimed at resolving outstanding issues left over from the Treaty of Portsmouth; these unmediated talks went a long way toward generating goodwill (Ericson & Hockley, 2008). A year later, they would draft a convention publicly celebrating the two nations’ new friendship, with private articles that outlined their respective areas of control in minute detail. These successful talks capped off almost ten years’ worth of efforts aimed at clarifying exactly which country had the right to operate in exactly which space. Viewed through that lens, the entire engagement could be described as a single, lengthy negotiation, interrupted by a brief war.