great_power_strategy_in_asiaempireculture_and_trade__1905

Great Power Strategy in Asia

This book analyses the enduring themes underlying the strategic strugglesin Asia, beginning with the pivotal 1904–5 Russo-Japanese War. It aims toshow how the most important areas of current international affairs havetheir roots in often-forgotten corners of military history.

The first part of the book examines the explosive factors that led to warbetween Russia and Japan in 1904, and offers a 10-year perspective on theWar, focusing on its consequences: cultural shock in ‘the West’, realignmentof Asian imperial geography and the failure to learn vital military lessonsas the First World War approached. The second part offers a 35-yearperspective on the war, as Japan repeated the essential strategic, operationaland tactical ploys of its war against Russia in 1904 in its strike upon theUSA in 1941. Allied victory assured the downfall of Europe’s empires inAsia, with the USA inheriting much of the old imperial legacy. The thirdpart takes a centennial view of the Russo-Japanese War and finds that manyof the broader issues identifiable in 1904–5 remain at the heart of today’sstrategic discourse: Western apprehension about the economic rise of Japan,the anomalies of an ‘American Empire’, tensions between the Occident andthe Orient, the apparent new relevance of geopolitics and the importance ofdemography in perceptions of global power.

This is the story of military innovation, the pathology of learning lessonsfrom the experience of war and the anticipated rise of Chinese power acentury after the false dawn of Japanese victory in 1905. The book willappeal to students of military history, strategic studies, Asian politics andinternational relations in general.

Jonathan Bailey retired from the British Army in 2005 as a major general.He is the author of The First World War and the Birth of the Modern Styleof Warfare (Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, 1996), and FieldArtillery and Firepower (Naval Institute Press, 2004).

Great Power Strategy in AsiaEmpire, culture and trade, 1905–2005

Jonathan Bailey

First published 2007by Routledge2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canadaby Routledge270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2007 Jonathan Bailey

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataA catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN10: 0–415–40458–4 (hbk)ISBN10: 0–203–96941–3 (ebk)

ISBN13: 978–0–415–40458–7 (hbk)ISBN13: 978–0–203–96941–0 (ebk)

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006.

“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’scollection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

ISBN 0-203-96941-3 Master e-book ISBN

Contents

Introduction 1

Context 1The contention 1

PART IThe Russo-Japanese War: a 10-year perspective 7

1 Portents 9

Strategy: racial and commercial dynamics 9Military omens 32

2 The experience of 1904–5 35

Outline of events 35The tactics of attack and defence 36Campaign planning 38

3 1905 – the future of war: a 10-year perspective 41

Morale 41Racial and cultural struggle 42Lessons to be learned 54

PART IIFrom Port Arthur to Pearl Harbour: a 35-year perspective 59

4 Grand strategy: racial angst and diplomatic odyssey 61

5 Military strategy: the paradox of inevitability and surprise 85

6 Tactics and technology: novelty repeated 97

PART IIIImperial tectonics: the plates shift. A centennial perspective 111

7 Europe bows out 113

8 Asia on the march 128

9 America advances 136

The USA and the Asians 136The USA and Britain 140

10 Nippon resurgat 148

Economic rebirth and confused identity 148Cultural reflections 157The lens of history 163The anomalies of self-defence 167Unfinished business – a settlement with Russia? 172Futures and choices 172

11 The next hundred years: Chinese futures 177

A new balance: made in China 177The short march to prosperity and the frictions

of ‘The China-Trade’ 180The fruits of power 188Demography: people power again 196Alternative futures 198

12 Conclusion: centennial themes 211

Race, culture, war and competition 211‘The China-Trade’ 212The Asian century at last? 213

vi Contents

East and West, the Orient and the Occident, modernity and tradition 214

China and Japan: a shared identity? 217Russian identities 217A civilizing mission? 218The American empire and the ‘Whiteman’s burden’ 220Geo-strategy and Geopolitics 222Demography 224The lessons of military lessons and the paradox

of surprise 224

Notes 228Bibliography 273Index 293

Contents vii

Introduction

Context

The Russo-Japanese War (1904–5) was short and intense, leaving the worldshocked and enthralled by its drama. It was witnessed by a large number offoreign military observers and journalists whose findings were widelypublicized in popular books and official studies. The Russian and Americanempires drove in from east and west upon a region from which Japansought to expand, and in which older European empires tried to consolidatetheir stakes while China festered. It was immediately acknowledged thatthis war would offer important insights into the nature of future conflict ata time of seemingly revolutionary technological change, social upheaval anda novel strategic geography. The validation of the lessons learned or forgottenin this Asian–Pacific ‘experiment’ would be made in 1914–18 and, ratherunexpectedly, in 1941. The consequences would reverberate through the1950s and 1960s; the full logic and strategic implications of the events of1904–5 will probably only become apparent more than 100 years later.

The contention

In 1905 Japan defeated Russia in a war fought to determine which wouldcontrol Manchuria, and perhaps eventually the trade of China. Even at thetime, the significance and consequences of the conflict were acknowledgedto be far more profound.

Japan had been forced open for trade by the USA and was seeking tomaintain its national independence from Western powers, conscious of thefate of other Asian peoples. It had adopted Western modernity to protectitself from those who brought it, and believed that it required an empire onthe Western model to sustain the economic power that would underwritethat independence.

Japan’s expansion would inevitably bring confrontation with others whofelt that their interests were threatened: the West European empires, thathad had stakes in the region for hundreds of years; Russia, which had anambitious plan for aggrandizement in its Far East; and the USA, whose

territorial and commercial expansion in the Pacific and East Asia wasgrowing fast. The great prize was the trade of China, a decayed empire nowunable to defend itself.

Britain and the USA supported Japan against Russia, for Japan seemed tobe the champion of modernity against a Russia which threatened their owninterests, and in some ways seemed more Asiatic than the Japanese. Theirsupport for their protégé soon waned as the manner of Japan’s meticulouslyplanned victory and its consequences were appreciated. Japan was now apower to be reckoned with and Britain, but especially the USA, soonrealized that one day they would very likely also have to fight Japan.

Japan’s vigorous military performance and the rapid changes to thebalance of power in East Asia were explained in terms of geopolitics,Darwinian and Malthusian theories, race, notions of cultural conflict andthe rise and fall of civilizations. They challenged Western assumptions ofnatural superiority and threatened the existing order of the Whiteman’sempires, throwing Western societies into dismay at their own apparentdecadence. Asia was rising and Japan was its champion; but some, evenin Japan, foresaw a time when China might succeed to that title. Theyspeculated that should China ever become a strong state and harness its vastproductive resources, the implications for Western economies, both in termsof opportunities and threats, would be immense. It would very likely endthe West’s dominance of global affairs.

The war witnessed many military novelties, above all the first convincingdemonstration of the power of new technologies in defence: machine guns,indirect firing artillery, magazine-fed rifles combined with trenches andbarbed wire. Hopes of rapid and decisive victories in battles of offensivemanoeuvre faded. With hindsight it is hard to identify any ‘lesson’ of thewar which was not appreciated and documented at the time. Inevitablymany of these lessons were mutually contradictory, peculiar to the theatre,and more or less appropriate to different military cultures. They were viewedthrough the distorting lenses of political intrigue, social attitude, militaryorthodoxy and wishful thinking, with the result that what we now see asclear auguries of the future of warfare, à la 1914–18, generally wentunheeded. Nations and their militaries were unwilling to acknowledge theconsequences of the new technologies. They tended to put their faithin the human spirit to overcome those factors which might make a war inEurope unwinnable, and thus perhaps unthinkable. The price of this follywould be immense in 1914.

The Russo-Japanese War ended with perhaps the most decisive battle innaval history at Tsushima, the triumph of the battleship, but it did not giveJapan control of the seas for a century, as Trafalgar had given the British in1805. It did, however, convince the Japanese of the need to possess apowerful navy and to put itself at the forefront of naval innovation inamphibious warfare and, in time, naval air power.

2 Introduction

By the 1930s, Japan felt a pressing need to build an empire on the Asianmainland as it had in 1904; and besides, many of its rivals were stillrecovering from the exertions of the First World War in which Japan hadplayed only a minimal role. This ambition would soon extend to establish-ing an area of economic control across much of South-East Asia. The USAfelt compelled to prevent this, not only fearing the forfeit of its dominantposition in the Pacific but also the inclusion of China in some expandedJapanese empire. It feared the loss of European possessions to the Japanese,but at the same time was reluctant to support European empires whichin their own way were an affront to American sensibilities and ambitions inthe region.

The USA had supported China against Japanese aggression for someyears before it was itself attacked by Japan, just as it had supported Britainagainst Germany before Hitler declared war on the USA. This support costit little in relative terms, but ensured that the USA went to war when itsenemies were already deeply committed and its allies tiring and ruined.

By 1941 little of the military innovation of 1904–5 seemed relevant, yetthe manner in which Japan initiated its war on the USA and Britain wasvery similar, a surprise torpedo attack on a fleet at anchor and a vigorousland campaign mounted by troops shipped rapidly from Japan. The maintechnological difference was the manner in which the torpedoes weredelivered, by aircraft. The day of the battleship was over.

By 1945, the Axis was defeated, but so too in a sense were all the WestEuropean nations, even the ‘victors’. The USSR was able to regain much ofwhat Russia had lost in 1905, and the USA was in a position of unrivalledpower and prosperity. Japan may have claimed to have defeated Europe’sFar Eastern empires morally, but in practice they collapsed from bank-ruptcy, exhaustion and at American insistence.

Western views of Japan swerved erratically, as deeper explanations weresought for the tides of military fortune. The admiration for Japan’s perfor-mance in 1904–5 and grudging respect for the qualities of its servicemen inthe Second World War had turned to contempt for the social, cultural andmilitary systems which had created such poor systems of government anddecision making. Perhaps, it was suggested, there was even something genet-ically amiss with the Japanese. In 1945, any thoughts of ‘Asia rising’ seemedmisplaced as Asia lay in ruins. Japan was disarmed, bankrupt and docile,and Communist China was unlikely ever to develop a powerful economy.The USSR was formidable, but no longer purveyed itself as ‘Asian’.

The ‘American Century’ had begun and the USA became the newimperial power in East Asia, albeit not on the earlier European model ofterritorial occupation, for it held sway by other means, cultural, economicand at times military. The limits of this military power were tested, but theUSA did provide the stability in which others could develop economically,politically and in some respects culturally.

Introduction 3

Many Asian nations gained independence in the two decades after 1945as their European masters departed; and within 30 years Japan had mirac-ulously rebuilt a world-class economy. This startling reversal of fortunerequired an explanation. This was couched in many of the same admiringbut fearful terms that had been used after 1905, but dismissed in 1945.Once again, cultural panic took hold as the West tried to learn the secretsof Japanese success, with some asserting that Japan was once more a direstrategic threat and had in a sense ‘won’ after all. The subsequent difficul-ties of the Japanese economy led many to revert to earlier explanations forJapanese incompetence, the West seemingly unable to grapple adequatelywith the two sides of the coin that make up the totality that is Japan.

The end of the Cold War and the demise of the USSR left the USA withunrivalled power in East Asia, even though it was not itself an Asian nation.It had grown used to, and comfortable with, the assumptions of globalresponsibilities, rather as had previous European empires. The power of thelocal champion, Japan, was much reduced; but it soon became clear that itmight have a successor. China was again a strong state and apparentlyintent on becoming wealthy as a means of developing its broader nationalpower, a model set by Japan a century earlier. The big players in Asian strat-egy were no longer Russia and Japan, but China and the USA; but the issueshad become familiar over the previous century. How might the economicpotential of China be unleashed and to what end? If Asia could produce aworld-class power, how would that power in the world be exercised?Would there be some new Asian empire of the ‘Middle Kingdom’ to whichothers would have to kowtow? Could the West, including Japan, competewith this Asian champion, and would it have to surrender some of itsinterests, political, economic and cultural? On the other hand, if the histor-ical model of a modernizing Asian champion was disturbingly familiar,could events be managed to ensure that they did not again lead to militaryconflict?

The debate as to whether China will be a benign or a menacing power inthe twenty-first century and how others should best react, by cooperating,containing, or challenging, preoccupies policy makers. This is especially soin the USA, which 100 years after an Asian power first defeated a Europeanone, is in effect the last of the great ‘European’ empires left standing in EastAsia. The dynamics of these strategic upheavals are explained in termsfamiliar 100 years ago: the clash of civilizations, the rise and fall of empires,geopolitics, demography, competition for raw materials and markets and anew military balance featuring not so much battleships as submarines,missiles and nuclear weapons, in scenarios where surprise and deceptionsare widely discussed.

The perception of the USA as an empire of many aspects is itself heavilycontested and the resolution of the controversy, if there is one, will do muchto determine whether this non-Asian nation continues to be the primaryactor in East Asian strategic affairs. It may also be that today’s Western

4 Introduction

model of modernity is no more transferable to China than was the Westernimperial model of modernity to Japan a century ago.

This analysis will examine how the future seemed in 1905 in the light ofthe intellectual and strategic dynamics of the day. It will look back andassess the significance of the Russo-Japanese War in a centennial perspec-tive and peer forward at the new but paradoxically familiar possible futuresand the choices they entail. That perspective was, and remains, one of impe-rial, economic and cultural rivalry – the roots of Asian strategy over the lasthundred years. This was often expressed militarily during the twentieth cen-tury, but maybe in future it can take some more benign form as theOccident and the Orient establish new relationships. This test seems set tobe the dominant feature of the strategy of the twenty-first century.

Introduction 5

Part I

The Russo-Japanese WarA 10-year perspective

Strategy: racial and commercial dynamics

Theory

In the late eighteenth century, Johann Gottfried von Herder maintained thatall peoples possessed a spirit of their own, a Volksgeist, manifest in theircultural achievements, languages and customs. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, acontemporary, maintained that people have ‘natural borders’ which theywill expand to fill, sharing a common identity with their territory. ForFichte, Germany, conscious of its superiority, was to become the leadingnation, fulfilling the Destiny of the Universal Spirit. Such notions helped toshape rising nationalisms and later extrapolations of Darwinian ideas,emphasizing the importance of the nation over the individual.

Some sought a medical explanation for the superiority of the Caucasianrace as evidenced by its material success. In 1839, Dr S.G. Morton ofPhiladelphia published Crania Americana, an examination of skull capacitywhich seemed to confirm the intellectual prowess of the Whiteman.1

J.C. Nott and G.R. Gliddon’s Types of Mankind of 1854 maintained thatthis superiority had arisen primarily from racial competition and the stim-ulants of conquest and colonization.2 It might have been natural toconclude from this, if it were so, that such martial activities were thereforebeneficial to the Caucasian race and should be continued.

Darwin’s The Origin of Species of 1859 did not support the idea of a pre-ordained racial hierarchy, but rather one where certain species prospered inparticular environments and divergence was the norm. This might explainhow Europeans had risen to their position of pre-eminence in the world, butas international conditions changed, it was entirely plausible that newhuman varieties would emerge, better adapted to those new conditions.

Herbert Spencer coined the phrase, ‘survival of the fittest’ in his SocialStatistics of 1851, maintaining that evolution and acquired characteristicsproduced progress, not merely diversity. This cast the debate in a new light,for if nations could also acquire characteristics, then competition wasnatural, dominance and extinction were not predetermined and the

1 Portents

outcomes had a moral validity. Collective social competition was added tobiological selection, laying the foundation for Social-Darwinism.3 Over500,000 copies of Spencer’s work were sold in the USA where they helpedto explain, justify and demand westward expansion – its Manifest Destiny.

Darwin’s The Descent of Man of 18714 maintained that some peoplesand nations would go into relative decline and that other more dynamicones in more favourable environments such as North America would leadthe march of progress. In time, the civilized races would exterminate andreplace the savage races, a theory that no doubt gave comfort to those whoplanned such action anyway. As Alexis de Tocqueville had noted, the justi-fication for exterminating the American Indians was that they did not havethe capacity to become civilized, and the true owners of their continentwere those able to exploit its riches. The Europeans who became Americanssought to replace what they found with what they found familiar, confidentthat their way was also superior.

The idea that the development of species, including peoples, is determinedprimarily by their adaptation to their geographical environment was reflectedin Friedrich Ratzel’s late-nineteenth-century term Lebensraum,5 and thatnotion was further reinfornced by Halford Mackinder’s work of the earlytwentieth century.6 Mackinder believed that the world had become a closedsystem. A dynamic expanding people would necessarily require an expandingLebensraum to match their energy and natural superiority.7 As the frontiersof the great empires of the world met, future strategy would concerncompetition for occupied territories rather than new ones. The search forLebensraum would now necessarily entail war. Such ideas were seen by manyto find sympathetic, and more objective, scientific expression in the works ofDarwin. Strategic thinking became infused with Social-Darwinism and thenotion that struggle between peoples was a part of nature’s design – a formof eugenic ‘creative destruction’. Social devastation was the natural price tobe paid by the defeated, Vae Victis, and lethal competition between societieswas the essence of human relations, and indeed progress.

In the anonymous The Battle of Dorking of 1871, the author describedBritain’s future military downfall as a ‘judgement . . . deserved’. ‘A nationtoo selfish to defend its liberty could not have been fit to retain it.’8

Friedrich Von Bernhardi, who was greatly attracted by Ratzel’s ideas, alsowent on to conclude that warfare was a beneficial part of ethnic competi-tion. The American Admiral S.B. Luce maintained that ‘War is one of thegreat agencies by which human progress is effected.’ It is the ‘operation ofthe economic laws of nature . . . it stimulates national growth . . . and solvesotherwise insoluble problems. Man is perfected through suffering.’9

Luce maintained that for the USA, ‘The operation of this law is not to bearrested on the hither shores of the Pacific.’10 China, he maintained, repre-sented a good example of what became of a stagnant people unaccustomedto war with a superior race, and it was a terrible warning of what couldbecome of the modern world without the stimulus of war.11 By the end of

10 The Russo-Japanese War

the nineteenth century, other more pessimistic constructions were beingplaced on the conduct of international affairs. Jan Bloch predicted the direeffects of modern military technology on societies, emphasizing the destruc-tive consequences rather than the eugenic benefits of war.

There were broad implications for foreign policy. Certainly the evidenceavailable in the world at the time seemed to show that the more vigorous,technologically advanced nations did indeed find it possible to expand theirLebensraum, with imperial conquests and migration. These seemed tofurther reinforce their future prosperity through the exclusive use of suchterritories, by gaining access to raw materials and markets for their ownproduce. From 1871, the need for Lebensraum became a common politicalcry in Germany by those seeking to acquire colonies to balance those ofBritain and France. These ideas also entered the common political discourseof Japan at the height of its desire to learn from the example of theEuropean powers.

Theodore Parker noted an imperial paradox, maintaining that ‘The his-tory of the Anglo-Saxon for last three hundred years has been one of aggres-sion, invasion and extermination. God often makes the folly and sin of mencontribute to the progress of mankind.’12 J.E. Chamberlain described theworld as it seemed to him which, as a matter of observed fact, was domi-nated by the ‘Anglo-Saxons’. ‘Is the world the inheritance of the Anglo-Saxon? There are signs that the Anglo-Saxon at least thinks so, and that therest of the world is not disposed to actively dispute his claim.’13 He saw thehistory of England over the previous 300 years as the history of territorialacquisition, a dynamic pursued energetically by the USA. ‘It has improvedon the original . . . America has already Anglo-Saxonized California,Louisiana and Texas, and will some day Anglo-Saxonize Mexico.’14

John Fiske believed that the retreat of barbarism in the face of superiorraces and civilization was inevitable, and that by the Year 2000 NorthAmerica would have a White population of 600 million, while Africa wouldhave followed America and become a mighty nation of English descent –the hubris of assumed predetermined superiority.15 Chamberlain predictedthat ‘The whole continent of Africa from the delta of the Nile to the Capeof Good Hope, and from Babel Mandeb to Sierra Leone, is destined to fallinto British hands at a time not too far distant’ – not an obviously waywardspeculation at the time. He predicted that within 50 years, North America,Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Polynesia and the British Isles would beBritish possessions. ‘It will present, in short, almost a monopoly of theundeveloped resources of the globe.’

He did not envisage a reunified British nation, but an Anglo-Saxon polit-ical, commercial and defensive league with a rotating imperial capitalbetween London, Washington DC and Melbourne. That said, ‘The UnitedStates is destined to be the chief seat and breeding ground of the race formany generations to come.’16 His assertion was not based on a racial theoryper se, but rather one which held that the USA could absorb all comers

Portents 11

without losing the characteristics Chamberlain described as Anglo-Saxon: alove of order, energy, industry, political freedoms and commercial associa-tion. Herbert Spencer maintained that the mixing of races had beneficialgenetic effects such that ‘The Americans may reasonably look forward to atime when they will have produced a civilization grander than any theworld has known.’17

In 1885, an American, the Reverend Josiah Strong, noted that‘The mighty Anglo-Saxon race was on the march’ and ‘ruled more thanone third of the earth’s surface’. Its advance would result in ‘the extinctionof the inferior races’ through the force of ‘vitality and civilization’.18 ‘Cananyone doubt that the result of this competition will be the “survival of thefittest”?’19 In 1891, Strong noted how Anglo-Saxons had multiplied sixfold,to 120 million in 90 years, and taken possession of one third of the globe.He expected them to dominate the world when their numbers reached 1 billion.20 This would only come after a great clash of civilizations, for asthe American frontier reached the Pacific, pressure of population wouldmean that the USA would be bound to compete for dominion elsewhere,thanks to ‘The mighty centrifugal tendency in this stock . . . strengthened inthe United States.’ The USA’s ‘leap across the Pacific’, to intervene in 1893and subsequently to annex Hawaii and to take the Philippines in 1898,seemed to confirm Strong’s theory. ‘Inferior races’ could not be saved butby pliant assimilation; but more profoundly, ‘What if it should be God’splan to people the world with better and finer material?’21

Theodore Roosevelt described the American campaign in the Philippinesas the triumph of civilization over ‘The Black chaos of savagery and bar-barism’,22 a judgement in keeping with his world view on race, power andcivilization.23 He saw the necessity for ‘inferior races’ to be replaced by theirbetters. It was ‘of incalculable importance that America, Australia andSiberia should pass out of the hands of their Red, Black and Yellow abo-riginal owners and become the heritage of the dominant world races’.24 Hewas not concerned whether this territory was won by treaty or by war, solong as it was won, for this would benefit mankind and civilization. Hebelieved that ‘It was our manifest destiny to swallow up the lands of alladjoining nations who were too weak to withstand us.’25 Roosevelt did notsubscribe to the

[w]arped, perverse and silly morality which would forbid a course ofconquest that has turned whole continents into the seats of mighty andflourishing civilized nations. All men of sane and wholesome thoughtmust dismiss with impatient contempt the plea that these continentsshould be reserved for the use of scattered savage tribes, whose life wasbut a few degrees less meaningless, squalid, and ferocious than that ofthe wild beasts with whom they held joint ownership . . . Most fortu-nately the hard, energetic, practical men who do the rough pioneerwork of civilization . . . are not prone to false sentimentality.26


It was this proudly imperial USA which reached out into Asia just asJapan was also expanding in the region, having been roughly awakened bythe USA in 1853. Ironically it is the republican empire of the USA, unlikeother European empires, that has retained elements of its imperial acquisi-tions of the nineteenth century and which remains, 100 years later, the mostpowerful non-Asian power in that continent.

Some rejected the Darwinian explanation of events and there was con-cern at American policy.

The decay and subjugation of the Hawaiian race . . . which is generallyaccepted as . . . the inevitable result of an inferior race coming in contactand in racial competition with a superior – an outcome of the law ofthe survival of the fittest . . . there is therefore no cure . . . only a philo-sophical regret, for such a condition in the supposed natural order ofthings . . . It is the beast of prey that has caused the downfall of theHawaiian . . . not the contest of an inferior with a superior race.27

As the ideas and practice of demographic and imperial expansion devel-oped, so the notion grew of an inevitable clash between the civilizations ofthe East and West. Such ideas were postulated by men such as ViscountEsher in Britain and in the USA by Captain A.T. Mahan in his A TwentiethCentury Outlook of 1897. ‘All around us is strife; “the struggle of life”,“the race of life”, are phrases so familiar that we do not feel their signifi-cance till we stop to think about them. Everywhere nation is arrayed againstnation; our own no less than others.’28

In 1898, Lord Salisbury described the world as divided between the‘living’ and the ‘dying’ powers, with states, like animal species, subject toDarwinian principles.29 He saw the strong becoming stronger and the weakbecoming weaker in a predetermined sense. Mahan and Halford Mackinderwere familiar with each other’s work, and Mahan agreed with Mackinder’sview that the world was a closed political system in which no state couldlive alone. If such a system was also dynamic, then national survival andinterests had to be secured in the face of threats from rivals. As Mahannoted, ‘more and more . . . states are touching each other throughout theworld, with consequent friction of varying degree’.30 States would eithergrow and expand, or wither and die. The USA therefore needed to grow,even if that meant clashes with others, for the alternative was to decline andto become subservient to more vital nations.

Fears grew that Western nations might not actually have the demographicresources to sustain their imperial destiny. Theodore Roosevelt frettedabout the ‘race suicide’ of the ‘Nordic European’ races, brought about bycontraception and self-indulgent, decadent populations determined to enjoythemselves rather than attend to what he regarded as their reproductiveduties. These higher races were in danger of being swamped by a tide ofinferiors.31 He termed this ‘the warfare of the cradle’, akin to the notion of

Portents 13

‘The Empty Cradle’ purveyed in the discourse on strategic demographics100 years later.32 Roosevelt saw the solution to the problem to be the sameoffered by some today: tax penalties and financial incentives.33

While some praised and asserted the spiritual superiority of Easternculture, strategists such as Mahan feared the power of a dynamic Orientwhich lacked the Christian and moral development of the West. Problemsbetween East and West were bound to occur as the ‘outward impulse’ ofWestern nations clashed with the stirrings of the Oriental nations, nationswhich now shared ‘ideas of material advantage, without a correspondingsympathy in spiritual ideas’.34 The West had either to ‘receive into its ownbosom and raise to its own ideals those ancient and different civiliza-tions . . . or perish’.35 The West might therefore have to use military meansto prevent the Orient ruling the world. ‘Whether Eastern or Western civi-lization is to dominate throughout the earth and control its future’36 wouldbe the most serious problem of the twentieth century.

Mahan foresaw that at some future date Britain might have to exchangeits global empire and naval supremacy for a subordinate relationship in agreat ‘Teutonic’ federation, led by the USA. Andrew Carnegie wanted tounite Britain and the USA, the ‘two leading Anglo-Saxon nations’, andadvocated ‘race imperialism’. President Cleveland’s Secretary of State,Richard Olney, justified his support for Britain as ‘patriotism of race’.37

Mahan noted the paradox inherent in any empire of a democratic statethat ‘equity and kindliness are only to be maintained by the presence offorce’.38 Mahan maintained that if a people did not make productive use ofthe land they occupied, then they should forfeit it to those who would.Control of territory should thus depend not upon claims of natural right,but upon political fitness and the use of resources for the general good.Failure to make such use ‘justifies . . . compulsion from outside’.39 Equally, ifa nation refused to open itself to the world for trade, the interests of theworld in opening it up should take precedence – the greater good.

Mahan asserted the right of people to be governed under their ownarrangements, but it should not be assumed that this meant that oppressiveregimes represented the interests of those they ruled. Regimes should there-fore be overthrown in the interests of their people. ‘There need be no ten-derness in dealing with them as institutions.’40 ‘That rude and imperfect,but not ignoble arbiter, force . . . which . . . still secures the greatest triumphsof good’ would have to be applied.41 After all, ‘Force has been the instru-ment by which ideas have lifted the European world to the plane on whichit now is, and it still supports our political systems, national and inter-national, as well as our social organization.’42

Thus at the end of the nineteenth century, the idea that the Whitemanwas the Darwinian winner in the competition between the races, seemedcompelling. The Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, William Inge, saw theDiamond Jubilee of 1897 as the culmination of ‘White Ascendancy’.43 Tobe White was to be Western, but there was a catch.44 The proposition


implied a need for social egalitarianism within the White race, and yet thiswas at odds with the social premises of the day. How could ‘the lowerorders’, ‘the great unwashed’, exemplify racial superiority? It soon seemedmore helpful to explain any superiority in terms of culture rather than race,a culture embodied only in the higher elements of society; and to emphasisthe idea of Western cultural, as opposed to mere racial, superiority. Thismade it easier to explain the admission of the ‘arriviste’ Japanese into thecivilized society of nations. Whiteness could not be copied, but Westernismcould be fully adopted. Nevertheless many still doubted that superioritycould be separated entirely from race or other alien cultural roots.This made the allegedly Westernized Oriental potentially duplicitous anddangerous.

Nietzsche predicted the emergence of a Western community based on thenotion of ‘the defence of freedom’, and that Britain would be part of anAmerican rather than European grouping.45 Benjamin Kidd’s Principles ofWestern Civilization of 1902 was perhaps the first to describe the West asa political and cultural entity. Kidd predicted a future of unceasing militarystruggle, and saw the peoples of the West to be militarily supreme and thewinners in the process of evolution. ‘We are par excellence the military peo-ples, not only of the entire world, but of the evolutionary process itself.’46

Lord Wolseley, commander-in-chief of the British Army, was also astudent of Darwin and maintained that all cultural vitality, empires andcivilization stemmed from war. He cautioned that ‘war has often acted asa sharp corrective of sloth and luxury’.47 ‘When the drill sergeant andgymnastics instructor are replaced by the ballet dancer and singer, not onlydoes national power decline, but all healthy civilization seems to perishwith it.’48 The fears of many Europeans were expressed in the paintingGelbe Gefahr (Yellow Peril), commissioned by Kaiser Wilhelm II in the1890s. Ironically, Western military culture itself encouraged many valueswhich it held in common with the Samurai code.49

Europeans were militarily supreme, and it was axiomatic that the securityof their empires depended upon maintaining this material and moral advan-tage. The British had been defeated in relatively small battles in the Indiansubcontinent and Africa in the late nineteenth century; but these hadgenerally been decisively avenged, if only to restore the ‘face’ of theEuropean. The Italians had suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of theAbyssinians at Adowa in 1892, and this was deemed by the British to be a‘moral’ danger to their standing in their own empire. It was one reason fortheir decision in 1896 to reconquer the Sudan from the Dervishes andthereby win an exemplary military victory.

As early as 1893, Mahan noted that Japan’s ambitions made it a poten-tial threat to the USA. In 1897 he wrote to the Assistant Secretary for theNavy, Theodore Roosevelt, describing the growing threat, even though inthe short term he saw Japan as a useful balance to the expanding power ofRussia which threatened American interests in China. He specified Hawaii

Portents 15

as the likely focus of trouble between Japan and the USA. That year,J.G. Bennett of the New York Herald predicted that war with Japan wouldbe inevitable.

Yet by 1900, Mahan and others were taking a more conciliatory view ofJapan which seemed to have acquired and to display the sort of Westernand Christian values50 that someday might also be characteristic of China.This led Mahan to see Japan as a likely candidate to become an honorarymember of the Teutonic club of maritime powers. ‘The Teutonic group andJapan are at one.’51 Nevertheless, he fretted lest Japan had merely acquiredthe appearances of Western civilization: ‘It is not possible that change canhave penetrated far below the surface, modifying essential traits and modesof thought.’52 ‘Her own participation in the spirit of the institutions ofChristendom, as distinguished from its exterior manifestations in materialresults, is yet too recent to permit of maturity.’53 One hundred years later,it is still a matter of debate whether Japan is indeed a member of theWestern grouping, as it has apparently been since 1945, or whether itsindigenous cultural roots and values are deeper than appearances.

The Japanese noted how technology enabled European powers toadvance rapidly around the world, with Russia’s building of the Trans-Siberian Railway54 and Britain’s construction of a railway across Canada.The works of Darwin and Samuel Smiles were widely read in Japan, andPrime Minister Yamagata Aritomo pondered the ‘world-wide racial strug-gle between the White and coloured races’ which would test the relativevitality of nations.55 The Japanese perceived themselves to be likely victimsof ever-growing imperial expansion and Yamagata Aritomo concluded that

The days when there is peace in the West are therefore the time forthem to contemplate long-term strategies for the East . . . the heritageand resources of the East are like so many pieces of meat about to bedevoured by tigers.56

In 1899, Meredith Townsend predicted a great European assault uponAsia, to divide it up as the great powers had Africa, provided Europe couldavoid internal wars or a war with an aggrandized USA. He foresaw Europeas mistress of Asia by 2000 and ‘at liberty, as her people think, to enjoy’.57

This proposition would not have seemed especially bold or unpalatableat the time, for such ethno-imperial strategy had already fuelled theoccupation of North and South America and Australia by Europeans, whilethe imperial requisitioning of Africa was an apparently successful ‘ongoingproject’.

The British view of the Chinese had for centuries been generallyderogatory. Between 1700 and 1759, Britain suffered a painful trade deficitwith China, with its exports of £9 million exceeded by imports from Chinaworth £26 million. This required the physical transfer of silver of that valuefrom Britain to China.58 Most European nations were irritated that the


Chinese would not accept a Western view of international relations. In1834, Major General Sir Robert Napier reported that the Chinese peoplewallowed in ‘the extreme degree of mental imbecility and moral degrada-tion, dreaming themselves to be the only people on earth and being entirelyignorant of the theory and practice of international law’.59

Some were cautious about ideas of any ‘Manifest Destiny’ of the Whiteraces to expand, and saw the possibility of challenges. Lord Wolseley notedthe moral rot of Chinese civilization which had led to its humiliation in theSino-Japanese War of 1894–5, but observed the many qualities of the Chinese.He predicted that China would have a great future, if it could make itselffit again.60 This was the hope of many patriotic Chinese. The Chineseself-strengtheners’ agenda at the turn of the century had similarities to that ofthe Japanese. The Chinese military attaché in Paris, Chen Jitong explained,

We will get everything we need, all the technology of your intellectualand material culture, but we will adopt not one element of your faith,not one of your ideas or even one of your tastes . . . You are yourselvesproviding the means whereby we will vanquish you.61

By 1894, C.H. Pearson, the former Minister for Education of the State ofVictoria, feared that the decadent West was doomed and that ‘In the longrun the lower civilization has a more vigorous life than the privileged . . . weshall wake to find ourselves thrust aside by peoples whom we looked downupon as servile.’62 China would be that vigorous nation.

No one can doubt that if China were to get for sovereign a man withthe organizing and aggressive genius of Peter the Great or Frederick theSecond, it would be a very formidable neighbour to either British Indiaor Russia.63

He predicted that,

A hundred years hence when these . . . Chinese, Hindu andNegro . . . races, which are now as two to one to the higher (White race),shall be as three to one; when they have borrowed the science ofEurope, and developed their still virgin worlds, the pressure of theircompetition on the Whiteman will be irresistible. He will be drivenfrom every neutral market and forced to confine himself within hisown. The day is at hand when China will have cheap fuel . . . cheaptransport . . . and technical schools to develop her industries . . . she maywrest control of the world’s markets . . . The preponderance of Chinaover any rival – even over the USA – is likely to be overwhelming.64

In Pearson’s mind, China’s economic power would also eventually findexpression in military expansionism. B. Kidd responded that Pearson’s ideas

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on the passing of ‘Aryan’, Christian, Western civilization was ‘no more thanthe legitimate application of those theories of the Manchester School . . . ’.65

In 1902, John Hobson’s Imperialism described other dangers in theeconomic development of China. He foresaw the demise of Western pro-ductivity and an unhealthy, decadent dependence on China. ‘The greaterpart of Western Europe might then assume the appearance and characteralready exhibited by tracts of country in the south of England, in theRiviera, and in the tourist-ridden or residential parts of Italy andSwitzerland, little clusters of wealthy aristocrats drawing dividends andpensions from the Far East.’66

If the USA needed to protect its commercial interests in China tomaintain its own health as a nation, Mahan recognized that this would havebroader historical, cultural and strategic consequences.

For European civilization . . . has now arrived . . . a day of visitation, aprocess has begun which must end either in bringing the Eastern andWestern civilizations face to face, as opponents who have nothing incommon, or else in receiving the new elements, the Chinese especially,as factors which, however they may preserve their individuality . . . mayproceed quietly to work out peacefully its natural results.67

Mahan never thought that China would become Western, rather that itwould maintain its own identity alongside that which it took from the West,making perhaps a powerful new hybrid, rather as the Teutons had infusednew energies into what emerged from the ruins of Rome to create a newdynamic Christendom, not merely another version of Rome. ‘What we haveto hope for is a renewed Asia, not another Europe’;68 and Mahan saw thisto be to the benefit of mankind.69

If the West wished to bring the benefits of civilization, trade and conse-quent wealth to China, it faced a dilemma, for wealth equated to power. Asuccessful China would surely demand its democratic say in the world inmaterial terms, or as Mahan put it in 1900: ‘The great inevitable future,when, aroused to the consciousness of power, and organized by the appro-priation of European methods . . . China . . . shall be able to assert an influ-ence proportionate to [its] mass, and to demand (its) share in the generaladvantage.’70 The Western hold on global power would have to be shared.

Should China become wealthy and powerful without the social and cul-tural values of the West, ‘the result of centuries of Christian increment’,71

then the outcome could be very serious.

[t]he danger to us . . . is infinitely greater of a China enriched andstrengthened by the material advantages we have to offer . . . but uncon-trolled by any clear understanding . . . of the mental and moral forceswhich have generated and in large measure govern our political andsocial action72 . . . It is scarcely desirable that so vast a proportion of


mankind as the Chinese constitute, should be animated by but onespirit and moved as a single man.73 It is difficult to contemplate withequanimity such a vast mass as the four hundred millions of China,concentrated into one effective political organization, equippedwith modern appliances, and cooped within a territory already narrowfor it.74

China might threaten the West. ‘Many military men look with apprehen-sion toward the day when the vast mass of China – now inert – may yieldto one of those impulses which have in past ages buried civilization undera wave of barbaric invasion.’75 Mahan’s solution was to encourage thedevelopment of China and to preserve its territorial integrity, but not as aunified political entity, at least until the time that it had developed moreWestern values. He saw benefit in its varied regional development under theinfluence of Western trading nations.76

Practice

Many Americans resented their national policy of keeping China ‘open fortrade’, for it promised to be ‘the great workshop’ whose labour would takejobs from American manufacturers. Brooks Adams expressed the growingfear of economic globalization, ‘by electricity and steam, all people arewelded . . . competition brings all down to a common level . . . factories canbe equipped as easily in India, Japan and China as in Lancashire orMassachusetts and the products of the cheapest labour sold . . .’77

On the other hand, the lobby to gain access to, and even to control TheChina-Trade in the face of European and Japanese competition was veryinfluential, and the fundamentals of this debate remain as contentious todayas they were then. By the mid-nineteenth century, many Americans werewarning that their burgeoning production needed fresh markets, withoutwhich their economy would be stifled. The critical issue from this point ofview was not the protection of American manufacturers, or even the princi-ple of free trade, but rather that the USA should win the competition forAsian markets in what was seen by some to be virtually a zero-sum game.

The USA had long sought to prevent other empires from competing inNorth America and on the Pacific coast. Russian advances into Alaskacaused the American President to declare his Monroe Doctrine in 1832,arrogating to the USA an imperial mandate in North America. In effect, thisclaimed that it was the enlightened political ideology of the US regime thatlegitimized its existence, and gave it, rather than Europeans, the right tocontinue to colonize that continent. In the event it merely served to protectthe USA from the competition of other powers in its own great imperialenterprise in the Western Hemisphere.

President Fillmore sent Commodore Perry to Japan in 1853 to open upthe Pacific for trade. The Japan he found was far from being some small

Portents 19

and primitive nation, a void to be filled by a dynamic Western civilization.It had the most urbanized society in the world and a population of 31 million,compared to the 23 million of the USA. Tokyo was the world’s largest citywith a population of over 1 million, while that of Washington DCwas 35,000. In Western commercial terms, however, it was indeed a void tobe filled.

The views of the American government on the efficacy of military powerwere often very similar to those of European ones. The American Secretaryof State, W.H. Seward, maintained that ‘The simple people of Japan’ wereto be made to respect ‘the institutions of Christianity . . . humanity demandsand expects a continually extending sway for the Christian religion’.78 Hisfriend Robert Pruyn reminded him that the opening of Japan had not beencaused by any Japanese concern for the common good; but rather by ‘thesilent but no less potent utterances of the bayonet and wide-mouthed can-non . . . our foothold can be maintained with the hand on the sword . . . It ishere as with our Indian tribes.’79 Yet the differences between East and Westseemed to become less clear-cut. While Japan seemed to be the new cham-pion of Asia, its acquired Western characteristics soon gave it an ambiva-lent status in the minds of many. In 1896, W.E. Curtis described theJapanese as The Yankees of the East.

East Asia was termed the Far East, but some Americans asked whether itshould not more properly be seen as the USA’s Far West and new ‘frontier’.By the end of the nineteenth century some Americans believed that thisfrontier was fated to fall to them: ‘The same law of civilization that has com-pelled the red men . . . to retire before the superior hardihood of our pioneerswill require the people of the Japanese Empire to abandon their cruelty.’80

Walt Whitman rejoiced at the new American ‘imperialism’, ‘I chant the newempire grander than before, as in a vision it comes to me, I chant Americathe mistress, I chant supremacy, my sail-ships and steam-ships threading thearchipelagos, my stars and stripes fluttering in the wind.’81

America had behaved very like European nations in securing extraterri-torial privileges in China and ‘opening up’ Japan. When CommodoreR. Shufeldt ‘opened up’ Korea to American trade in 1882, he proclaimedthe United States’ destiny,

The Pacific is the ocean bride of America – China and Japan and Korea –with their innumerable islands hanging like necklaces about them, arethe bridesmaids . . . Let us determine while yet in our power, that nocommercial rival, or hostile flag can float with impunity over the longswell of the Pacific sea.82

Clearly some extension of the theory of Manifest Destiny, stretching westof California had evolved, and it would have to be defended by someextended Monroe Doctrine.


In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, American isolationism hadprotected continental expansionism, but Mahan maintained that in thetwentieth century this was no longer an appropriate policy for a healthyand dynamic nation. He believed that the USA should make a contributionto the expense of maintaining an open-door policy in China and not leaveit solely to the Europeans. The USA ‘should be ashamed to receive morethan we give’.83

In 1878, Emory Upton had predicted that ‘Japan is no longer contentedwith progress at home (and) is destined to play an important part in the his-tory of the world.’84 Some believed that a collision between East and Westseemed inevitable; but for now the friction would be merely intellectual andpolitical. While Japan adopted much from the West, cultural resistancegrew and was even publicized in the USA. Okakura Kakuzo published apiece in English in the USA contrasting Eastern spirituality with Westernmaterialism, asking, ‘The West is for progress, but toward what? . . . moderncivilization [makes] slaves.’85

The first significant clash between the USA and Japan occurred over thefuture of Hawaii. In 1883 there were 116 Japanese in Hawaii, but by 1896there were 24,000. Only 7,200 White Americans lived in Hawaii out of atotal population of 109,000. President Grover Cleveland condemned thelanding of American troops on 16 January 1893, describing it as an act ofwar against the constitutional government of Hawaii: ‘There is little basisfor the pretense that such forces were landed for the security of Americanlife and property.’86 Cleveland maintained that Hawaii was taken by anunauthorized act of war by an American diplomatic representative: ‘Hawaiiwas taken possession of by the United States forces without the consent orwish of the government of the islands, or of anybody else so far as shown,except the United States Minister.’87 There was concern that the ‘blessingsof civilization’ were merely a convenient American slogan for political andeconomic domination on the European model, ‘they proclaim to the“children of nature” that peace is a jewel from heaven – while Krupp andMaxim ride anchor in the bay’.88

Men such as John Cabot Lodge ensured that the USA would challenge itsrivals in the Pacific as ardently as any other empire. He insisted that Hawaiishould come under American control, governed by

men of American blood . . . we should take all the outlying territory nec-essary to our own defense, to the protection of the Isthmian canal, tothe upbuilding of our trade and commerce . . . I cannot bear to see theAmerican flag pulled down where it has once been run up . . . 89

He believed it imperative to take the islands before the Britishoccupied them, for the British had ‘always oppressed, thwarted and soughtto injure us’.90

Portents 21

Arguments against the annexation of Hawaii were mainly on points ofethics and constitutional propriety, but they were also racial, as they hadbeen against annexing the whole of Mexico in 1848. The Senate was alertedto the possibility of having ‘pig-tailed, pagan Chinese’ taking part in itsdebates.91

In March 1897, the White Hawaiian Government turned away Japaneseimmigrants on the grounds that they threatened its moral, sanitary and eco-nomic interests. In response, Japan sent a battleship to protect its citizens.On 1 May 1897, A.T. Mahan noted in a letter to Roosevelt that theJapanese Navy represented a threat to Hawaii, and Roosevelt instructed theNaval War College to study the problem of the Japanese moving againstHawaii. In 1898, with some prescience, the Senate Foreign RelationsCommittee noted that necessity. Pragmatic imperialism won the day, andthat year the USA annexed Hawaii, despite Japanese disapproval.92 In1900, native Hawaiians became US citizens, but without the right to votein Presidential elections.

The American frontier continued its advance into Asia in the name oftrade and civilization. John Burgess, the founder of Political Science atColumbia University insisted that people who were incapable of civilizingthemselves had a duty to submit to those who would civilize them. The USAhad a ‘transcendent right and duty to establish political and legal ordereverywhere . . . a great world duty’ to eradicate ‘permanent instability on thepart of any state or semi-state’.93

In 1898, the USA sought a lease on Samsah Bay in Fukien. That sameyear it bought Spain’s interest in the Philippines for $20 m, with the stateddesire to ‘uplift, civilise and Christianise them’. In 1900, SenatorA.J. Beveridge described the Philippines as the gateway to The China-Tradeand essential for the USA to possess. He predicted that most future warswould be about commerce and asserted that The China-Trade was vital tofuture American interests. Secretary of State John Hay believed that‘The storm center of the world has shifted . . . to China. Whoever under-stands that mighty Empire . . . has a key to world politics for the next fivecenturies.’94

Others disowned the USA’s imperial behaviour. Roosevelt’s psychologyprofessor at Harvard, William James, condemned the taking of thePhilippines: ‘We can destroy their ideals but we cannot give them ours.’95

Others condemned American military intervention in the affairs of millionsof people in foreign lands, even if it was judged to be good for them.The American constitution should not be imposed on others by force. TheRepublican William E. Mason warned, ‘God almighty help the party thatseeks to give civilization and Christian liberty hypodermically with thirteeninch guns.’96 Senator Swanson warned that large numbers of troops wouldbe required to fight an inevitable guerrilla war over many years, andthat they would end up committing atrocities as the Spanish had done. On9 January 1899, Senator G.F. Hoar noted that the Monroe Doctrine had


been discarded and every European nation now had the right to acquireterritory in the Western Hemisphere.

Henry Cabot Lodge had some demographic/Darwinian misgivings aboutthis American expansion, believing that when a ‘lower race’ mixes with a‘higher’ one in sufficient numbers, ‘the lower will prevail’.97 However, hisdefence of American actions in the Philippines was robust. On 7 May 1900,he announced in the US Senate that the USA had not asked for the consentof the people of Louisiana and Mexico before annexing their territory anddid not need popular consent to take the Philippines. On 7 September 1900,T.R. Roosevelt agreed that the consent of aboriginal Americans, the peopleof Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Louisiana, Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska hadnot been required when the USA seized their territory, and neither did theUSA require the consent of the citizens of the Philippines to annex theirs. Inhis inaugural address, Roosevelt noted the benefits of British rule in Indiaand Egypt98 and hoped that the USA would replicate this in thePhilippines.99 Perhaps he was mindful that this American imperial venturehad been abetted by its erstwhile imperial rival Britain.100

American policy in Asia suddenly seemed to be dependent upon its newbase at Manila; but the purchase brought with it a war against Filipino‘freedom fighters’ who had taken the American Declaration ofIndependence as their model. President McKinley termed this an insurrec-tion101 and it was defeated, but at a moral price. Allegations were made thatAmerican forces had committed atrocities similar to those associated withthe old imperial powers.102 These allegations were investigated, but actionwas not taken because of the serious consequences of their findings beingmade public – the ‘facts would develop implicating others’.103 Americaneditors complained that executing prisoners was a Spanish method inap-propriate for American forces.104

Arthur MacArthur recommended that, should the opportunity arise, theUSA should not stop at the Philippines but also invade and occupy Japan.‘If Japan should come into our hands . . . I should say keep it by allmeans.’105 The Philippines was an expensive and apparently valuable asset,but it was soon apparent that it might also be a strategic liability, threat-ened by a Japan concerned by this acquisition, with its implications fortrade and further territorial expansion.

The Japanese had their own strategic imperatives. Prior to the agitationcaused by their modernizing and imperial ambitions, the Japanese had tra-ditionally sought harmony, over disruption and risk for material gain. In theearly eighteenth century, Arai Hakuseki contrasted the ‘spiritual civiliza-tion’ of Japan with the ‘material civilization’ of the West, a distinctionwhich has proved a popular fiction to this day.

Others were more ambitious. In A Secret Strategy for Expansion of 1823,Sato Nobuhiro proposed an ultra-nationalist policy that would make therest of the world provinces of Japan; and this expansion would begin withthe conquest of China, striking first into Manchuria.106 Japan remained an

Portents 23

international hermit until Commodore Perry’s arrival, but in 1857, theshogun’s adviser, Hotta Masayoshi noted pragmatically, that ‘militarypower always springs from national wealth’,107 and that such wealth sprangprincipally from trade and commerce. This seemed the key to Japaneseindependence, requiring alliances with trading partners and the emulationof their best practice. He advised,

I am therefore convinced that our policy should be to stake everythingon the present opportunity, to conclude friendly alliances, to send shipsto foreign countries everywhere and conduct trade, to copy theforeigners where they are at their best and so repair our shortcomings,to foster our national strength and complete our armaments, and sogradually subject the foreigners to our influence until in the end all thecountries of the world know the blessings of perfect tranquillity, andour hegemony is acknowledged throughout the globe.108

Western ideas were not necessarily regarded as inferior and materialistic,as they often were later; rather the reformers wanted the ‘Civilization andEnlightenment’ which they saw to be essentially Western notions. Themodernizer, Fukuzawa Yukichi, wanted Japan to ‘leave Asia’ and to enterthe ‘rational civilization’ of the Occident.109 He also noted the essentialrequirements of Occidental modernity: ‘When others use violence, we mustbe violent too.’110

In 1865, the Shogun Iemochi also urged that the ways of the ‘barbarians’be copied in order to subdue them. By copying Western technology, tech-niques and commerce, Japan could remain powerful in robust internationalcompany, and avoid the foreign subjugation that had humiliated China.Japan would build its military strength to protect itself and then destroy theunequal treaties which had been imposed on it.111

It was clear to the Japanese in the last 30 years of the nineteenth century,that power and prosperity in the world went to those who used militarypower to seize them, and Japan set about achieving these. Accordingly, in1874, the Japanese landed a force on Formosa.112 In 1875, Japan copiedPerry’s ‘opening of Japan’ by sending warships to ‘open Korea’ to Japanesetrade, applying what it now saw to be ‘the public law of the wholeworld’.113 A treaty was signed in 1876 effectively detaching Korea fromChinese control, and granting Japanese extraterritoriality in Korea.

In 1887, Viscount Tani advised that Japan should build up its strengthuntil there was a time of confusion in Europe, to remain aloof from it andthen to claim its place as the leader of Asia. Japan’s Meiji leaders of the1890s noted that economic resources were the basis of a nation’s power,and used Ito Hirobumi’s expression ‘peacetime war’ to describe the strug-gle for them and the expansion of trade and investment abroad to createfurther power. Many in the West falsely assumed that the Japanese appetitefor Western things meant that Japan was in some way becoming Western in


spirit, with the accompanying social and political implications, when theJapanese intent was the very opposite.114

Japan’s growing self-confidence created confusion in the West about theJapanese identity, a confusion which seems to endure. It is seen either asbarbaric and primitive, or as advanced, admirable and successful.Sometimes it is seen as both, thereby apparently defying explanation. It hasbeen characterized in the terms of the day: by race, religion, region,modernity and culture, resulting in great confusion.

The Japanese seemed to have some redeeming qualities. E.S. Morse,writing in the 1870s and 1880s, alerted the West to the ability of theJapanese to assimilate Western technology and methods. He also admiredJapan’s ancient civilization which he believed Christian missionaries weresubverting. The latter resented Morse, not least because he introducedDarwin’s theories of evolution to Japan in a number of public lectures. Itwas, however, troubling to many Americans that the Japanese were bothheathen and yet almost ‘civilized’, allegedly a profound, mutually exclusivedichotomy, one that would be seen by others, through another lens, as theseparation of East and West.

Attempts at understanding became ever more desperate and bizarre, butabove all, expedient. The treaties ending 40 years of extraterritoriality tookeffect on 17 July 1899, causing Minister Komura Jutaro to observe that thiswas the first time that Western powers had recognized the full sovereigntyof an Oriental state. American newspapers declared Japan to be a civilizedequal; and missionaries in Japan rejoiced that for the first time ‘White-skinned, Occidental, Christian peoples have put themselves and theirbelongings under the rule of a Yellow-skinned, Oriental, non-Christianpeople’.115 The missionary M.L. Gordon said that they had done so becauseJapan was now Occidental in government and law despite being Orientalby geography.

In keeping with this, strange pseudo-scientific studies emerged to ‘prove’that the Japanese were not racially Asian. If the Japanese were to becomeChristian and could be proven to be White, then the world had not reallybeen turned upside down, but rather the earlier relationship of race, religionand civilization had been reinforced. The Japanese were now said to beeither descended from Europeans through the White Ainu aboriginals ofJapan, or to be some sophisticated hybrid product of evolutionaryprocesses. A.M. Knapp and G. Kennan maintained that the Japanese were‘Aryans to all intents and purposes’.116

In 1894 when Korea had felt threatened by Japan, the Koreans hadappealed to the USA under the terms of the ‘Shufeldt Treaty’ of 1882, bywhich the USA had been the first to recognize that country, but the USAdeclined to intervene.117 The Dark Ocean Society set out to ‘start a fire’ inKorea, giving Japanese troops the excuse to invade without a declaration ofwar. Japanese ninjas assassinated the Korean Queen in her palace andthe Japanese occupied Korea for the next 50 years.118 The US Minister

Portents 25

Horace Allen informed his government that ‘These people (Koreans)cannot govern themselves.’ A ‘civilized race’ like Japan should takeover‘these kindly Asiatics for the good of the people . . . and the development ofcommerce’.119

There were fundamental tensions inherent in the Sino-Japaneserelationship. Chinese policy was to keep China unchanged, while Japanesepolicy was to maintain its own autonomy; Japan became, in modernterms, the first successful developing country. Japan saw the creation of itsown empire and sphere of influence to be essential to its own economicdevelopment, and therefore the key to its independence from the West.China was regarded as a part of that sphere, requiring a high degree ofcontrol.

Prior to 1895, Japan was regarded as a quaint country, far from capableof modern accomplishments. China by contrast, despite the despair ofmany, was still given credit as the ‘only great Asiatic state that really com-mands the respect of the great powers of the world’.120 Japan’s victory overChina transformed perceptions. China’s place as the leader of theConfucian world was shattered more effectively by defeat in 1895 at thehands of Japan, another Confucian power, than if it had been defeated bya Western one. China is only now recovering that reputation lost in 1895.By contrast with Japan, China had come to seem, ‘corrupt to the core, ill-governed, lacking cohesion and without means to defend herself . . . tobelieve in the recuperative power of China is mere wasted faith . . . China asa political entity is doomed.’121

The US Secretary of the Navy, H.A. Herbert wrote,

Japan has leaped, almost at one bound, to a place among the greatnations of the earth . . . this small island kingdom . . . so little takenaccount of heretofore . . . has within a few decades stridden over groundtraversed by other nations only within centuries.122

The Anglo-Japanese alliance, concluded on 30 January 1902, wasBritain’s only alliance between 1815 and 1914; from Britain’s point of view,it was more about balancing the power of Russia, and the latter’s threat toBritish India, than about protecting commercial interests in the Far East,although these were none the less important for that. The British journalist,Sir Henry Norman noted that ‘The war with China and the treaty withEngland will at last force foreigners to see Japan as she is. The Japanese area martial and proud race, with marvellous intelligence, and untiring energyand enthusiasm.’123 Putnam Weale on the other hand saw the treaty as giv-ing Japan licence to rob Korea and an admission to 300 million Asians thatthey could not be protected from European aggression except with the helpof Japan.124 He predicted that the pragmatic alliance with Britain would notlast beyond the 1920s or 1930s.


Nevertheless, Japan found itself torn between the desire for an autonomysustained by a global economy, and a deep cultural solidarity with its Asianneighbours. Following the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, Ito Hirobumi andLi Hongzhang negotiated the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Admiral Yukoexplained why the Japanese had not followed the Chinese way. Japan ‘owesher preservation and her integrity today wholly to the fact that she then[thirty years ago] broke away from the old and attached herself to thenew’.125 The Japanese asked why the Chinese seemed so reluctant to abideby the rules and customs of other nations, as they themselves had decidedto do. In reply the Chinese proposed that ‘It is quite time the Yellow raceshould prepare against the White.’126

Some in Japan were also now inclined to agree, for the interference ofWestern powers in 1895 encouraged Japanese fears of their influence andresentment at the apparent worship of Western ways.127 Victory over Chinadid not bring the Japanese peace of mind. On 12 April 1895, MarshalYamagata Aritomo predicted, ‘It is certain that the situation in Asia willgrow steadily worse in the future . . . and we must make preparation foranother war within the next ten years.’128

Friction between the USA and Japan was essentially about whether andhow China would be part of the global trading system, and whether China’scommerce would be defined primarily by its relationship with an Asiansphere led by Japan. Japan saw China as a vital source of raw materials anda massive consumer market, but it also dreaded the unfulfilled militarypotential of China – a predicament whose fundamentals persist at thebeginning of the twenty-first century. The Japanese publicist AdachiKinnosuke noted that

The twentieth century Jenghiz Khan threatening the Sun-Flag with aMongol horde armed with Krupp guns may possibly strike the Westernsense of humour . . . Japan cannot forget that between this nightmare ofarmed China and herself there is only a very narrow sea.129

If China was both an economic opportunity and a potential militarythreat, other Japanese saw it as a potential strategic ally. In the 1890s, theAsia Solidarity Society took an idealistic approach and argued that Japanshould increase its cooperation with China. The Black Dragon Societyargued that Japan should assert its leadership in Asia, and accept thepremises of some special relationship between Japan and China, and thedivide between East and West. In 1904, Kakuzo Okakura asserted that‘Asia is One’, and that Japan was its natural leader. ‘The rock of our racepride and organic union has stood firm throughout the ages.’130 From this,some developed the idea that it was Japan’s ability to preserve its identityover the centuries that gave it a special place as the leader of Asia.Nevertheless, as the century turned, there was little practical evidence to

Portents 27

suggest that other cultures might threaten the supremacy of the Europeans,and the Japanese understood how this had come to pass.

At times, Japan’s ambitions appeared unsettling. Europeans reporteddebates in Japan about the future of Australia, which the Japanese regardedas a vast, rich, empty continent in which the White Australians and Britainwere playing ‘dog in a manger’. They believed that Japan should have a rolein its development and that if this were resisted, then at least part of itshould be annexed. Ironically, the Japanese were citing the argument ofTerra Nullius which the British themselves had used to justify their rights toAboriginal land in Australia.

While the interests of European empires and the USA had expanded inthe Pacific, the Russians had advanced from the west, and in a manner thatseemed more menacing to the Japanese. For now, the USA and Japan main-tained generally cordial relations, and Japan was more intent on learningfrom European nations than challenging them. It was Russia, the quasi-European, Asiatic empire which seemed to pose the greatest threat toJapanese ambitions on the Asian mainland.

Both Russia and Japan lie on cultural fault lines, and what has often beenportrayed as a clash between East and West is perhaps better seen as a clashbetween a European nation that believed itself also to be in some wayAsian, and an Asian nation that believed it had also become ‘modern’, andthus in some respects Western. Just as the Japanese saw a need to adoptaspects of Western culture in order to preserve their own national identity,making them appear, to some at least, as Westernized and civilized Asians,so too, many Russians, far from regarding themselves as Western, believedthat they were part of an essentially Asian and more ‘spiritual’ civilization.Fyodor Dostoyevsky observed that

In Europe we were hangers-on and slaves, whereas we shall go to Asiaas masters. In Europe we were Asiatic, whereas in Asia, too,Europeans . . . to us Asia is like the then undiscovered America. Withour aspiration for Asia, our spirit and force will be regenerated.131

Debates about this confused Russian identity were often acrimonious.‘Asianists’ relished Russia’s exotic cultural identity, seeing it as their sacredmission to reunite Russia with China – ‘That light, shining from the Orient,reconciles East with West.’132 They favoured peaceful engagement with theEast, disapproved of explorers and ‘conquistadors’ such as NikolaiPrzhevalskii,133 and saw the Orient as refined rather than weak. Accordingto the Asianists,

Russia in reality conquers nothing in the East, since all the alien racesvisibly absorbed by her are related to us by blood, in tradition, inthought. We are only tightening the bonds between us and that whichin reality was always ours.134


Nikolai Fedorov urged Russians to champion the ‘cult of the ancestors’over the Anglo-American ‘cult of gold’. Prince Esper Ukhtomskii despisedthe ‘scientific’ approach of the West, and in 1900 criticized the ‘rude ego-tism of the Anglo-Saxon and his impulse to rule over weaker races . . . Wefeel our spiritual and political isolation from the Romano-Germaniccountries.’135 The Asianists maintained that Asia needed no infusion of suchan alien culture.

Ukhtomskii, who acted as tutor to the Tsarevich Nicholas on his grandtour of Asia in 1890,136 saw Russia’s destiny to lie in the East, as the peace-ful partner of China. He regretted that Russia had surrendered its powerand prestige in Asia to the British, French and other European empires.137

He saw problems ahead for these empires and the necessity for Russia toremain detached from them for now, building its power secretly in the East,ready for the great clash of civilizations. He saw Russia as part-Asian, anidentity which had devastated it but which would also renovate it.

It was Przhevalskii more than any other who popularized the idea ofRussia’s special destiny in Asia, rather as G.A. Henty made the notion ofimperialism noble and orthodox in the hearts of the teenage boys who wenton to run Britain’s empire. Przhevalskii believed that Russia was a greatEuropean power with a mission to conquer Asia.

Our military conquests in Asia bring glory not only to Russia; they arealso victories for the good of mankind. Carbine bullets and rifled can-non bear those elements of civilization that would otherwise be verylong in coming to the petrified realms of the Inner Asian Khans.138 TheChinaman here is a Jew plus a Muscovite pickpocket both squared.139

He spoke of the moral superiority of European energy and couragecompared to the degraded races, and their inner yearning to be ruled by theTsar. ‘I know all about the unimaginably cowardly character of thesepeoples. Anyway, we are all very well armed, and (rifle) fire . . . has a spell-binding effect on the half-savage natives’;140 besides, ‘International law doesnot apply to savages’.141

Europeans must come here to bear away in the name of civilization allthese dregs of the human race. A thousand of our soldiers would beenough to subdue all of Asia from Lake Baikal to the Himalayas . . .Here we can repeat the exploits of Cortez.142

Finally there was a scientific Darwinian justification for such policies.

The struggle for existence seems to be coming to head. The powerfulweapons of science and technology only intensify the egotistical com-petition amongst the nations . . . We must not tarry in our actions, neverforgetting that might always and everywhere makes right.143

Portents 29

Some pessimists believed that the conquest of the East was required topre-empt another subjugation of the Russian people by the Mongol horde,the modern ‘Tartar’.144 In 1897, Dmitri Mamin-Sibiriak published the storyof Europe’s conquest by the people of an island off the coast of East Asia,who had been taught the arts of destruction by those same Europeans. Thenew conquerors sold Europe to American billionaires who turned it into apark for hunting vacations.

All versions of ‘Asianism’ involved engagement and expansion in theEast, most notably in the form of the building of the Trans-SiberianRailway, which became a ‘driving-belt to the machinery of world imperialism’,championed by Count Sergei Witte. As with Western ambitions elsewhere,China was the key. ‘Building a railway track is one of the best ways to guar-antee our economic influence in China.’145 Nicholas II also fell under thebeguiling spell of this militant form of Asianism, seeing himself as a combi-nation of conqueror, civilizer and Asian potentate, a vanity which ulti-mately led him to tragedy.

Only a few condemned this Asian obsession, fearing Germany as the truethreat to Russia, and seeing such activity in the East as a dangerousdistraction and drain on economic resources. General A. Kuropatkin hadcomplained to the General Staff as early as 1885 about such developments.In 1889 Kuropatkin worried about the Tsar’s fascination with the East andwhere such fantasies would lead.146 He shared the opinion of manyRussians who saw the East as the Yellow Peril rather than as a valued partof their own identity.

Kuropatkin fretted about the increasing military competence of ‘primitiveraces’. In 1887, he maintained that ‘It is horrifying to contemplate what willbecome of Russia – the tears the Russian people will shed, the rivers ofblood which will flow, the vast sums of money squandered, if we are takenon by 400 million Chinese . . . ’.147 ‘The twentieth century will witness thegreat struggle in Asia between Christians and non-Christians. For the goodof humanity, we must ally ourselves with England against the Orient’sheathen tribes.’148

Russian expansion in the East, but especially in China, developed its owndynamic, encouraging a Japanese competitive reaction, complicated byGerman territorial ambitions in the region. This friction ensured that by1904 Russian policy was based more on the assumption that Russia was arepresentative of Western culture, battling the Yellow Peril, than on anybenign version of Asianism.

The Sino-Japanese War was ostensibly a conflict between Japan andChina, but in reality it was an attempt by Japan to pre-empt Russian expan-sion down the Korean Peninsula which would limit Japanese options on theAsian mainland.149 Containing Russia remained a key element in Japaneseforeign policy from 1894–1945. Ironically, the Japanese attempt to keepRussia away from the Pacific coast, ensured that Russia would intensify its


efforts to protect its interests on its Siberian border and ultimately that itwould clash with Japan. Russia intensified its efforts to colonize anddevelop Manchuria, putting the Trans-Siberian Railway throughManchuria rather than along the north bank of the River Amur.

For some Russians, China was seen as a possible ally against Britishcommercial interests in Asia. For these factions, Japanese victory overChina in 1895 and the peace of Shimonoseki were the heralds of futuretrouble. ‘The desire to lead . . . the Yellow races against the White . . . this iswhat drives the Japanese to make Port Arthur their Gibraltar . . . athorn . . . which we will sooner or later have to take out.’150

Yet, Russia itself would be the architect of many future troubles. SeeingChina’s weakness as an opportunity to secure an ice-free port on the Pacific,Russia took Port Arthur in 1897, following negotiations with theChinese. This was viewed by some Russians at the time with foreboding.Count Witte observed to Grand Duke Michaelovich, ‘Your Highness,remember this day, you will see what dire results this fatal step will have forRussia.’151 Russia’s actions drove the Japanese to similar conclusionsto those the Russians themselves had held earlier – that Port Arthur was a‘thorn’ in their side which would have to be removed. There was outragein Japan which was exacerbated by the expansion of Russian loggingcompanies into Korea, and the extension, in 1898, of the Trans-SiberianRailway through Manchuria to Vladivostok. These seemed clear enoughindications of Russia’s strategic ambitions on the Pacific coast. The veryname, Vladivostok, meaning ‘Ruler of the East’, seemed to betray thisdesign.

Yet others were troubled by these events. The Boxer Rebellion stirred fearof the Yellow Peril in the painter Vasilii Vereschagin who wondered how itwould be possible to defeat the inevitable advance of 600 million Chinese.He, like Kuropatkin, urged Russia to avoid conflict in the East.152 Yet inApril 1903, Russia violated an agreement with China requiring Russiantroops to conduct a staged withdrawal from Manchuria, and rejectedJapan’s offer to recognize Russia’s predominance in Manchuria if Russiawould recognize Japan’s in Korea. It was this Russian imperial expansionin what Japan saw as its own vital expanding sphere that determinedthat Russia would be the first Western power to fight the Orient’s newchampion.

Equally, it was the USA’s desire to keep open its markets in China thatearned Japan tacit American support in 1904. In 1899, Mahan had writtenthat ‘Russia’s aggressive advance moves over the inert Asiatics like a steam-roller.’153 He and Roosevelt were convinced that Russia’s advance to thePacific from its ‘Asian heartland’ could not be stopped by a maritimepower. This advance, which was in accordance with ‘natural law and raceinstinct’,154 posed a threat to China’s territorial integrity and any Americanpolicy based upon an ‘open door’ for Chinese trade. Yet Russia could only

Portents 31

be confronted by maritime powers once it had reached the Pacific coast. Itwas these developments that led Britain to make its alliance with Japan; andit was the logic of Japanese and American expansion, and rivalry overaccess to China, that would lead to a yet more fateful clash of empires35 years later.

Military omens

The Russo-Japanese War came as a shock, even though there had beenintimations of what was in store. In 1898 Jan Bloch, a Pole with eclecticstrategic interests, published a six-volume work on the future of war. Thelast of these volumes, Is War Possible? The Future of War in its Technical,Economic and Political Relations was published in English 1 year later.155

He concluded that war between great states was now impossible, orrather suicidal, because ‘The dimensions of modern armaments and theorganization of society have rendered its prosecution an economicimpossibility.’156

Bloch’s argument was based upon the mathematics of the lethal range ofrifles and artillery, which made it impossible for infantry and cavalry toclose with the enemy, preventing a rapid, decisive outcome. Instead, armieswould have to dig themselves protection from the storm of fire that wouldbe unleashed. Bloch also quoted the German General von der Goltz whomaintained that ‘The economic resources will dry up before the armedforces are exhausted.’157 He predicted famine, bankruptcy and socialcollapse; he cited civilian stamina and the propensity for revolution as thedecisive elements in modern war.158 The prescience of Bloch is now clear,whereas at the time his ideas were both acknowledged or rejected but hadlittle effect upon military planning.

Bloch was not alone in noting the technological changes in warfare thataccompanied the Industrial Revolution. The theory of indirect artillery firehad been explained in the 1880s and developed primarily by the Russians.The most important development at this time seemed to be, however, notthe improvements in artillery but the enhanced firepower of the infantry.Many contemporary writers referred to the new generations of rifle as‘hand artillery’ in admiration of the firepower the infantry could nowgenerate.

Others had visions of more far-fetched military technology. In 1887, theFrenchman Albert Robida published La Guerre au Vingtieme Siécle, avision of modern war depicting submarines, tanks, planes and poison gas;and in 1903, H.G. Wells produced his prophetic The Land Ironclads.159

Nevertheless, the idea that the balance of power might be shifting frominfantry to artillery, let alone to some fantastic armoured force, was notevident in mainstream military doctrine.

In December 1904, the American pioneer of air warfare, OctaveChanute, proposed that the Wright brothers sell their planes to Japan


for $100,000. They agreed to build a two-man craft with a range of 80 km,given that the American Government seemed content for other nations totake the lead in air warfare.160 Rudyard Kipling wrote of a time when theworld would be at peace ruled by an international Aerial Board of Controlusing Anglo-Saxon air power to preserve global order and harmony.161

Concern about the ethical implications of the new sciences of war was man-ifest. The Hague Conference on peace and disarmament was due to meet in1904 to discuss the implications of warfare in three dimensions, using sub-marines and balloons, but this was postponed due to the outbreak of theRusso-Japanese War.

Despite the evidence of 1870 of high infantry casualties in the assault, by1884 French regulations again prescribed, ‘The principle of the decisiveattack, head held high, unconcerned about casualties.’ The British and allmajor armies held similar beliefs. Yet, during the Boer War defenders wereoften able to protect themselves behind cover and, by generating a highrate of rifle fire, occupy unprecedentedly wide frontages, overlappingfrontal assaults. The attacker faced the novelty of the apparently ‘emptybattlefield’. Men no longer advanced against a mass of visible enemy butagainst an invisible one, creating the fear that he was everywhere andprobably in great strength. There was the psychological terror of beingenveloped by this unseen enemy, rather than merely facing those immedi-ately to the front.

Attacks in close order under heavy fire proved suicidal and shook morale.Rather,

The most brilliant offensive victories were . . . those won by surprise, byadroit manoeuvre, by mystifying and misleading the enemy, by turningthe ground to best account, and where the butcher’s bill was small . . .the old (system) is impossible except at a cost of life which no army andno nation can afford.162

Most armies were aware of the problems created by the increasing lethal-ity of firepower. Assaults would require immense tenacity, identified as thecrucial quality. Colonel Ferdinand Foch declared in 1903 that in the attack,eventually

[T]here is, so to speak, an ‘impassable’ zone; no defiladed ways ofaccess are left; a hail of bullets sweeps the ground . . . To run away orfall on, such is the unavoidable dilemma. To fall on, but in numbers andmasses: therein lies salvation.163

The power of the defence in the Boer War had perversely caused most todwell on the need for high morale and a constant offensive mentality, ratherthan some more balanced approach to the complicated technological–humanconundrum. In 1904, European armies regarded high morale rather than

Portents 33

artillery fire as the primary means by which infantry could redress the physicaleffects of defensive firepower. Ironically, that emphasis was itself largely theproduct of doubts identified as early as 1870 by Ardent du Picq about thefrailty of the individual on the frightening modern battlefield. This anxietywas compounded by fear that urban life was leading to the military degener-acy of the civil populations which would have to man massed armies.


2 The experience of 1904–5

The experience of the Russo-Japanese War should have resulted in arevolutionary change in the conduct of war; and the failure to learn fromthat experience brought severe penalties when change did come 10 yearslater. The War had novelties: indirect artillery fire, machine guns, barbedwire, hand-grenades, searchlights, wireless1 and motor vehicles were incommon use in Manchuria for the first time. Less obviously, the War wasfought on the world’s financial markets and on the streets of Russia’sEmpire. The War was scrutinized minutely, many believing that in it theywere glimpsing the future and others that, armed with new insights, theycould craft something different. Many of their visions were quite shocking,and many of the ideas about mankind and societies which the Warappeared to endorse were to be as significant as any tactical or technologicalinnovation.

Outline of events

Japan intended to fight a quick, limited campaign in Korea and Manchuriato curb Russian expansion in the Far East, to reinforce its own control overKorea2 and to exact revenge for Russian interference after the Sino-JapaneseWar of 1894–5.3 The deployment of Japanese troops to the mainland theatrerequired command of the sea. This in turn required the destruction ofRussia’s Far Eastern fleet and the capture of Port Arthur, its only ice-freeport on the Pacific coast, whose loss would deny a base to the RussianBaltic fleet should it sail to the Far East. On land, the Japanese planned todefeat the relatively small Russian Army in the region before Russia’soverwhelming resources could be dispatched along the Trans-SiberianRailway to reinforce it.4 The War began on 8 February 1904 with a surprisetorpedo5 attack by the Japanese Navy on the Russian Pacific fleet at PortArthur, modelled on Japan’s decisive torpedo attack on the Chinese fleet inWei-hai-wei harbour on 5 February 1895.6 On 10 February 1904, theJapanese Government declared war on Russia.

The Japanese landed at Chemulpo in Korea and advanced to lay siegeto Port Arthur. The Russian Army Commander General Kuropatkin bided

his time, intending to build up his forces before relieving the garrison inthe summer. Various attempts to save Port Arthur failed. Japaneseland forces converged on the Russian defensive positions to the north. Aseries of ferocious yet indecisive battles took place at Liao-Yang from25 August to 3 September, but Kuropatkin, believing himself defeated,withdrew again, north to Mukden. Both armies were exhausted and dugin. Further Russian attacks failed and resulted in the now familiarwithdrawals.

Meanwhile, Port Arthur had held out against a series of brutal frontalassaults by the Japanese under General Nogi, inflicting heavy losses on theattackers.7 The garrison finally surrendered on 2 January 1905 when it wasclear that they would not be relieved. On 21 February 1905, the mainopposing armies, each of about 300,000, faced each other across 75 km ofentrenchments at the Battle of Mukden. Both sides lost approximately onethird of their force at Mukden and this marked the end of the landcampaign. At this point the Japanese seemed masters of the theatre butfaced mounting logistic and financial problems, while the Russian warmachine was only just beginning to deliver vast quantities of men andmateriel to the Far East.

On 15 October 1904, the Russian Baltic fleet had sailed for the Pacific,beset by almost insuperable logistical problems. After a desperate voyage,this fleet of largely obsolete vessels met a modern Japanese force of compa-rable numbers under Admiral Togo Heihachiro in the Tsushima Strait on27 May 1905. The Russian fleet was destroyed in arguably the mostcomplete victory in naval history, affirming the ascendancy of the armouredbattleship. The defeat caused civil unrest in Russia and, although its armieswere far from exhausted, the political imperative for peace seemedoverwhelming. The Japanese had achieved their objectives and were keen toreap their reward before their advantage ebbed away.8 The USA brokeredthe Peace Treaty of Portsmouth on 6 September 1905, by which Russiaevacuated Manchuria, and Korea was recognized as part of Japan’s sphereof influence. President Theodore Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel PeacePrize for his efforts.

The tactics of attack and defence

By 1890 the Japanese Army had been transformed under the instruction ofthe German General Klemens von Meckel into one designed for offensiveaction on the European model. The Japanese saw the offensive as a strate-gic imperative, and their capacity for high morale also made attack a potenttactic. They craved a ‘Sedan’ or a ‘Plevna’ and identified Port Arthur as sucha key to their campaign. Ironically, their opponent, Kuropatkin, had beenan observer at Sedan. He, by contrast, looked to 1812 for his model, and


his aide Kharkevich lectured his headquarters on this theme as their trainheaded east. He envisaged retreats, stretching the enemy lines of communi-cations, weakening him to the point of collapse.

The Germans, and hence the Japanese, favoured frontal attacks, but thesegenerally failed to dislodge the Russians who had little difficulty in holdingtheir positions if well-sited and protected by wire and mines. Russianinfantry were often spectators as Japanese infantry was shredded byindirect artillery fire.

It became clear that frontal assaults would only be likely to succeedif supported by massive firepower, or if the enemy proved irresolute.Every attack launched by the Japanese against prepared Russian positionsfailed with heavy loss except in cases where the Russians suffered amoral rather than material collapse. This led some to note the power ofthe defence, while others judged that such defence was doomed to suc-cumb eventually to the will of the attacker. Here lay the seed of the post-war controversy that set the style in which Europe would go to war in1914.

Having generally failed with frontal assaults, the Japanese resorted toenvelopments which appeared to threaten flanks, creating a sense ofuncertainty which curbed the Russians’ ability to manoeuvre and usuallyresulted in their withdrawing.

The Russians accepted that when advancing against the Japanese, thezone of effective infantry fire began at 1,500 m and became intolerable at1,000 m. At such ranges

The reality of the field of battle today is that one has to deal with aninvisible enemy. . . . There was nothing and nobody. This created apainful feeling of uncertainty and distrust. . . . Before the men canengage in the fighting, they are already materially and morallyweakened.9

At the other extreme, combat could be close and prolonged,

The real fact is, the last position today is no more than some dozen ofpaces from the enemy. On this position one remains glued to theground, often for long periods of time, because neither side ventures torisk an assault.10

Firepower was changing the shape of the battlefield and the character ofwarfare itself. The most obvious tactical response to the increase infirepower was to build fortifications and entrenchments. At Mukden, thefront was 75 km long and both sides were dug in. The weakness of suchentrenchments was revealed once their flank was turned, but in frontaldefence they were extremely potent.

The experience of 1904–5 37

The new quick-firing guns made an immediate impact on the battlefield.Sir Ian Hamilton witnessed an artillery duel at Manjuyama on 2 September1904.

I have no words left to convey an impression of one hundred quick-firersdischarging their unlimited ammunition at top speed . . . if I were struckdeaf and blind tomorrow, it would be of consolation to me for the restof my life that I had heard and seen the great cannonade today.11

The fundamental, common factor in the Russians’ ability to hold offJapanese attacks was that Russian artillery outranged that of the Japaneseand was able to fire indirectly from cover without coming under counter-battery fire. If the Japanese accurately located the Russian guns, they hadto move forward into the open to engage them and were usually destroyed.That said, although Russian artillery was technically superior, theirstandards of training were generally inferior.

The dominance of artillery fire encouraged both sides to increase thedepth of no-man’s-land and made the attack even more difficult, prolong-ing the battle and increasing the digging on both sides. The spade replacedthe shield as the infantryman’s armour.

Campaign planning

Liddell-Hart observed that ‘[Grand] strategy must always remember thatpeace follows war’.12 Sir Julian Corbett asserted that when pursuing limitedobjectives it was important to recognize ‘a limit beyond which it would bebad policy to spend that vigour, a point at which, long before your forcewas exhausted, or even fully developed’.13 Identifying one’s own objectives,understanding the enemy and how to manipulate him by a wide range ofpressures, including battle, have proved important factors in success in war.Preparing the conditions for terminating conflict is as crucial as the prepa-rations for the conflict itself.

Arguably the most successful aspect of Japan’s campaign was its clear plan-ning and preparation, shaping the circumstances that would bring Russia tothe table, and the financial planning that, matched by military competence inthe field, would bring Japan to that point coincidentally, on optimal terms.Victories on land and sea were merely the operational stepping stones alongthis predetermined path to strategic triumph. By the time the Japanese hadreached their culminating point financially, and could not go on, theyhad achieved their campaign objectives. The key was how to break offfighting while retaining the advantage in negotiations. Lt Gen Kodamaunderstood this dynamic, and it was largely his influence that caused Japanto settle for a negotiated peace while still in a position of strength. Oyama,the land force commander, told the Navy Minister before leaving forManchuria, ‘I will take care of the fighting in Manchuria, but I am counting


on you as the man to decide when to stop’.14 The Russians were unaware ofthis critical moment of Japanese vulnerability when they themselves were farfrom exhausted financially or militarily. They were, however, woundedpolitically, with insurrection across the Tsar’s empire. The Japanese had abetter understanding than the Russians of their relative positions.

Deep attack

While Japan fought Russia on the Far Eastern battlefields and its diplomatsstruggled with it at the conference table at Portsmouth, its forces were alsoactive against the Tsar’s regime itself, perhaps assisted by the BritishGovernment.15 Colonel Akashi Motojiro16 was entrusted with operations toundermine the Russian Empire from within.17 He received 1 million yenfrom Imperial General Headquarters to finance these activities fromSwitzerland where most Russian revolutionary exiles, including Lenin, werebased. One Japanese source indicates that Akashi paid Lenin 50,000 yen.18

It is likely that some of this was used to finance Lenin’s newspaper Vperyodwhich appeared on 4 January 1905 and whose second edition reported thefall of Port Arthur.

Lenin observed after the fall of Port Arthur that the defeat of Russianabsolutism was essential for the struggle for socialism by the internationaland Russian proletariats, ‘The disaster that has overtaken our mortalenemy not only signifies the approach of freedom in Russia, it also presagesa new revolutionary upsurge of the European proletariat.’19

On 1 October 1904, Konni Zilliacus assembled thirteen oppositionparties in Paris to orchestrate a campaign against autarchy.20 Thiswould include tying down troops with riots in Poland and assassinationsin the Caucasus. Akashi agreed to finance these operations and boughtweapons in London, Hamburg, France and the USA.21 On 22 January1905 St Petersburg suffered rioting, and on 4 June, 5,000 demonstratorsclashed with police at Tsarskoe Selo in the wake of the defeat at Tsushima.There were riots in Warsaw and Lodz. In the Caucasus mobilizationwas halted. The Georgian revolutionary, Dekansky, supported by40,000 yen from Akashi, stirred mutiny in the Black Sea Fleet in Odessa inJune 1905.22

Finance

The vulnerability of a small industrial power to its international economicpartners and financiers was acknowledged before the war started, andJapan monitored its credit anxiously throughout. Confidence among itscreditors depended upon battlefield success, and early victories wereessential to maintain this international support. Consideration of thispotentially weak ‘flank’ formed the basis for the Japanese strategic plan,and preparations to secure the necessary loans began as early as 1903.23

The experience of 1904–5 39

Before the war, Japan had debts of $282,000,000 and it would have toborrow another $500,000,000 before victory at Tsushima in May 1905.Japanese Government bond prices started to rise in April 1904 followingbattlefield successes, and the terms of loans improved still further afterTsushima in May 1905.

That Japan could raise such large loans in contemporary terms wasthanks in part to the pogrom of Jews at Kishinev in April 1902. Jacob H.Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb and Company, the New York bankers, was infuriatedby such Russian anti-Semitism and did all he could to raise funds for theJapanese;24 but the key to success in the battle for finance was early successon the battlefield itself. The markets were happy to back a winner.


3 1905 – the future of warA 10-year perspective

Morale

A recurrent theme of accounts of the war was the vulnerability and virtualisolation of the individual beset by the technology of war. Not surprisingly,the pre-war concern for the maintenance of morale and sustaining esprit decorps assumed a fresh urgency, with many stressing the moral and psycho-logical qualities needed to win, criticizing Bloch for ignoring the humanspirit. ‘The moral is to the physical as three to one’ became the mantra ofarmies studying the Russo-Japanese War and was much relied upon byGeneral Hamley in his influential work Operations of War.1 Unfortunatelyit also resulted in the neglect of the most obvious lessons on how best toorganize and apply the physical.

Colonel Maude and others insisted that casualties and suffering wereinevitable and that victory would go to whoever had the fortitude to bearthem. In 1907, Major General Douglas Haig lent his support to this view.Colonel Maude was a Social-Darwinist who asserted that Clausewitz sawwar as beneficial to society; and he popularized this opinion in his versionof On War in 1908. In 1913 Major General W.G. Knox predicted that asmall British Expeditionary Force would lose 60,000 men in the first monthon the continent.2 By 1914 it was generally accepted that casualties infuture wars would be very heavy and that moral qualities would determinetheir outcome. Major General Altham spoke of ‘punishing losses’ in ThePrinciples of War3 of 1914, and Brigadier General R.C.B. Haking stressedthe importance of the offensive spirit and willpower to overcome man’sweak inner nature, ‘The little devil inside’.4 But where was such stalwarthuman material to be found?

The Russo-Japanese War had excited fears that urban proletariats lackedmartial ardour and moral fibre, and demands grew for remedial action.How were discipline and esprit de corps to be instilled in these degeneratepopulations? Some stressed the need to ‘improve’ the individual in a Social-Darwinian sense. This imperative to struggle and overcome was readilyapplied to the whole of society as much as to the individual; therebycreating not merely a better-trained and enthusiastic soldier, but also areinvigorated and vital society.

Racial and cultural struggle

Bloch had predicted that modern war would lead to the collapse of societies;and the Russo-Japanese War seemed to confirm that war was indeed anevolutionary struggle between races and cultures, rather than merely someClausewitzian extension of policy. It could no longer be assumed thatEuropean ascendancy was the natural condition. Warfare was nowcommonly held to be a natural, normal and in a sense necessary biologicalprocess, that shaped not merely the individual but the ‘organism’ of humansociety itself. Von Bernhardi maintained that war was ‘a necessity on which thefurther development of our people depends as a civilized nation . . .we mustrely on the sword’.5 Such notions were to find their clearest expression in theideology of the Third Reich, but were common in much determinist thinking.

National morale and spirit were deemed vital for success, and thus warswere contests of national and cultural vigour. They would be ‘selections’ inwhich only the fittest would survive, and fitness was itself a malleablequality.6 The very vocabulary of these views makes uncomfortable reading,but has accurately reflected the character of the twentieth century’s WorldWars, the Cold War and more recent discourse on ‘clashing civilizations’7

and demographic strategy.The Russo-Japanese War was neither a ‘Western civil war’, nor was it a

colonial war. It was not merely a war between two empires, but rather thefirst modern war between a ‘Western’, or at least an ethnically Europeanpower, and a rival ‘Eastern’, or at least an Asian one, fought on effectivelyequal terms. Francis McCullagh, a British journalist who rode with RussianCossacks during the war wrote,

[T]hese faces which shine white in the flash of the Russian rifles, are thefaces of Orientals, this cry is for the blood of Whitemen . . . the cry ofthat monstrous Asia with which Europe has been at feud for thricea thousand years . . . it demands vengeance not only for PortArthur . . . but for Salamis . . . for Plassy, for Kandahar, for Mindanao.8

Lenin noted as early as January 1905 that ‘Progressive Asia has dealtreactionary Europe an irreparable blow.’9 The Times of London of6 February 1904 noted of the War that ‘It is really the contest of twocivilisations, and in this lies, perhaps, its profoundest interest to theobserver.’ The German National Zeitung of 31 May 1905 warned thatthe Russian defeat ‘must cause grave anxiety to all those who believe in thegreat commercial and civilizing mission of the White race throughoutthe world’.10 Japan seemed to be ‘Mysterious islands wherein the forlornhope of Asia is fashioning its thunderbolts . . . the Japanese are bound tohave it all their own way in the Far East for a long time to come.’11

In 1910, B.L. Putnam Weale contemplated what he believed would be theinevitable conflict between East and West and feared that if the USA and


Britain did not combine the efforts of their navies in the Pacific, then ‘theywill cease to be a factor in Eastern Asia’.12 He saw the chances of the Westuniting in the face of the threat from Asia to be undermined by Britain’salliance with Japan, placing itself for the first time ‘by formal treaty on anabsolute equality with an Asian race . . . by this act the power was given toJapan at once to attack Russia – the old champion of Europe againstAsia’.13 He predicted that the shores of the Pacific Ocean, ‘are reallydestined to play the part of the world’s great battle-ground . . .’.14

The senior British observer General Sir Ian Hamilton wrote: ‘I have todayseen the most stupendous spectacle it is possible for the mortal brain toconceive – Asia advancing, Europe falling back, the wall of mist and thewriting thereon’. Concerned about the fundamental shift in strategic affairswhich he had just witnessed, Hamilton wrote,

[I]t should cause European statesmen some anxiety when their peopleseem to forget that there are millions outside the charmed circle ofWestern Civilization who are ready to pluck the sceptre from nervelesshands . . . as if Asia and Africa were not even now . . . dreaming dimdreams of conquest and of war . . . England has time, therefore – time toput her affairs in order . . . time to prepare for a disturbed and anxioustwentieth century.15

Francis McCullagh, travelling with Russian prisoners being ‘freighted’ toJapan, surveyed

a crowd of broken Whitemen whom the despised little slant-eye hadcompelled by the keen logic of the bayonet point, to travel in trucksthat might have been useful for carrying coal or ballast . . . a moreefficient way of destroying the prestige of the White race . . . couldhardly be conceived . . . it is the overthrow of invincibility.16

The mass of Russian prisoners seemed to be unaware of the deepersignificance of their capture.

They were captives to the vague, legendary Cipango. They failed tosee . . . that history had opened a new account, that the axis of the earthhad shifted, that the Universe had entered on an entirely newphase . . . Adowa was nothing by comparison with it.17

Hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners travelled in such conditionsthrough the ports of North-East Asia, heading for captivity in Japan; andwere observed by an astonished and thoughtful Asian population. Thescene and moral were to be repeated 36 years later.

The effects of the defeats of 1904–5 on Russian society were shattering,and Tsushima and Mukden became synonymous with the bankruptcy of

1905 – the future of war 43

Russian autocracy.18 Having styled itself as Europe’s champion in Asia itwas all the more humiliating to be defeated by that ‘inferior’ culture, adefeat which cast the Russians once more into soul-searching about theirown cultural identity. Russians who had styled themselves as an Easterncivilization that would surpass the corrupt and decaying West, now foundthemselves to be merely a backward part of the Western world in the frontline against a rising East of which they were not a part.19 Even Leo Tolstoywho had opposed the war on pacifist grounds found himself unable tocontrol his nationalist instincts in the face of defeat at Tsushima. He subse-quently attempted to explain events with an intellectual somersault thatnevertheless had resonance with pre-war ‘Asianist’ thinking. He describedthe Japanese victory in 1905 as a triumph of Western materialism overRussia’s Asiatic soul – so the Japanese were modern and Western after all.

Terrifying folk-memories of subservience to an Asiatic master arose totorment the Russians, entwined with fin de siécle premonitions of impend-ing Apocalypse. In his novel of Tartar Armageddon, Petersburg, AndreiBely despaired,

Port Arthur has fallen. That region has been inundated by Yellow-facedpeople. The legends about the horsemen of Genghis Khan have come tolife . . . Listen closely: there is a sound of galloping horsemen . . . from theUral steppes. It is horsemen.20

Vladimir Solovev wrote of the approaching Mongol horde that wouldimpose a new yoke on Russia and the West.21 Yet this fearful sense ofdéja vu also entailed an ironic recognition that an otherwise ‘European’Russia had many of its historical, cultural and ethnic roots in Asia.22

The poet Valerii Bruisov, sensing the decay of his own society asked, ‘areyou . . . marching Huns? . . . You who will destroy me, I welcome witha hymn of greeting . . . . To revive our prematurely decrepit bodies with awave of burning blood’.23 Andrei Bely wrote of the ‘Yellow hordes [whosestruggle with the West would] encrimson the fields of Europe in oceans ofblood.’24

Bolshevism at first seemed to offer a riposte to Asia’s challenge.Communism was a Western ideology of globalization, of another sort tothat Western notion which today holds centre-stage. The Bolsheviks andmany socialists in Europe did not see the West to be synonymous withCapitalism or free markets and Democracy, but rather that Communismwas the West’s crowning achievement. The Bolsheviks, saw themselves asrepresentatives of European, Western modernity overthrowing the ancientcorruptions which Russia’s Asian identity seemed to typify. The Bolshevikslaunched themselves into the Asian heartland with missionary zeal, creatingSoviet republics to Europeanize the East. In 1923, Trotsky maintained that‘The revolution means the final break of the people with Asianism . . . anassimilation of the whole people of civilization.’25


Many in the West, however, saw Communism as an ideological and racialtreason, alien to Western values, which amplified Russia’s Asian identity.They were only too ready to see Russia’s alien ‘Asian’ character. BertrandRussell condemned Lenin’s ‘Mongolian cruelty’, and even Rosa Luxemburgreferred to the ‘Tartar-Mongolian savagery’ of the Bolsheviks.26

This, however, was an image that many Soviets were keen to foster as ameans of regaining a Russian sense of pride after the disasters of war. In1918, Aleksander Blok wrote The Scythians, an appeal to Europe to acceptthe Bolshevik revolution, but also a reminder to Europe that Russia shouldbe feared ‘You have your millions. We are hordes and hordes and hordes.Just try it! Take us on! We are Asians too, from shores that breed squinteyes bespeaking greed.’ No longer would Russia protect Europe from thebarbarous East: ‘We will turn our Asiatic face to you.’27 In 1923, SergeiEsenin wrote, ‘Let us be Asians, let us stink, let us scratch our buttocksshamelessly in front of everyone . . .Only an invasion of “barbarians” like uscan save and reshape them. The march on Europe is necessary.’28 Once itwas clear that Europe would not follow Russia’s road to revolution, Stalinrediscovered the USSR’s Asian identity, setting it against the idea of theWest, which became identified with all that was not Communist. The Westwas now held to be materialistic and decadent, and Communism was set ona higher plane of human development.

T.M. Maguire noted in his lecture to Aldershot Command on16 November 1909,

The Yellow Race determined that it must not be unduly controlled orlimited in its policy, tastes or aspirations by Whites . . . (it is theiropinion that) . . . the civilization of the European races is no whit, evenin theory, superior . . . nothing worse than the present French, Englishand American civilization could well be conceived.29

(a foretaste of ‘Asian Values’)

Maguire understood that Japan’s victory, like Britain’s after Trafalgar,was not so much the end of a process as the beginning of one: ‘Theambitions of the Japanese are not yet satisfied. But by the shores ofthe Pacific they find enormous fields for commercial expansion, and to theunoccupied lands of South America and Australia, panting for want ofdevelopment and labour, they turn their longing eyes.’ Maguire had astutelyidentified the strategic dynamics of the next 40 years, while many otherswere pondering merely the tactics of the next 10.

Homer Lea’s book The Valor of Ignorance,30 written in 1904 butpublished in 1909, sold 40,000 copies in Japan and was read by DouglasMacArthur who heavily scored his own copy for future reference.31 Leabelieved that Japan and the USA were bound to fight each other as theirempires expanded across the Pacific. ‘The Republic and Japan areapproaching, careless on the one hand and pre-determined on the other,


that point of contact that is war.’32 He maintained that ‘The centralizationof power in the Pacific is impossible to any nation other than China, Japanor the United States.’33

Some were critical of Western attitudes. Francis McCullagh who hadlived in Japan before the War maintained that

It does not take very long for a Whiteman to forget that their skin isnot quite the same colour as his. If there is ever a ‘Yellow peril’, it willbe an educated peril, and not the wild, barbaric, mysterious andinhuman monster with visions of which some people have torturedtheir brains.34

As war had erupted, the American missionary Sidney Gulick had ponderedthe possible outcomes. He maintained that Japan was not so much adoptingWestern technology and methods to defend its own enduring identity andvalues, as genuinely transforming itself into a Western Christian capitalistdemocracy, based on individual rights, the rule of law and a non-aggressivepolicy towards weaker states. ‘Japan stands for the essentials of Anglo-Saxoncivilization.’35 He believed that China would eventually rise up, become agreat economic power and take revenge on the Europeans.36

Theodore Roosevelt, who was a great admirer of Nitobe’s Bushido: TheSoul of Japan, gave copies to his friends and took judo lessons three timesper week, wrote shortly after the War started, ‘The Japs have played ourgame because they have played the game of civilized mankind.’37 He notedthat ‘The non-Aryan far-eastern Japanese were in some essentials closer tous than their chief opponents (the Russians).’38 Picking up on pre-waranthropological studies, W.E Griffis’ The Japanese Nation in Evolution of1907 declared the source of Japanese success to be ‘The White blood in theJapanese’.39

In a cultural reversal, some Americans now saw the descendants of theMongols to be fighting under the Russian flag not the Japanese. In a mat-ter of decades, the Oriental, backward and heathen Japanese had somehowin the minds of some Westerners become progressive, industrialized, Whiteand Christian, for there could be no other explanation for their successwithout challenging the profound assumptions upon which Western behav-iour itself was based.

Others took a more pragmatic strategic viewpoint. By 1911, MeredithTownsend, who just 12 years previously had anticipated the dominanceof Asia by Europeans, now predicted the expulsion of the Whiteman fromAsia. ‘The flash of the Japanese guns across the murky waters of PortArthur harbour revealed to a startled world – the beginning of the ebb.’40

Townsend noted that the 200-year-old process of European imperialism inthe Far East ‘must now terminate . . . Japanese victories will give new heartand energy to all Asiatic nations and tribes which now fret under Europeanrule . . . and will spread through them a strong impulse to avail themselves


of Japanese instruction.’41 H.M. Hyndman wrote in 1918 that the West hadshut its eyes to the obvious in 1905, that Japan was now the ‘mistress ofAsia’ and that if it had its way in Asia against Europe . . . ‘a war moreterrible than that which is now being concluded may easily confront oursuccessors’.42

The Japanese victory in 1905 served to exacerbate fears of Asia ingeneral, but of China in particular. In 1905 school children in China wereheard to chant, ‘I pray that the frontiers of my country become hard asbronze; that it surpass Europe and America; that it subjugate Japan . . . Mayour empire, like a sleeping tiger suddenly awakened, spring roaring into thearena of combats.’43

Some in Russia noted that significant strategic changes had been set inmotion. After the War, Kuropatkin predicted that, ‘The battle is only justbeginning. What happened in the fields of Manchuria in 1904–5 was noth-ing more than a skirmish with the advance guard.’44 He now recommendedthe seizure of a ‘cordon sanitaire’ across the frontier with China to defendagainst future assaults. In 1916, as administrator of Central Asia,Kuropatkin warned of the emergence of China as the real threat to Russia:‘As for China, the danger menacing Russia in the future from that empireof 400,000,000 people is not to be doubted’.45 Before the start of the war,Sir Robert Hart, Inspector-General of the Chinese Maritime Customs, hadadvocated building up China to improve the balance of power in the region,but was roundly condemned by The Times of London which declared thathis proposals ‘will doubtless be read with a shudder by all alarmed at thethreatened development of the Yellow Peril’.46

In 1905 there were 8,000 Chinese students in Japan, but by 1906 therewere 15,000, including Chiang Kai-shek. Many of these students providedthe political base for Sun Yat-sen when he returned from Europe in July1905. In 1907, W.A.P. Martin maintained in his Awakening of China that

China is the theatre of the greatest movement now taking place on theface of the globe. In comparison with it, the agitation in Russia shrinksinto insignificance . . . It promises nothing short of the complete renova-tion of the oldest, most populous and most conservative empires.47

Another book China in Transformation, of 1912, declared that, with theoverthrow of the Qing dynasty, China ‘will be remodelled . . . as efficient inher way as the new Japan, and more wealthy – perhaps more powerful’.48

It wasn’t only Chinese nationalists who were inspired by the events of1904–5. Mao Zedong was taught English and music by a teacher whostressed the importance of Russia’s defeat by Japan which had given hopeto other Asian nations and that the route to this had been modernization.

Halford Mackinder believed that China could become a major power ifmanaged by Japan. Many Japanese ultra-nationalists agreed, viewing Chinaas ‘the steed’ upon which Japan would ride to victory, a country that could


turn Japan’s population of 50 million into 500 million and conquer Asia asfar west as the Balkans. They saw the USA as a ‘fatuous booby with nobrains or cohesion . . . a race of thieves with hearts of rabbits . . . an immensemelon ripe for cutting’; but would the ‘warrior races of England andGermany’ allow Japan to ‘slice and eat our fill’? ‘North America willsupport a billion people, that billion shall be Japanese with their slaves . . . itshall be ours by right of conquest.’49

In 1910, Putnam Weale recognized Japan’s perceived necessity to unitethe Asians, and that China, the Asian nation with the greatest potential, hadto be the priority for its attention. Yet the fundamental problem faced byJapan in confronting China was that, ‘No amount of efficiency or cunningcan destroy the fact that a nation outnumbered by eight to one is a nationhopelessly outnumbered in any struggle à outrance.’50 Whatever the odds,it was clear to Putnam Weale that Sino-Japanese relations would be the keyto the future of East Asian affairs.

For it is certain that the vast region immediately beyond the Great Wallof China is the Flanders of the Far East – and that the next inevitablewar which will destroy China or make her something of a nation mustbe fought on that soil just as two other wars have been fought thereduring the past twenty years. But this does not belong to contemporarypolitics; it is an affair of the Chinese Army of 1925 or 1935.51

Jack London’s The Unparalleled Invasion of 1910 speculated that thepower of Japan would fade, but only after China, ‘a kindred race’, hadlearned from it the skills of the West. By 1976, China would dominate theworld economy and threaten the West. This challenge could only be met bya united assault on China by Western nations, led by the USA. In London’stale, Western victory was assured by the use of air-delivered biologicalweapons, in an ‘ultra-modern war . . . the war of the scientist and thelaboratory’ in the aftermath of which ‘All (Chinese) survivors were put todeath’.52 V. Solovev’s War and Christianity, from a Russian Point of Viewof 1915, told of how the Japanese rapidly adopted the material forms ofWestern culture, tutored the Chinese and united the peoples of the Eastunder their military leadership in a struggle against Europe. The Russianssided with Christendom and perished with honour. All of Europe fell,except Britain, which paid a tribute of £1 billion.

Meanwhile in Japan, victory in 1905 had led to the creation of manynationalist groups with ethno-strategic agendas. Count Okuma founded thePan-Asiatic Association and the Pacific Ocean Society, and the Indo-Japanese Association agitated for Japan to lead Asia against the West.In 1907, Okuma called for Japan to give protection to the 300 millionIndians oppressed by the British, and to reach out to the South Pacific and elsewhere in the world. In 1909 Kato Satori published a brochure


Mastery of the Pacific in which he noted that Japan could

Overrun the Pacific with fleets manned by men who have made Nelsontheir model and transported to the armadas of the Far East the spiritthat was victorious at Trafalgar. Whether Japan avows it or not, herpersistent aim is to gain mastery of the Pacific.53

Sir Robert Douglas noted in 1912 that as a result of its victory in 1905,Japan had ‘virtually proclaimed a sort of Monroe Doctrine to the effect thatEuropean nations already hold quite sufficient territory in the Far East’.54

To his mind, a Russian victory would probably have resulted in the parti-tion of China. The Burmese journal Budhism discussed the possibility of analliance between China and Japan to impose such a Monroe Doctrine forthe Far East, guaranteeing it against aggression from the West. It noted thatthe West had justified its own aggression against the East by the doctrine of‘Survival of the Fittest’, which claimed that this was best for humanity. Sobe it, in any struggle between ‘Aryan’ and ‘Mongol’, if the Mongol shouldwin, this should not be seen negatively as a triumph for the ‘Yellow Peril’,but as an outcome that was best for mankind.55

Tokutomi Soho wrote The Yellow Man’s Burden, justifying an imperialrole for Japan in the Pacific. His faith in the ‘gospel of power’ andmilitarism was reinforced by the events of the First World War; and whilehe initially predicted the success of German militarism over British liberalism,he came to see Germany’s eventual defeat as mere evidence of Britain’simperialism being even more effective and admirable than Germany’s.56

Phan Boi Chau saw Japanese success against Russia as an example to hisown Vietnamese nation, but recognized that it would need help fromothers. In 1904, he left home to study in Japan. Military action againstWestern decadence seemed the surest way to achieve independence.Members of the Annam royal family of Indochina visited Tokyo and calledfor revolt against the French. When the French opened a new university inHanoi in 1907, it was forced to close within the year as a result of studentnationalism.57 After Japan’s victory, the Filipino nationalist leader, ArtemioRicarte fled to Japan to preach independence from the Americans, and theAmerican Governor of Hawaii noted the increasing disaffection ofthe majority Asian population of Hawaii following the Japanese victoryin 1905.

In Britain, Lord Kitchener noted that the people of the Orient had beenawakened, and he expected this to result in insurrection in India and trou-ble in Afghanistan. Governor-General Gallieni attributed the revolt againstFrench rule in Madagascar in 1904 to the Russo-Japanese War. The RussianRevolution of 1905, if not itself inspired by an Asian triumph, was triggeredby the Russo-Japanese War, and went on to have a deep inspirational effectupon the revolutionaries of Turkey and Persia.58


However matters appeared to others, there had been little sign in Japanof popular enthusiasm for the war in the arts or cinema, and there wasconcern about Japan’s apparently rotten and effeminate youth. In 1905 aninfantry captain described volunteers to become cadets: ‘The weakness ofyouth in Gifu prefecture is shocking! Look at the volunteers’ pretty silkgarments, hair combed in the latest fashion, smelling of perfume andpomade.’59 Some felt that Japan’s diplomatic failure at Portsmouth was areflection of this creeping degeneracy. In September 1913, an editor ofa newspaper from Takayama wrote,

What of general morals in our society? Murders, suicide, theft, deceit,how frequent these crimes are! . . . all rush to follow the fashionable. Wecannot but mourn the way in which the careful and the industriouslabourer seems to recede from the people’s thoughts.60

It was this perception of degeneracy and weakness that caused some suchas Nitobe Inazo to seek to revitalize Japanese society by stressing the idealsof Bushido.

Nevertheless, the belief that the Russo-Japanese War had proven the martialspirit to be the supreme virtue caused expressions of concern in many coun-tries about the quality of the human material available. President T. Rooseveltmaintained that ‘The nation which abandons itself to an existence of ease andlooks upon war with horror, rots away without advancing. It is destined todecline and become a slave of other nations which have not lost the virilequalities’.61 ‘A rich nation which is slothful, timid, or unwieldy is an easy preyfor any people which still retains those most valuable of all qualities, thesoldierly virtues.’62 Homer Lea also believed that racially homogenousnations, or at least ones led by a dominant race, were more likely to survive;and he warned against ‘frenzied crowds. . . theorists . . . feminists . . . for theseare but the feverish phantasms and sickly disorders of national life’.63

Evolutionary science and mysticism became entwined in attempts todescribe the decline of Western societies. General de Negrier, Inspector-General of the French Army and observer of the War, spoke despairingly ofFrance’s apparent degeneracy, urging the nation to work

[T]owards our complete state of perfection, [exerting itself] so that ourdescendants may reach an intellectual and moral standard superior toour own. It is thus that races of warriors and brave men developthemselves. The Japanese are giving us at the present moment anexample of this.64

Life is an accident which death atones for . . . To the force which thismoral develops must be added that intense gratification, that under alltrying conditions, no matter what a man’s social condition may be, hewill have no feeling of fear. It is for the man a sure source of consola-tion, of which decadent nations have deprived themselves, because the


materialism in which they wallow necessarily destroys noble sentimentsby the degradation of character.65

He maintained that races became pusillanimous when educationdestroyed patriotism and that nature ruthlessly punishes the coward:‘Conquered and dismembered they disappear from the scenes of the world.It is the immutable justice of things.’ Decadent humanitarian theoriespurveyed by university professors and schoolmasters, imbued with notionsof peace, humanity and fraternalism, were identified as the cause ofFrenchmen becoming timid poltroons.

De Negrier agreed with the Evolutionary ideas of the Italian physiologistDr Mosso that ‘Instinct is the voice of past generations, which resounds asa distinct echo in the cells of the nervous systems.’ Mosso developedprogrammes to develop physical endurance in school children and troopsand was applauded by de Negrier who believed that ‘The Latin race seemsto succumb to the law that the industrial developments, mechanical andintellectual, accentuates its physical decadence.’66 The Japanese also tookan interest in Darwinian aspects of international affairs with ProfessorAdachi Buntaro conducting blood tests in 1912 which claimed to showwhich races were the closest to and the most distant from the apes.67

Japan had been a good student of Western political culture, and it beganto dawn on the teacher that the lessons it had taught might be turned tochallenge its own imperial primacy. Thomas Malthus’ An Essay on thePrinciple of Population had been widely read in Japan before the FirstWorld War and meshed with other ideas about populations, the spacerequired to support them and the likelihood of mass migrations to satisfythis. The consequent notion that Japan and the USA were fated to collideas their peoples expanded was commonly discussed and the USA was saidto lack spiritual and moral qualities. Japanese textbooks attacked the‘Western evils’ of ‘individualism, liberalism, utilitarianism and materialism’,and there was talk of ‘the White Peril’.68 Japanese ‘Double Patriots’ such asKita Ikki maintained that if socialists argued the justice of class strugglebetween the oppressors and their victims, then it was hypocritical tocondemn that same moral principle when acted upon by oppressed nationssuch as Japan – Social-Darwinism should be applied to the society ofnations as well as the societies of nations.69

A Russian General Staff Paper appearing in Razviedchik on 3 August1909 maintained that, ‘War is no longer a duel between armies, but a lifeand death struggle between nations. Nothing short of paralysing the wholelife of a country [to such an extent that any prolongation of it impliesnational death] constitutes final victory.’ Having correctly, if inadvertently,identified the nature of Russia’s collapse 8 years later, the paper confidentlycompared Russia’s vast resources with the perils facing any invading army,‘We have nothing to fear from an enemy – only our own lack of spirit. Waris at hand . . .’.


Fear about the degeneracy of modern urban populations was widespreadin Germany before 1914. Colonel William Balck maintained that

The steadily improving standards of living tend to increase the instinctof self-preservation and to diminish the spirit of self-sacrifice . . .The manner of fast living at the present day undermines the nervoussystem . . . the physical powers of the human species are also partlydiminishing.70

There was concern in some quarters in Britain about the fitness of thenation to bear its necessary martial burdens. In the United Service Magazineof June 1904, Captain Bellairs described the British nation as being ‘in awild debauch of so-called freedom. It is time to call a halt . . . to inculcatediscipline’. Sir Alexander Bannerman noted in 1910 that ‘With all the oldrestraints removed, the nation must either have a new discipline or go topieces. It is universal discipline which has brought Japan to her presentpitch of efficiency.’71 On that same occasion Bellairs complained that unlikethe Japanese, English education instilled discontent, teaching children howto extract their rights but with no mention of duty or sacrifice to the nation.He blamed London County Council for what would later be called ‘LoonyLeftism’ when, in 1905, it refused to fly the Union Flag at an elementaryschool even though a benefactor had offered to meet the cost.72 Bellairswould no doubt have been impressed by the report of Sir FrederickTreves who visited Japanese hospitals during the War. He witnessedsurgery performed without anaesthetic on impassive patients and was toldby the surgeon that ‘Our men do not always require chloroform or anyanaesthetic; it is not necessary to use it with our men like it is with youwhitemen’.73

Those who held forthright racial views did not necessarily do so out ofuncritical regard for their own people. Jack London74 said that if he wereGod for one hour, he would ‘blot out London and its 6,000,000 people, asSodom and Gomorrah were blotted out’.75

To him, the London Abyss was another Social Pit. The inefficient wereweeded out and flung downwards. The efficient emigrated, taking thebest qualities of the stock with them. The British race was enfeeblingitself into two classes, a master race and a ghetto race. A short andstunted race was being created – a breed strikingly different than theirrulers.76

The patriotism provoked by the Russo-Japanese War was viewed with con-cern by many socialists who saw the ‘spectacle of the working classes unitingto applaud the crimes of their exploiters’. Race and cultural struggle seemedto be taking over from class struggle,77 and in Nazi Germany the race and cul-tural struggle would be united. In times of national peril, Soviet Marxism soon


adopted traditional patriotic themes against threats from both the OrientalJapanese and the European invaders from Germany. In German eyes, itwas the Russians who took on the mantle of ‘Oriental monster’ in the SecondWorld War, just as the Japanese filled this role for the Allies. In the First WorldWar, the German ‘Huns’ acted that part in the minds of the British, given thatthe ‘plucky little Japs’ were their allies.

The military academic, T.M. Maguire, asked

Are English mothers so situated that they can give birth to men andbreed and rear them as fit instruments for individual and nationalelevation? Come with me and wander the poorer streets of Glasgow,Edinburgh, Liverpool, Dublin and London, and the stoutest warriorhere . . . will stammer out ‘No, alas No’, with tears in his eyes. Ourposition is endangered by political intrigue, lack of self-denial, lack ofknowledge, cult of games of a spectacular kind, and the terrible deteri-oration of so many mothers in the crowded towns, who are the victimsof machines that can produce anything but men. Yet still less a race ofMilitary men.78

Maguire would have been heartened to know that from the other side of theChannel, Albion seemed to be in distressingly rude health.

The pride in the cult of the ‘Old Country’, decision and gallantry,inculcated in children from the earliest age, have made England a richand powerful nation, which knows how to found its prosperity on theemployment of arms. With her the doors of the Temple of Janus arenever closed. Thus her people, who swarm everywhere, march ontowards the conquest of the world.79

One practical method of producing a disciplined fighting force was to ini-tiate youth training. General Baden-Powell’s Boy Scout movement was seento meet many of the needs for rebuilding national discipline and morale. ‘BePrepared’ meant ‘Be prepared to die for your country’. In 1910, ColonelJ.H. Rossiter, a retired officer working for a Schools Union, responded toBaden-Powell’s call for volunteers to recruit for ‘the modern Bushido or BoyScout movement . . . permeating itself over the whole country’.80 There wasa belief that society could reinvigorate itself by teaching this Bushido spirit.One scoutmaster reported, ‘Colonel, you see we are really going to have anew generation of boys, quite different from the present generation’.81

Maybe his premise was wrong or his conclusion was right, and the resultswere revealed in the fortitude of troops in the war just 4 years away. In thesame debate, in words of which President J.F. Kennedy would no doubthave approved, Lieutenant General Sir Herbert Plumer urged that a boy betaught to regard himself judged ‘not by his own success, but by what he hasdone for his country’.82


In the decade prior to 1914, many believed that the answer to the militaryproblems of the day lay in manipulating human nature rather than under-standing and addressing the emerging technologies and tactical possibilitiesof war. By 1910, Sir Ian Hamilton had adopted a semi-mystical view offighting spirit, despite his own experience of the Russo-Japanese War,maintaining that the will could overcome wire- and fire-swept zones. Hewas to discover at Gallipoli that this theory was incomplete. Some believedthat the spiritual could be communicated in ‘thought waves’. In a visionwhich seems less fantastic today than it probably did at the time, ColonelMaude predicted the day of the ‘automatic regiment’ in which thecommander would be the sender of ‘waves’ and each private a ‘Marconireceiver’, with an esprit de corps impervious to suffering.83

Ironically, it was the very recognition of the technological realities ofmodern war, described by Bloch and manifest in the Russo-Japanese War,that caused armies to seek desperate, alternative, non-technological reme-dies in the form of discipline, fortitude, moral strength and esprit de corps.The emphasis was on shaping human character to overcome firepower andin this bracing spirit Europe took to the field in 1914. The consequences ofthis proved disastrous and it would take 3 years for armies to catch up withthe harsh tactical and technological realities; but only after the troops haddemonstrated the qualities of which many had believed them incapable.Man’s inherent sense of self-defence evidently mastered any veneer ofrecently acquired social decadence – Monsieur Poilu proved no poltroon.The astonishing evidence of the First World War was that civilians inuniform could sustain their morale in appalling conditions, although theeventual national collapse that Bloch had predicted did strike down threeof the major participants – wars had indeed become struggles of socialattrition and dominance.

Lessons to be learned

The official histories of the major powers were translated into English, aswere the reports of most foreign observers. Despite the urging of manyobservers for radical reform, traditional views prevailed and doctrinalregression soon set in.84 The justifiable visions of 1905 were being funda-mentally distorted by 1910 and resulted in a nightmare in 1914. Sir IanHamilton noted that ‘On the actual day of battle naked truths may bepicked up for the asking; by the following morning they have already begunto get into their uniforms.’85

Liddell-Hart noted that

If the study of war in the past has so often proved fallible as a guide tothe course of the next war, it implies not that war is unsuited toscientific study but that the study has not been scientific enough inspirit and method.86


After 1905 the process of constructive analysis went disastrously astray,distorted by the military’s prevailing culture. A bundle of new, sometimesmutually contradictory views intruded upon a powerful doctrinalorthodoxy, itself based on the immutable strategic premises of the day.National politics and strategy largely determine military culture and these,rather than awkward tactical ‘lessons learned’ in Manchuria, proveddecisive as 1914 approached.

One lesson of the War was the frequency with which different observerscould view an event and come to totally different conclusions, and partisanstended to find what they wanted to suit their own interest. While some sawthe inevitability of trench warfare and the dominance of artillery in a futureEuropean war, others believed that Japanese moral qualities had overcomephysical obstacles. By 1914, the lessons of the Russo-Japanese War hadbeen so selected as to achieve the precise opposite of what might moreobviously have been deduced, and after the First World War many similarmistakes were made.

Within months, the First World War proved to be startlingly different towhat the prevailing doctrines had anticipated, but almost exactly whatmany observers of the Russo-Japanese War had foreseen. The power ofdefence was dominant in the first 3 years of the First World War, largelybecause little had been done to structure and equip forces and devise tacticsto make it otherwise. Instead, a substantially counterproductive belief inmanoeuvre and élan in the attack with inadequate firepower prevailed,relying in the final analysis on moral factors.87

The essential debate after 1905 turned on whether or not the powerof modern defence precluded the possibility of successful offence.Although the power of defensive technology was recognized, there wasa fundamental belief that the charge was necessary and could succeedif there were enough men, sufficiently motivated. The evidence availablein 1905, and not merely with hindsight post-1918, should have led tothe conclusion that in defence, well-sited machine guns and concealedartillery had little to fear from a purely infantry attack, howeverdetermined. A successful attack required a careful, and possibly complex,artillery fireplan that neutralized enemy artillery and machine guns so thatinfantry could manoeuvre to close with the enemy, but the evidence wasneglected.

Some also realized that all operations, whether offensive or defensive,were changing and would be conducted at an unprecedented pace overprolonged periods, with fighting by night and day. In Britain, CaptainC.E.P. Sankey, an officer of the Royal Engineers wrote in 1907, ‘May wenot expect that future sieges and battles will be reckoned in weeks and willin fact be indistinguishable?’ He predicted that in a European war, unlessone side blundered badly, both would entrench and all attacks would befrontal attacks and ‘each army will then practically become the garrison ofan enormous extended fortress’.88


The rise of artillery as the principal arm of firepower in modern warfarehad been evident to some but ignored by most for many years; and althoughits power was amply demonstrated during the Russo-Japanese War, theimplications were not well received or acted upon. Little was done after theWar to acknowledge the dominance of artillery or the power of the machinegun in defence when combined with wire, trenches and obstacles and thepossible use of chemical weapons. In armies obsessed with élan vital etpantalons rouges, morale and shock, the ‘firepower school’ was paid scantattention. The emphasis in most armies seemed to be less on how technologycould change the next war, than how new technology might permit a returnto the old ways.89

After the Russo-Japanese War, many serious officers were eager to seizeon the new ideas and their consequences. The forum for debate on innova-tion was the military journal and the general view of the authors was thatin the new circumstances there was a pressing need for more howitzers,machine guns, mortars, hand grenades, mines and barbed wire.Unfortunately these generally remained no more than the ideas of thosewith the time to write articles.

Their main concern was how enemy trenches, which would featureprominently in future warfare, might be reached and overrun withoutoverwhelming losses. Captain Rogers of the Royal Engineers believed thatengineers would have to take on the old role of artillery in preparing a pathfor a final assault.90 Major H.S. Jeudwine won the Royal ArtilleryInstitute’s Duncan Prize of 1907 with his paper suggesting that long-rangeheavy guns were essential for enfilading the lines of trenches that anyEuropean army would have to construct. Second place in the DuncanCompetition went to Major C.C. Robertson who warned that ‘If we do notaccept the lessons of the Russo-Japanese War exactly as if it had been ourown campaign we shall make mistakes in the next war which it is mostnecessary to avoid’.91

Major J.M. Home observed,

The great impression made on me by all I saw is that artillery is nowthe decisive arm and that all other arms are auxiliary to it. The impor-tance of artillery cannot be too strongly insisted upon, for, other thingsbeing equal, the side which has the best artillery will always win . . . .It seems almost a question for deliberate consideration whether artilleryshould not be largely increased even at the expense of other arms.92

However, little was done to build an indirect fire capability. In 1913,Major General W.G. Knox attacked the Secretary of State for War over thepredicament of Britain’s artillery, ‘outranged by hostile gun and rifle,untrained to recognize friend from foe, innocent of the tactical requirementof a combined fire fight, does not the result spell murder?’93


The First World War witnessed a ‘Military Revolution’ in which thedominance of indirect artillery fire, ‘three-dimensional’ warfare and DeepBattle were established.94 This had become the conscious orthodoxy of allmajor armies by 1917. That Revolution should have been the immediateconsequence of the experience of the Russo-Japanese War; but although itsbasic components were evident in that War and their implications notedby observers, there seemed to be little institutional awareness of them, ofthe scale or significance of their sum, let alone of the need for appropri-ate reform. For military doctrine, 1905 was the false dawn of theMilitary Revolution of 1917 as much as it was for the political and socialrevolutions of that year.


Part II

From Port Arthur to PearlHarbourA 35-year perspective

The Russo-Japanese War offered tantalizing insights into the character ofwar as it would be fought in the twentieth century. Many factors wereidentified and many discounted; but they were eventually to coalesce in anew style of warfare by 1918. These profound military developments werematched by equally dramatic political and strategic ones in East Asia overthe next 35 years.

The phenomenon of ‘world war’ had been evident since the eighteenthcentury, and in 1900 A.T. Mahan had noted that thanks to the speed ofmaritime travel, ‘The world has grown smaller’.1 The Russo-Japanese Warconfirmed that global character and its increasing industrialization.

Huge steam ships, ship canals, trans-continent railways and thetelegraph have not altered strategy, but they have altered itsapplication . . . overseas expeditions of enormous magnitude arecommon . . . 2

Global war had become the norm, and with it the increased possibility ofglobal ideological and cultural struggle. The dynamics of that globalizationhave burgeoned to this day, expanding the scope of potential operations,while constraining them with added complexity and pressures of time. TheFourth Dimension contracts while the others, including cyberspace,expand.

Victory over a European empire provoked high emotion in Japan. Itestablished its credentials as a major power, but what had been won on thebattlefield seemed to evaporate, as it had done after the Sino-Japanese War,at the negotiating table at Portsmouth, leaving Japan bitter and mistrustfulof international diplomacy.3 What was seen to have been lost was notmerely a province, but the source of essential agricultural and industrialsustenance, vital for Japan’s survival. It also seemed an affront to Japan’sright to expand in what it saw as its natural and imperial sphere; followingthe pattern set by Western nations. This ‘injustice’ was attributed in Japanto international cultural and racial bias against an Asian nation.

4 Grand strategyRacial angst and diplomatic odyssey

Francis McCullagh saw little long-term benefit to Japan from its victory.

I doubt that at the apex of their prosperity they will enjoy anything likethe national happiness which is theirs today. . . . Time and wealth andfactory servitude, the great corroders of martial virtue, will graduallytake the fine edge from off their valour.4

Some Japanese were also deeply uneasy about their victory. The radicalJapanese journalist Kotoku Shusui viewed Japan’s success with dread,believing that Japan would merely be beggared by the expense of itsimperial commitments and subject to immeasurable strategic liabilitiesthereafter. In his The Melancholy of Victory, the Christian pacifistTokutomi Roka maintained that nothing had really been changed bymilitary triumph, for Japan remained dependent on its relationships withother powers. Paradoxically, the stronger Japan grew, the more insecure itsposition would become; and any future struggle would continue to be seenin cultural and racial terms. A successful resort to force might enable Japanto become a great power, but he warned that ‘Those who live by the swordshall perish by the sword’, and that victory over Russia had cheered theworld’s Coloured races, provoked the White race and could become theprelude to an inter-racial conflict ‘unprecedented in the annals of worldhistory’.5

Japan’s new position in the world also came at a financial price. By 1906,a victorious yet discontented Japan had a foreign debt-to-GNP (GrossNational Product) ratio of 91 per cent and hoped to cut back military expen-diture; but by 1910 it still felt obliged to join the naval construction race.There followed a period of intense rivalry in Japan between the Army and theNavy, not merely over funding, but over the foreign policy that justified it.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the USA was not so muchconcerned with Japanese reactions to its Pacific expansion, as with thepotential power of China, fearing the long-term threat of the latter to itsPacific coast more than any to its Atlantic front facing Europe. PresidentTheodore Roosevelt had therefore supported Japan in 1904, driven largelyby the desire to keep China weak and to control a slice of its trade.6 It wasassumed that after the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese would open up thewhole of Asia and its 800 million people for free trade, making the Pacifican ‘American lake’.

It soon became apparent that this would not be the case. The Treaty ofPortsmouth was brokered by the USA and marked its real emergence as aPacific power; but it generated a lasting hostility against it in Japan, whereit was blamed for the loss of the expected Russian indemnity.7 US–Japaneserelations deteriorated rapidly thereafter; while the negotiations atPortsmouth seemed to cast the USA in the role of ‘honest broker’, in realitythey were the occasion on which the Russians ‘passed the baton’ as the

62 From Port Arthur to Pearl Harbour

primary rival of the Japanese; and the greater clash between East and Westwould wait until 1941.

In 1870, Chinese immigrants had represented 20 per cent of theCalifornian labour market. In 1882, Congress had passed the ChineseExclusion Act, which restricted Chinese immigration for the next 60 yearsand was the only American immigration law based on race. The Chinesewere soon replaced by a growing number of Japanese, Korean and Indianlabourers on the West Coast;8 but fears continued to be widespread inCalifornia of what the San Francisco Examiner called the ‘Brown stream ofJapanese immigration and . . . the complete orientalization of the PacificCoast.’9 In 1890, 2,000 Japanese lived in California; but by 1900 there were24,000. Japan was outraged by the segregation of Japanese school childrenby the San Francisco School Board in October 1906, and by Americanlegislation limiting Japanese immigration.10 Mainichi Shimbun called forAdmiral Togo and Japanese warships to be sent to California to protectJapanese citizens and save civilization from American barbarity.11 HomerLea, an ardent American patriot, nevertheless believed that the USA wasdealing unfairly with its Japanese population, and that unlike injusticesagainst the supine Chinese, such affronts were bound to hasten the outbreakof war with a martial Japan. When that war came, he feared that theseinjustices would cause the rest of the world to side with Japan.

Unions in California generally resented ‘coolies’ taking jobs from‘Americans’, and The San Francisco Chronicle ran stories headed, ‘TheYellow Peril – How Japanese Crowd out the White Race’ and ‘Japanese aMenace to American Women’. In May 1907 there were anti-Japanese riotsin San Francisco, and Japanese immigration was restricted by ‘gentlemen’sagreement’. Roosevelt noted that the Japanese

[W]ould like to be considered as on a full equality with, as one of thebrotherhood of, Occidental nations, and have been bitterly humiliatedto find that even their allies, the English, and their friends, theAmericans, won’t admit them to association and citizenship as theyadmit the least advanced or most decadent European peoples . . . ourpeople will not permit the Japanese to come in large numbers amongthem . . . 12

Canada experienced similar frictions over Asian immigration. The laterPrime Minister of Canada, W.L. Mackenzie King, noted in his 1908 ‘Reporton the Causes of Anti-Oriental Riots of 1907’, ‘the native of India is not aperson suited to this country’;13 and Canada imposed immigration restric-tions after those riots. It was, however, Japanese immigrants who were seento be the greatest threat to British Columbia, where the newspaper TheProvince declared that ‘The Japanese does not assimilate, and never will.His sons and daughters will never be Canadians. They will always, in

Grand strategy 63

reality, owe allegiance to the Mikado.’14 Another newspaper, The IndustrialWorld, asked

Is nothing to be done to stop the influx of the Mongols into thisprovince? . . . The workers of British Columbia may be forced to givethe government to understand, once and for all, that they intend thatthis community shall remain Anglo-Saxon.15

The Saturday Sunset maintained that ‘Even the riff-raff of the White racethat Europe sends, can be boiled down into a decent Canadian citizen in acouple of generations at least, but an Oriental does not change.’ The Premier,Richard McBride insisted that ‘British Columbia must be kept White’.16

Roosevelt maintained that ‘Nineteenth century democracy needs no morevindication for its existence than the fact that it kept for the White race thebest portions of the New World’s surface, temperate America andAustralia.’17 He was determined to meet the challenge from any ‘race foe’to these lands and there were many who agreed with him. Fears forAustralia’s security, and therefore the British Empire, were expressed asearly as 1905. Octavius Beale argued that

In Australia we have three million five hundred thousand squaremiles . . . half empty, in security by the British fleet. We are therebetween East and West and you know gentlemen, at the Battle ofTsushima the centre was actually shifted very seriously. We are not farremoved from the great disturbance . . . a very great change has takenplace in what you call the Far East simply by iron and blood.18

He maintained that Australia was held

[I]n trust for the race to which we belong and any proposal for handingit over to the Black or Yellow man comes too late for serious consider-ation . . . I say that you can no longer keep track or control if you openthose gates as they have been opened in South Africa, and it is very hardindeed to see how this is going to be corrected.19

The irony of Western protests about possible Japanese expansion doesnot seem to have disturbed the accusers. One Australian senator noted inNovember 1905,

Japan has shown that she is an aggressive nation. She has shown thatshe is desirous of pushing out all around. What has always been theeffect of victory and conquest upon nations? Do we not know that itstimulates them to further conquest? to obtain fresh territory? Has notthat been the history of our own race? Is there any country that offerssuch a temptation to Japan as Australia does?20


Japan’s victory over Russia had stopped Russian expansion and reducedthe perceived threat to India at no cost to Britain. Nevertheless, the newAnglo-Japanese Treaty of 12 August 1905 recognized India as a factor moreexplicitly than had the Treaty of 1902, and there was provision to invokethe treaty if India were attacked by a single power. Initially, the Britishhoped that the treaty would require Japan to send troops to defend India,but the British themselves soon dropped this idea; a richly ironic one giventhat within 30 years Japan would be purveying itself as the champion of thecolonized, and sending its own Army to conquer or colonize the Indiansubcontinent from Britain.

The British were aware of potential ‘cultural’ problems should Japanesetroops be used in India. On 12 April 1905, the Committee of ImperialDefence noted that ‘It is of primary importance to ascertain the views of theIndian Government as to the desirability of the troops of another Asiaticpower co-operating with our native Indian troops.’21 The Secretary of War,H.O. Arnold-Foster noted with prescience, the

[D]anger that the people of India will cease to regard us as the masters ofIndia. If ever we cease to hold India by the strong hand, and India knowsit, the day will not be far distant when we shall lose India altogether.22

A War Office report of 4 November 1905 noted that defending India withJapanese troops would, ‘be highly detrimental if not absolutely fatal to ourprestige throughout the Asiatic continent’.23

The renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1905 was one reason why theBritish felt able to reduce their fleet in the Pacific, thereby ruling themselvesout as a possible enemy of the USA. The secret Note A to the Treaty judgedthat ‘It is now recognized as a cardinal feature of British foreign policythat war between Great Britain and the United States is not a contingencysufficiently probable to need special steps to meet it.’24

The British had noted the Russians’ vulnerability in having a singleinadequate naval base at Port Arthur, and as early as 23 April 1909 theCommittee of Imperial Defence wondered whether Hong Kong andSingapore could be defended against Japanese attacks which seemed increas-ingly plausible. Equally, many Japanese doubted the benefits of the alliancewith Britain. In 1912, the semi-official Japan Magazine suggested that Japanwould benefit more from an alliance with Germany than with Britain; andit was clear that British survival in the Far East would become increasinglyprecarious. Rather as the Russians in 1904–5, the British would fight theSecond World War in the Pacific at the end of a perilously extended andweak line of communications, but without even a slender railway.

Roosevelt judged the capacity of a race for self-rule to be an importantfactor in international relations and in the immediate aftermath of victoryhe deemed the Japanese not only capable of self-rule, but also to be agentsof civilization in Asia. He had favoured the Japanese having a position in

Grand strategy 65

Korea, much as the Americans had in Cuba, controlling the periphery of theYellow Sea, much as the USA controlled the periphery of the Caribbean; butRoosevelt soon also saw a menacing aspect to this. He believed that theJapanese combined self-confidence, ferociousness and conceit and a ‘greattouchiness’,25 and would soon be greater rivals in the Asian trade than theWestern nations. Japan invested heavily in China and it was increasinglyregarded by the USA as a threat to an ‘open China’, rather than as a fellowcapitalist like the Western nations. There were already fears that Japanmight attack the Panama Canal, even though this was not due to be com-pleted until 1914.

Those predicting war between the USA and Japan saw access to rawmaterials and trade as the key to future conflict, just as it had been in theprevious century.26 The American occupation of the Philippines was seen byJapan to block its access to the raw materials of South-East Asia which itnow regarded as vital to its growth. The Japanese clearly understood thestrategic risks inherent in such commercial rivalry, and in the 1906 draft ofthe Imperial Defense Policy, Tanaka Giichi outlined plans to fight the USAin the Philippines.

Once we begin to take away the Chinese trade of Western nations, thelatter will cease to be . . . cordial towards us. But that is somethingwe cannot help. We are poor; our natural resources are limited . . . If weentice away your customers by under-selling, that is no fault of ours.27

Admiral W.M. Folger feared that an American base at Subic Bay couldresult in the US fleet being trapped like the Russian fleet in Port Arthur in1904. That fleet, like the Chinese fleet at Wei-hai-wei, 10 years earlier, hadeventually been destroyed by heavy artillery positioned on high ground.Subic Bay was likened to the bottom of a soup plate and was clearlyvulnerable to a major ground attack. Previous studies had considered raidsby small forces on American island possessions, but since 1904, the USA’sposition had deteriorated. On 21 January 1907, the American General Staffreported that Hawaii was ‘in a deplorably defenceless position’.28 The USArmy Staff was impressed by Japan’s joint capabilities, and in 1908 notedthat the Japanese could land 100,000 men on Hawaii before reinforcementscould arrive from the American West Coast.

As a result of the Russo-Japanese War, Congress appropriated $862,395for fortifications on Hawaii, and $700,000 for fortifications on thePhilippines. On 5 September 1907, the US Army Chief of Staff, J.F. Bell,said that it would be absurd to try to defend Subic Bay, even though theGeneral Board declared it to be essential. By 1908, Bell’s position had beenaccepted, and instead Pearl Harbour became the focus for the US Navy’sdefensive plans, receiving another $900,000 for fortifications.29

In 1907 President Roosevelt decided to move the US Navy’s battle fleet,‘The Great White Fleet’, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, citing ‘unknown


possibilities both as regards their (Japanese) motives and purposes’.30

The fleet, including sixteen cruisers, arrived in Tokyo in October 1908. TheJapanese had planned that 160 of their warships would be deployed in afriendly, if ambiguous greeting at sea. In the event, a typhoon prevented themeeting. What the voyage made clear, however, was that the USA could notsustain a fleet of that size in the Pacific without new and immenseinvestment in infrastructure, for it had had to borrow coal from the Britishto complete its 434 days of sailing.31 The fleet pulled back to Hawaii,anticipating the obvious, that it could not defend the Philippines.

Wargames that year revealed how easy it would be for the Japanese toland a large invasion force on those islands. In 1909, Major GeneralJ.P. Story predicted that the Japanese could land 400,000 men anywhere onthe West Coast of the USA in 3 months,32 and there was a flurry of litera-ture predicting that Japan would win any war with the USA. In 1911,following disastrous exercises near San Antonio, Major General LeonardWood declared that the US Army was not prepared ‘to meet with a trainedenemy’.33

In 1910, Mahan compared the self-assertion and expansionism of Japanand Germany to Sparta. ‘If Japan seriously starts to reorganize China andmakes headway, there will result a real shifting of the center of equilibriumso far as the White races are concerned.’34 The Russians also stirredAmerican fears by maintaining that having taken Korea the Japanese wouldsoon be planning to take the Philippines. By 1910, it was apparent that theUSA would have to defend on a line through Hawaii; but it was unclearhow the USA would protect its trading interests in Asia in this way, let alonefulfil its ambitions to expand them.

From 1908, there had also been clear signs of Japanese involvement inMexico, with talk of Japan securing Magdalena Bay on the Pacific coast asa naval base. The Japanese also spoke increasingly of the Mexicans as racialbrothers. In 1911, Admiral Yoshiro visited Mexico and asserted at abanquet that ‘The same blood flows in [our] veins.’35 From 1911, Japanplanned for war with the USA, and American strategic and ethnic concernsabout Japan became more pronounced.

Germany was keen to gain the support of two nations with a grudgeagainst the USA: Japan and Mexico; German involvement in Mexicoseemed troubling, with many Americans believing that the USA faced animminent invasion by a German-led Japanese Army from Mexico. InMarch 1911, President Taft mobilized two thirds of the US Army on theMexican border and sent the US Fleet to the Gulf of Mexico. In 1913, aJapanese ship visited Mexico, and Japan supplied arms to the HuertaGovernment in Mexico in retaliation for the Californian Alien ExclusionAct.36 That year Japan could field twenty-five divisions, while the US Armyhad trouble putting together one for operations on the Mexican border.

Even President Woodrow Wilson supported policies that would excludecertain races from immigrating to the USA. In 1912, he maintained that

Grand strategy 67

‘We cannot make a homogenous population of a people who do not blendwith the Caucasian race.’37 Wilson was impressed by the technical ability ofthe Japanese, but noted that the problems in California had arisen becauseAmericans did not want to ‘have an intimate association’ with them,because ‘they are not on the same plane with us. That . . . is something thatdiplomacy itself cannot handle.’38

Negative assumptions about the Japanese soon replaced the positiveimages that had so recently prevailed. In 1915, Lt Cdr L.A. Cotton, theAmerican naval attaché in Japan wrote an essay on the Japanese characterwhich did much to shape both military and civilian opinion in the USA insucceeding decades. He described the Japanese commitment to the warriorethos, but in terms of acceptance of suffering and discipline. He notedJapanese arrogance, their inability to think creatively and to innovate, theirpredilection for secrecy and deceit, and their ruthless pursuit of self-interest.It was partly such assumptions about race that made Wilson reluctant tohave Americans fight in Europe. On 5 February 1917 he noted the damagewhich the war in Europe would do to ‘White civilization’; and that it wasnecessary to keep at least part of the ‘White race’ strong to face the ‘Yellowrace’.39

Black American leaders sometimes saw a connection between their owncondition in American society and that of the ‘victims’ of Americanimperialism abroad. This was especially so after the First World War whenthe Japanese set themselves up as the champions of equal rights for all racesat the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, and the standard-bearers for Blackemancipation in the USA. When the Japanese delegation stopped in NewYork on its way to the Conference, it was lobbied by Black activists urgingit to try harder to ensure that racial discrimination in the USA wasoutlawed. Japan’s bid to incorporate pronouncements on race in the finalagreements failed, thanks to opposition by President Wilson who wasdetermined not to grant the Japanese equal racial status with Caucasians.40

In 1919, some calculations predicted that California would have a major-ity Japanese population by 1949.41 In 1922, the US Supreme Court ruledthat Japanese immigrants were not eligible for citizenship, as they were notWhites and therefore of Caucasian race,42 and the Exclusion Act of 1924halted all Japanese immigration. California’s Alien Land Laws preventedthose ineligible for citizenship from owning or leasing land. During thedebate on these laws one assemblyman said that he intensely hated theJapanese, whom he characterized as a ‘bandy-legged bugaboo, miserablecraven Simian, degenerated rotten little devil’.43

In the 1912 Presidential election campaign, Woodrow Wilsoncampaigned on the need to find an outlet for burgeoning Americanproduction; and recommended the use of diplomacy, and if necessary polit-ical power, to open Asian markets. The American empire was on the march,into a region that Japan’s ‘Monroe Doctrine’ considered to be in Japan’svital interest to dominate.


The USA, however, often seemed reluctant to become embroiled in Asianterritorial disputes; and as early as 1914, Robert Lansing maintained that‘It would be quixotic in the extreme to allow the question of China’sterritorial integrity to entangle the United States in international difficulties.’Nevertheless, in January 1915, Japan demanded control of the YangtseRiver Valley; and in May of that year, Roosevelt told the Japanese that theUSA would not tolerate any infringement of the ‘political or territorialintegrity of China’.44

Germany was the next European Empire to suffer at the hands of theJapanese. In 1904 the Russians had had no large dry dock in the Pacific andplanned, bizarrely, to use Japanese facilities if required. Germany appreci-ated that it would need a major dry dock in the Far East to sustain itspresence. In the years before 1914, it spent large sums on port facilities atits colony at Tsingtao, including a 16,000-ton floating dry dock. TheGermans concentrated their efforts on building the defences to face theland, against a likely Chinese assault; but they neglected those against navalattack by Japan. On 7 November 1914, Tsingtao fell to the Japanese,supported by a small infantry contingent from its ally Great Britain.45 Bythe end of 1914, Japan had seized all Germany’s Pacific colonies and in1915 Japanese warships cruised off California.

In July 1916, Russia recognized Japanese ascendancy over most of China,the issue which had essentially provoked the Russo-Japanese War.46 Japanhad thus knocked out two of Europe’s empires from the Far East, butironically it was Japan’s ally, Britain, which now seemed to pose the great-est obstacle to Japan’s further ambitions. Nevertheless, the Japanese placeda naval squadron of fourteen warships under British command in Malta forconvoy-protection duties,47 and when the USA entered the war Japan andthe USA became allies of a kind. Yet the Japanese became increasingly scep-tical about relations with the USA, and in July 1917 the Navy MinisterKato Tomosabuo told the Japanese Cabinet that the United States hadbecome a hypothetical enemy. That year Germany sought an alliance withJapan in support of a Mexican attack on the USA to regain territory lost in1848;48 but Germany’s plans were revealed to the USA in the ZimmermannTelegram, precipitating the USA’s entry into the war.49

Anti-Japanese feeling remained common in the USA, and in March 1917President Wilson tried unsuccessfully to suppress W.R. Hearst’s film Patriawhich showed Japanese troops invading the USA from Mexico andcommitting atrocities. Yet both the USA and Japan were pragmatic in secur-ing their interests. On 2 November 1917, the Lansing–Ishii Agreementestablished that the USA recognized Japan’s special interests in Manchuria,and in return Japan agreed to the USA’s having equal commercial accessto China. A further secret protocol agreed that neither would takeadvantage of the European war to seek special privileges at the other’sexpense. On 21 August 1918, American forces, deploying to Siberia on anuncertain mission during the Russian Civil War, stopped to refuel in

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Nagasaki, and for a short time seem to have accepted orders from Japanesecommanders.50

The First World War weakened the European empires in the Far East andstrengthened Japan’s position in Asia. After Germany’s defeat in the FirstWorld War, Gustav Stresemann warned his countrymen not to rejoice at thereduced strength of the British in East Asia: ‘The liquidation of the EastAsian branch of the British economy’, for its transfer to the Japanese, would‘mark a significant defeat for the entire White race’.51

The USA, however, was the true ‘winner’ of the First World War. On 28July 1915, Rear Admiral A.M. Knight, President of the US Naval WarCollege (NWC) observed, ‘The present almost world-wide war appears tobe a struggle for industrial and commercial supremacy; or more concretely,for control of the markets and the carrying trade of the world.’52 Therelatively unscathed USA was aware of how its economic power, and thecrippling effects of 3 years of war on other belligerents, would bolster itsposition in the world. Its enemies would be defeated and its allies virtuallybankrupted. In July 1917, Woodrow Wilson noted that the USA would beable to force its own terms, not merely on Germany, but also on France andBritain: ‘When the war is over we can force them to our way of thinking,because by that time they will, among other things, be financially in ourhands.’53

Many saw the First World War as but the beginning of a longer and morevicious racial struggle. The Japanese feared that it indicated that race wasat the heart of international conflict; and that it would ultimately manifestitself in a terrible Armageddon between the ‘White’ and ‘Yellow’ races.Yamagata Aritomo believed that Japan had to ally itself more closely to its‘race-ally’ China, but also to seek good relations with Britain and the USAto avert catastrophe.

On 27 July 1915, Captain W.L. Rogers explained the US Navy’s ‘worldview’. ‘As the world fills up and strong and virile peoples find they mustexpand or starve, the victors must finally challenge the United States.’54 Inthese circumstances, he maintained, ‘the code of international mannerswhich we call “international law” will become as of little force as is thecode of individual manners in a panic-stricken crowd.’55 The desire for‘Lebensraum’ was noted, albeit in other words, by the US Navy GeneralBoard Memorandum No. 21 of 1918 which observed of dynamic races,‘When their racial characteristics are virile and militaristic, and their formof government autocratic, strong tendency towards forcible expansion mustbe expected. Germany and Japan are nations which fulfil theseconditions.’56 Others would have argued that this was the very dynamicwhich had propelled White Europeans around the world, especially acrossNorth America and into the Pacific, and been celebrated by them with sometriumphalism as Manifest Destiny.

In 1921, the American Admiral R.R. Belknap expressed his concernsabout the ‘unification of the Yellow races’ under Japan, ‘with effect too


far-reaching on White civilization for such a possible eventuality to beaccepted. The outcome would threaten our race.’57 It was in these preceptsthat the idea of an inevitable war with Japan took root; and subsequentJapanese behaviour in China seemed to confirm the image of the Japaneseas both racially delinquent and dangerous, just as they had often beendescribed in contemporary interpretations of Social-Darwinian theory.

The war blew away the myth of the Whiteman’s invincibility and stirredAsian passions. In his book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy of 1920, Lothrop Stoddard asserted that ‘The Russo-JapaneseWar is one of those landmarks in human history whose significance increaseswith the lapse of time . . .The legend of White invincibility was shattered, theveil of prestige that draped White civilization was torn aside . . . ’.58 He sawthe War as ‘an Asian revolt against White supremacy’, which had beenfollowed by the ‘White world’s’ descent into a ‘Peloponnesian War’ in1914–18. Men such as Madison Grant, the Chairman of the New YorkZoological Society, saw the advance of the ‘lesser races’ of Asia as a lethalthreat to the Nordic race, what he termed ‘The Great Race’. Stoddardbelieved that ideas of ‘survival of the fittest’ had encouraged a fatal,arrogant complacency in the West, for it had overlooked the possibilitythat the ‘best’ might succumb to the ‘worst’ when conditions favoured ‘thelow type’.

In the 1920s some felt that the Europeans were living through the lastcycle of their civilization. The poet Gottfried Benn predicted that Europewould fall to the Slavs and Mongols, ‘the last strenuous, self-assertion of anancient race’.59 There were calls for White solidarity against the Yellowthreat. In 1925, Sir Leo Chiozza Money acknowledged that ‘the rifle ormachine-gun or aeroplane or “chemicals” may arm a Yellow attack uponthe West’, but thought it far more likely that the West would be destroyedby ‘race suicide and internecine war’.60 He urged the White races to give uptheir fratricidal rivalries and that European nations form a federation.

Equally, if the White races did not expand and occupy the other territo-ries of the world, they could not expect ‘the rest of the world – the greatmajority of its people – to be debarred from inhabiting and profiting bywhat the White refuses to develop’.61 The notion of Lebensraum and theassertion of Terra Nullius doctrine now seemed to militate against theEuropeans. It was not merely un-populated land which troubled ChiozzaMoney, but ‘empty cradles’ constituting some kind of evolutionary reverse.He believed that Western ethics, law, philosophy, art and science woulddecline along with European populations, and he maintained that, ‘inEurope and America alike, the White races appear to be dying off from thetop downwards, in Britain, in especial, the most intelligent people arerefraining from rearing families’.62

The Scotsman, J.H. Curle, perhaps influenced by the experiences of theFirst World War, took a dark view of the human condition in a naturalworld of unremitting violence, with its ‘widespread killing, blotting out of

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life, and wantonness throughout the organic world’.63 He fretted that ‘If wedo not take drastic steps about our breeding, the British Race – all thewonderful White Race – will decline and its meaning for the world’s futurefade away.’64 White culture was seen to be in as much danger from its ownproletariat as from outside. This stirred debate about eugenics and Curlepredicted war with the masses of the ‘unfit’ who would seek to thwart theeugenic legislation which he deemed necessary to contain them and topromote the one in twenty-five possessing ‘what is good in the British’.65

He saw the USA as the future leader of the Anglo-Saxons, even though raceper se might no longer be significant. ‘In the United States, the Britishstrain may disappear outwardly (but) many of its qualities remain . . . theAmericans will become materially the greatest White people.’66

Japan increasingly saw the Far East as its just and necessary domain, andcontrol over China as the highest priority. In 1918 Japan sent a large forceto Siberia asserting that conviction. The collapse of Germany was a blow toJapan, for the continuation of the war would have further weakened itsEuropean rivals, while allowing it to consolidate its position in Asia.67 Onthe other hand, the longer the war went on the more powerful the USAwould also become, and even by 1918 the once virtually unarmed USA hadbecome a great military power.

Yet the USA was accommodating. After the First World War, PresidentWilson agreed to let the Japanese keep Shantung,68 and was condemned forit by the likes of Henry Cabot Lodge on the grounds that it appeared tooblige the USA to provide military assistance to the Japanese to hold ontotheir gains. Lodge called the Japanese ‘the coming danger of the world’ and‘the Prussia of the Far East’.69 In 1921, the American Professor J.O. Dealeydeclared, ‘If Japan is allowed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, it meansultimately a war of races, the struggle of the Yellows and the Brownsagainst the Whites, under the leadership of a Prussianized Japan.’70

In 1924 President Coolidge, a strong supporter of the preservation of ‘theNordic race’, signed the Exclusion Act in order ‘to prevent our cherishedinstitutions’ being ‘diluted by a stream of alien blood’.71 The offence causedin Japan did much to negate any goodwill arising from the WashingtonTreaty of 1922. One effect was to encourage Japanese emigrationelsewhere, and for Japan to work more closely with what it regarded askindred races in Asia. Japan was angered by criticism of this Japaneseemigration to the Asian mainland, and Earl Balfour observed that ifWhite nations refused to allow Japanese immigration, ‘It was somewhatunreasonable to say that she [Japan] was not to expand in a country wherethere was a Yellow race.’72

The Japanese ultra-nationalist, Hashimoto Kingoro maintained thatthere were only three ways that Japan could escape its problem of over-population: emigration, find a larger place for its produce in world marketsor expand its territory. The first was not permitted by the anti-Japaneseimmigration policies of other nations and world markets were increasingly


being closed by tariff barriers. That left expansion as the preferred option.Hashimoto denied that this would entail annexation by Japan, ratherthe Japanese were ‘looking for a place overseas where Japanese capital,Japanese skills and Japanese labour can have free play, free from theoppression of the White race’.73 Hashimoto complained that if the Whiterace believed that Japan’s occupation of Manchuria had been excessivelyviolent,

Ask which country it was that sent warships and troops to India, SouthAfrica and Australia . . . and proclaimed these territories as theirown . . . They will invariably reply, these lands were all lands inhabitedby untamed savages. These people did not know how to develop theabundant resources of their land for the benefit of mankind. Thereforeit was the wish of God . . . to develop these undeveloped lands . . . Wouldit not then be God’s will and the will of Providence that Japan go thereand develop those resources for the benefit of mankind?74

The mood was set by Hirohito’s enthronement in 1928, when newspa-pers characterized the coming Showa era in terms of Japan’s youth and itsmission to become the world’s hub and guide to all peoples.75 MatsuokaYosuke, who was to become Foreign Minister in July 1940, noted that‘Japan is expanding, and what country in its expansion has ever failed to betrying to its neighbours? Ask the American Indian or Mexican howexcruciatingly trying the young United States used to be once upon a time.’76

In 1929, Ikezaki Tadakata advocated expansion into China to accom-modate Japan’s growing population; and that year Ishiwara Kanji drafted aplan to solve the ‘Manchurian and Mongolian problem’ and ‘to change ourcountry’s destiny’. In 1930 he wrote that ‘China is not a unified nation. Itis Japan’s divine mission to assist the Chinese people. The four races ofJapan, China, Korea and Manchuria will share a common prosperity . . . .’77

Britain’s concern for the security of its Far Eastern possessions was mademore urgent after the Washington Conference of 1921–2 when, followingan apparent American threat to recognize Sinn Fein in Ireland, it abruptlydropped its alliance of 21 years with Japan.78 The Treaty led to thescrapping of the bulk of the Royal Navy’s capital ships, removing theirprotection from Britain’s far-flung Empire. When the Anglo-JapaneseTreaty was not renewed, Admiral of the Fleet Lord Chatfield noted, ‘Wehad weakened most gravely our Imperial strategic defence. We had turneda proved friend . . . into a potential and powerful foe.’79

That potential ‘foe’ felt itself to be very much the victim, but notnecessarily the loser in any future conflict. If Japan and America Fight(1921) by Sato Kojiro, ‘the Japanese Bernhardi’, criticized the USA as thesource of Japan’s problems. He claimed that the USA advocated an ‘opendoor’ policy, but was all the time pursuing an imperial policy in East Asia.He contrasted the corrupt ‘gold poisoning’ of the USA with the spirit and

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willpower of the Japanese. In any war with the USA, ‘bands of death-daringmen . . . thrown in upon San Francisco would be very interesting indeed’.80

Sato was certain that Japanese spirit would confound the mathematics ofsuperior force ratios. ‘To divide four by two and obtain two is an ordinarymaterial judgement. But if we should obtain three, an invisible coefficient[the Japanese spirit] must have been multiplied by the visible coefficient.’81

In 1926, J.H. Curle described Japan’s strategic imperative ‘to exploitlarge areas of China and the unlimited Chinese markets. Here she will standno dictation from the Whites; she will surrender China to one people only –to the Chinese themselves, when at last they awake from their sleep.’82 Suchan awakening would one day have profound consequences for the entireglobal economy.

The Chinese are a world personality. Their racial energy isappalling . . . being brilliant and daring traders . . . they would make theworld if they had the chance. They are a protean people . . . the mostcapable and efficient race in the world . . . They have no military skill . . .but when it acquires knowledge of science . . . we will see tremendousferments at work . . . with its appalling energy the old economics of theworld are liable to go up in smoke.83

The invasion of the Philippines was discussed at the Japanese War Collegeas early as the 1920s and General Tanaka Giichi is reputed to have submit-ted a secret blueprint for Japanese expansion to the Emperor on 25 July1927. The document, known as the ‘Tanaka Memorial’ has never been foundand is generally assumed to have been a Chinese forgery, if it ever existed.Whether genuine or not, the ideas contained in the ‘Memorial’ matched, to alarge extent, the events of the years that followed: an attack on China,followed by offensives into South-East Asia and Australasia and war againstthe USA and European imperial powers. Stories of such Japanese ambitionswere known to Roosevelt and Stimson,84 and the idea that this mightsomehow be Japan’s ongoing policy, albeit pursued by other means, hasexcited much anti-Japanese sentiment since the Second World War.85

The future Admiral, C.W. Nimitz,86 believed that historical evidenceshowed war to be the prevailing human condition and that until it could beabolished, force and right would jointly rule the world. In his NWC thesisof 1922, he noted that Japan was bound to prepare its armed forces, buildingits strength for the time when it was able to ‘stop by force our continualobstruction of her policies’.87 In 1926, the future naval commander at PearlHarbour, H. Kimmel, noted that war with Japan was inevitable if its expan-sionist policies continued.

Race and cultural awareness played an increasingly important part inshaping the views of future American military leaders; and it seems thatthis common cultural outlook and collective self-confidence contributedmightily to the effectiveness of the US Navy in subsequent decades.88


Between the wars, each class at the NWC received thirteen lectures on the‘scientific’ subject of race and from 1922–37 Lothrop Stoddard was theleading expert on the subject. From 1931–7, he lectured annually on ‘RacialAspirations as the Foundation of National Policy’. In 1935, one third of thebooks reviewed at the NWC were about Japan. One sixth were aboutthe control of raw materials and the remainder were about race and Social-Darwinism.

In 1929, amidst economic recession, the USA stopped the interest-freeloans it had been giving the Japanese to prevent their incursions into China.Japan also believed that the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 discriminatedagainst Japanese trade, and it set about creating its own autonomous tradesphere.89 There was concern in the USA that China might come to termswith Japan and that India might throw out the British and reach a similaraccommodation. There was fear that the chasm between the Oriental andthe Occidental cultures would increasingly be perceived in racial terms. TheUSA therefore saw a need to keep China an ally and not let it become a partof the ‘Asia for the Asian’ movement.

Some Britons took a more sceptical view about China ever makingprogress. Contempt for the Chinese was expressed by Sir Alexander Cadoganfrom the British Embassy in Nanking in the 1930s, ‘What was wrong withChina was that there was something wrong with the Chinese – something atleast that made them unable properly to adjust to Western standards.’90

On 7 January 1932, the USA condemned the Japanese creation of thepuppet state of Manchukuo; and this ‘Stimson Doctrine’ asserted the rightof the USA to guarantee the sovereignty of China. The Monroe Doctrinehad, in effect, spread halfway around the globe. It was for these reasonsthat, in the 1920s and 1930s, the USA rather than the USSR emerged inJapanese minds as the primary military, racial and cultural power curbingtheir imperial aspirations. Meanwhile in the USSR, Japanese expansion inManchuria was seen to be but the first step of an advance into Mongoliaand Siberia.

The idea that Japan was surrounded by hostile powers was fundamentalto much of Japanese thinking between the World Wars. The Japanese fearedthat the USA would link up ‘The Three A’s’: America, Alaska and Asia, bya tunnel under the Bering Straits, threatening Japan from the north as wellas from its bases in the Philippines. In 1932, Ikezaki Tadakata recom-mended seizing Guam and the Philippines at the outset of war with theUSA. To compound this, the Japanese felt threatened by Nationalist Chinaand a Communist USSR from the west. A film of 1933 paraphrased thewords of the War Minister General Araki Sadao,

Can we expect the waves of the Pacific of tomorrow to be as calm asthey are today? It is the holy mission of Japan to establish peace in theOrient . . . The day will come when we will make the whole world lookup to our national virtues.91

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At the London Naval Conference of 1934, the Japanese asked for navalparity with Great Britain and the USA but were offered 70 per cent, leavingthem as bitter as they had been with the outcome of the internationalnegotiations of 1895 and 1905. Japan believed that it was becoming subjectto an essentially Anglo-American economic order in the Pacific, whichconstrained its growth once it had become too competitive.

The world has witnessed the conquest, by the White races of thecoloured peoples. Japan too was once treated as if she were a dominionof White races . . . China is like an unchaste woman. She is a sycophantbefore the stronger, and a braggart before the weaker.92

Books such as The Rising Tide of Colour93 persuaded the Japanese of thefundamental divide between East and West, and General Tanaka Giichiadvocated closer cooperation with China. Prime Minister Prince Konoe sawJapan’s task to be one not merely of dominating China but also of under-taking an altruistic mission, ‘the development and not the ruin of China. Itis China’s cooperation and not conquest that Japan desires.’94 In 1938, aJapanese official informed the US naval attaché in Shanghai that thepurpose of Japanese policy was to drive all Whites from China, destroyChinese industry and control Chinese customs.

The naval rivalry of 1919–29 had been more between Britain and theUSA than between those two and Japan; and Anglophobia in the USAovershadowed the influence of its Anglo-Saxon elite. In the early 1920s the USNavy maintained Plan RED, the Atlantic Strategic War Plan, based on a warwith Great Britain, resulting from the latter’s alliance with Japan. PlanRED–ORANGE hypothesized a war in two oceans with the need to defeatGreat Britain in the Atlantic first, before defeating Japan in the Pacific.95 Thisview soon changed as the latter emerged as the primary threat; although in theevent, the logic of winning against a European enemy first again prevailed.

The idea grew that the USA should become a global force to be unleashedon its rejuvenated mission and destiny. Captain D.W. Knox maintained that‘The United States must eliminate altruism from its national strategy.’96 Thenotion that a future war would have a cultural dimension was expressed inthe crisis of 1931–3 by the US Secretary of State, Stimson, who maintainedthat it was ‘almost impossible that two such different civilizations’ as theUSA and Japan could avoid clashing head-on.97

The USA was effectively an East Asian power only by proxy; and in the1930s that proxy was China, just as it was Japan after 1945. When Japansought once more to establish its position in Manchuria in the 1930s, it wasthus bound to confront the USA as well, rather as Russia’s advance intoManchuria in 1900 had set the course for war with Japan.

J.O. Richardson bemoaned the fact that the American public were asunlikely to support entanglements in Asia as they were commitments inEurope. General D. MacArthur saw the interrelationship of trade and


military power and the consequent importance to the USA of its base in thePhilippines. ‘The Pacific will be the theatre of future commercial andmilitary struggles between nations . . . and these Islands will be the center ofall such future contests for supremacy.’98 Such notions had a racial andcultural dimension. One American Governor of the Philippines between theWorld Wars believed that the USA should retain the islands in order tosustain ‘Anglo-Saxonism in the Western Pacific in the Far East and inIndia’.99 It was not surprising that many Asians saw little to distinguishAmerican activity in the Pacific region from that of other ‘Europeans’.

The supply of raw materials was a prominent theme in the strategicdebates of the 1930s, being seen to favour the Anglo-Saxons and toconstitute a weakness for the Japanese. Brooks Emeny regarded the USA’ssituation as the most favourable, except ‘in the case of open hostilities withthe British’. On the other hand,

the raw material position . . . of her Empire is not only comparable toours in many ways, but largely complementary . . . the United Stateswould have no problem of procurement in time of war so long as theBritish, possessed of their Empire, were either allied or neutral.100

He saw that

The richest raw material regions of the world are in great part underthe dominance of the Anglo-American Powers: and that these twonational groups, which account for over sixty percent of the world’sindustrial output and exercise financial or sovereign control overseventy-five percent of the mineral resources, hold the balance of powerin so far as the essential commodities of war are concerned.101

The Japanese shared a similar view and drew the natural conclusionsregarding their own vulnerability to encirclement by the Anglo-Saxons. By1933, the Kwantung Army noted the vast coal and iron-ore deposits ofnorthern China and that

If we are careless, these resources will end up in English or Americanhands . . . Talking about ‘International Morality’ and allowing others toget the jump on us, will give Japan the short end of the stick . . . takingnorth China is vital to Japan.102

Prime Minister Prince Konoe believed that unequal distribution of landand natural resources cause war. ‘We cannot achieve real peace until wechange the present irrational international state of affairs. We cannot waitfor a rationalizing adjustment of the world system.’103 Speculating on wherethe solution might lie, in July 1937, Konoe said, ‘I think North China isvital, particularly for our economic development.’104

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The Japanese understood their material inferiority when fighting a waragainst the Western powers and the need to win before that difference couldtell, using surprise, tenacity and Sato’s invisible coefficient, the Japanesespirit. In 1932, Ikezaki Tadakata had decried any calculus based on mater-ial factors, saying that the Japanese could ‘fight on with our bare fists ifnecessary’.105

Nevertheless, the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ were far from united. From 1919 to1932, Anglo-American relations were damaged by memories of the USA’slate entry into the First World War and the USA’s decision not to join theLeague of Nations. British diplomats saw the threat of an alliance with theUSA, and even with the USSR, as a useful lever against the Japanese; butthe Americans were loath to enter any formal relationship with Britain forfear of antagonizing the Japanese, but also because they did not want tobe an ally of the British Empire in Asia. In 1934, some American policymakers suspected that Britain was seeking to revive the Anglo-JapaneseAlliance to protect its possessions in the Far East. Yet by the early 1930s,the Japanese Navy seemed convinced that Britain would necessarily be itsfuture opponent, since every act of expansion by Japan would inevitablyintrude upon Britain’s interests.

By the mid-1930s, most Americans believed that their participation in theGreat War had been a profound mistake and that a similar commitmentwas not to be repeated. Britain was usually seen as the cause of the USAbeing dragged into that war. The British were also condemned for notstanding up to Hitler, and for creating an environment where fascism couldthrive.106 In 1936, Roosevelt refused to lodge a protest about Germany’sreoccupation of the Rhineland and likened Britain’s lack of action followingthe annexation of Austria to a ‘Chief of Police making a deal with theleading gangsters . . . ’.107 On the other hand, Roosevelt himself took noaction.

The Neutrality Act of 1937 was primarily intended to keep the USA outof European wars. In Chicago on 5 October Roosevelt condemned Japan’sattack on China but was accused of trying to get involved in an Asian warto save Britain’s empire in the Far East. In 1938, A.W. Griswold’s book, FarEastern Policy of the United States108 argued that the USA and Britain hadno community of interests in Asia.

A clash between the USA and Japan may have been deemed inevitable,and if that were the case, then in practical terms, the Japanese invasion ofChina was in some respects of strategic benefit to the USA. The USA didnot send decisive assistance to the Chinese, whose precarious survivalpinned down a massive Japanese army at great expense in the years beforethe USA’s own long-anticipated war with Japan. In 1940 its war in Chinaconsumed 40 per cent of Japan’s national budget, and 1.1 million Japanesetroops were serving overseas. This made American economic pressure andmilitary power even more effective when it was eventually applied. Whenwar with the Western powers came, sufficient Japanese troops to invade


Australia or India were not available – they were already committed inChina, where Japan now had 2,100,000 men. There were also curiousinconsistencies in the American reaction to Japanese operations in China.Even after the widely condemned attacks by Japan on Chinese cities, Japanapparently continued to receive essential war supplies from the USA;109 andby 1938, Japan was consuming 43,000 tons of 100-octane aircraft fuelfrom the USA for its war in China.110 Even in 1940, the British weredismayed at American sales of aviation fuel and aircraft parts to Japan.111

Despite the USA warning Britain against any deal with Japan, in 1937Great Britain concluded that no support could be expected from the USAin the Far East in the event of a Japanese attack. Neville Chamberlainbitterly remarked, ‘It is always best and safest to count on nothing from theAmericans but words.’112 The challenge was to find a way to change that,for the British Government feared that war with Japan was imminent andthat Britain might stand alone. In 1938, Admiral Chatfield wrote, ‘I haveno doubt that sooner or later it will be our turn to face the music.’113

The British had understood the need for a dry dock in the Far East. Theyconsidered Sydney, but over 30 years planned a massive investment in thefacilities and defences of Singapore. If a serious Japanese threat were todevelop, Singapore would have to hold out until the British fleet arrived.However, progress in developing Singapore in the 1920s and 1930s wasdisappointingly slow and there were insufficient funds to make the baselarge enough to take the main battle fleet. The British relief plan seemedeven less credible after the London Naval Treaty imposed further restric-tions on the building and replacement of warships.

In 1932 the British had assessed that, in an emergency, a fleet could sailto relieve Singapore within 38 days. In 1938, Major General W.G.S. Dobbiewrote a secret appreciation of the defence of Malaya and Singapore notingthat Singapore might well be attacked from Malaya; and by 1939 thecommander of Singapore reckoned that he needed 556 front-line aircraft todefend the island. The time estimated for a fleet to sail to the relief ofSingapore had by now risen to 180 days. In the event, there were only 158largely obsolete British aircraft available to defend Malaya, and it took theJapanese just 70 days to capture Singapore.

‘Imperial overstretch’ was undisguisable. Yet as late as March 1939,Churchill appeared indifferent to the Japanese threat, writing toChamberlain, ‘Consider how vain is the menace that Japan will send a fleetand army to conquer Singapore.’114 Nevertheless, the British War Cabinettook a gloomy view of prospects in the Far East. Its minute of 8 August1940 noted that since Britain was, ‘Unable to send the fleet to the FarEast . . . it must avoid (an) open clash with Japan.’ It recommended that noBritish action be taken if the Japanese attacked Siam and Indochina, or ifDutch possessions were attacked and the Dutch did not resist. This soonbecame known to the Japanese Government,115 and was reported by theNavy Minister Oikawa Koshiro at a conference on 27 December 1940.

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It was clear that the British would only be sending their Grand Fleet to thePacific in extremis, and that it was unlikely that this ‘Baltic’ fleet wouldhave to be fought at a ‘Tsushima’. A ‘Tsushima’ would instead have to befought against the ‘The Great White Fleet’.

In May 1940, in a vain hope of American support, Churchill even invitedRoosevelt to send American warships to visit Singapore, ‘to keep theJapanese dog quiet in the Pacific’.116 There seemed little hope of Americanintervention in Europe either, but knowing this to be vital, Churchillresolved on 18 May 1940, ‘I shall drag the United States in.’117 It was onlyon 29 December 1940 that Roosevelt declared to his people that the USAwould support Britain’s war effort as ‘the great arsenal of democracy’,118

but that was not the same as going to war.Americans such as Henry Morgenthau were suspicious of Britain’s

attempts to persuade the USA to take a tougher approach in its dealingswith Japan, seeing deeper economic rivalries at stake: ‘It is an internationalbattle between Japan, Great Britain and ourselves, and China is the bone inthe middle.’119 Senator Wheeler noted that fighting Japan would simply be‘undertaking to preserve the British domination of Asia’.120 In May 1941, aGallup Poll showed 79 per cent of the American people were against enter-ing the war voluntarily. Even at Placentia Bay in August 1941, theUSA would not give Britain an undertaking to go to war in the event of aJapanese move southwards.

This reluctance contrasted with the USA’s readiness to engage theGerman Navy in the Atlantic. German U-boats attacked American ships,but not on orders from above, and the US Navy retaliated.121 In July 1941,Roosevelt issued a ‘shoot on sight’ directive to attack German U-boats.Admiral King’s Operation Order 6–41 of 19 July 1941 directed the USNavy to attack any German or Italian ship within 100 miles of anAmerican-escorted convoy, in effect declaring war on Germany over4 months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. Nevertheless, itseems that Roosevelt did all he could to ensure that clashes with theGerman Navy were avoided.122 Had the US Navy actually attacked GermanU-boats, then Japan would have been required under the terms of theTripartite Pact to come to Germany’s aid, and Pearl Harbour wouldprobably have been placed on a high state of alert. As it was, Kimmel wasnot informed of King’s directive.123

In 1893, Mahan remarked upon an American inclination to expresssympathy for the suffering of other nations but to take no practical actionto prevent it until ‘the interests of the United States as a nation’ were atstake.124 From a practical American perspective, the USA’s entry into theFirst and Second World Wars were both at times when its opponents hadexpended much of their capacities. They also occurred when its future allieswere approaching exhaustion and the American economy was benefitingfrom their efforts, ensuring that the USA that would be the true, in somerespects sole, victor and the primary arbiter of the peace, as it had been at


Portsmouth in 1905 and at Versailles in 1919. The strategy of combiningthe maximum power of decision, economic growth and the minimumexpenditure of lives proved a highly effective one for the USA in thetwentieth century.

While Christopher Thorne125 has pointed out the tensions in Anglo-American relations in the pre-war years, Greg Kennedy126 has shown thatbehind the public pronouncements, close working relationships developedbetween the militaries of the two countries, which stood them in good steadwhen war came. At heart, Roosevelt saw the survival of Britain and itsinterests as inseparable from those of the USA. He feared that the Britishfleet might fall into German hands, pitting the might of all Europe’s naviesand Japan’s against the US Navy, standing alone. Rather, he saw the RoyalNavy as a future, junior partner of the US Navy in policing the world.Roosevelt had to be mindful of and manage isolationist and Anglophobicpublic opinion, but saw the necessity of preparing for war with Britain asan ally.

Nevertheless, it was only from 1936 that Roosevelt started to persuadeAmerican public opinion of the need to engage with the world’s problems,especially in the Far East. At the same time he permitted closer relationshipsbetween the British and American navies which had a long tradition ofcooperation in the Pacific. The balance of power in the Far East was,however, complex for both Britain and the USA wanted to use Japaneseimperialism to contain the USSR, yet did not want it to crush China.

The two nations had a parallel, not a joint relationship in the Far Eastand they shared little common ground on European policy. One wasisolationist by instinct and the other deeply committed to empire. Theremay have been no plans to fight together in the Pacific, but there was a clearunderstanding as to how a war would be fought. The alliance was not somuch the result of any sense of shared values, but rather a manifestation ofthe balance of power at work in satisfying British and American interests inthe face of the threat from Japan.

Despite its lingering isolationism, the USA’s determination to confront anexpansionist Japan may well have precipitated war in the Pacific. It waswidely accepted by American planners that cutting off oil supplies to theJapanese would precipitate their invasion of the Dutch East Indies. In 1938,Admiral H.E. Yarnell recommended to Roosevelt that the USA and its allies‘strangle’ Japan to death by denying it raw materials. Admiral Leahy, Chiefof US Naval Operations had earlier proposed a plan to blockade Japan, bywhich after three months ‘Japan will be broken economically.’127 In theevent, the USA, Britain and the Netherlands cut off oil supplies to Japanbetween 25 and 27 July 1941.128 It has also been argued that Americanplans, framed by Secretary Morgenthau and Chennault, the American airadviser to the Chinese, to bomb Japan into submission provoked theJapanese to pre-empt this action by attacking Pearl Harbour.129 On14 November 1941, General Marshall briefed the press that the USA was

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planning an offensive war against Japan, and this was leaked to the NewYork Times, which published the story on 19 November 1941.130

Churchill was anxious that if the USSR were knocked out in 1942, whileBritain still ‘stood alone’, then Britain’s situation would become unsustainable.He hoped for salvation through the eventual joining of the English-speakingpeoples; and in 1941 there was discussion of how Britons and Americansmight share civic rights in each other’s countries. The entry of the USA intothe war in any way possible became Britain’s highest priority; and byNovember 1941 Britain had stated that it would accept American leader-ship in a future war in the Pacific.131 When the British Ambassador toTokyo, Sir Robert Craigie, wrote a scathing account of the incompetence ofthe final American negotiations with Japan, Churchill expressed surprisethat Craigie saw the outcome as a disaster – for him it was a blessing thatwould lead Japan to war.

By November 1941, Britain had agreed to support the USA if it wasattacked by the Japanese, but this undertaking was not reciprocated. TheUSA calculated that the British had no option but to offer unconditionalsupport, while the USA did not need to. On 28 November 1941, the USSecretary of State for War, Stimson, did acknowledge that if the Japaneseinvaded Siam and if the British fought, the Americans would have to aswell. On the other hand, Cordell Hull later told Admiral Stark that if theJapanese had avoided attacking American possessions, the USA might nothave fought them.132 It seems that it was only with a causal pledge byRoosevelt in the first week of December 1941 that the USA guaranteedcooperation with Britain in the Far East should Japan attack; but if suchassurances were made, they were not passed down the American chain ofcommand.

On 7 December 1941, Churchill told the American Ambassador, JohnWinant, that Britain would declare war on Japan if it attacked the USA. Heasked if the USA would declare war on Japan if it attacked Britain, andWinant replied correctly, but unhelpfully, that that would be up toCongress.133 On hearing news of the attack on Pearl Harbour on the radio,Churchill’s first words were, ‘We shall declare war on Japan.’ An alarmedWinant sought to restrain Churchill, ‘Good God, you can’t declare war ona radio announcement.’134 Yet on the day of the attack, the USA and Britainwere de facto allies only against Japan, for Roosevelt made no publicmention of war with Germany. Churchill’s hopes were only to be fulfilledthanks to Hitler’s declaration of war135 on the USA on 11 December.136

Many in Japan and the West believed that the inimical ideologies ofJapan and the USSR probably made war between them unavoidable. Japanhad been reluctant to attack in the Far East lest the USSR ally itself withEurope’s imperial powers and the USA against it while it was alreadyheavily engaged in China.137 In March 1941, besides cementing relationswith Germany, the Japanese secured a neutrality treaty with the USSR. On12 April 1941, Matsuoka even offered Stalin Karachi as a warm-water


port.138 Stalin characterized the issue in racial and cultural terms, assuringthe Japanese Foreign Minister, Matsuoka Yosuke, that ‘We are bothAsiatics, Japan can now move south.’139

The possibility of a German attack on the USSR soon became clear, how-ever, and Germany agreed that should it go to war with the USSR, the bestassistance Japan could provide would be to attack the British in Singapore.On 27 May 1941, the Japanese told the Germans that they would reservetheir position in the event of war between the Axis and the USSR, evidentlyconcerned about creating further expensive commitments on the Asianmainland. Stalin’s reaction to the German invasion of June 1941 was oneof shock, similar to the effect created by the attacks on Port Arthur andPearl Harbour. The collapse of the USSR soon seemed inevitable. Hitlerurged the Japanese to join in its destruction before embarking together onthe great battle between the continents, the battle with the USA. Thestrength of Soviet resistance at Smolensk in late July made the Japanesecautious and on 9 August 1941, the Japanese decided not to intervene in theGerman–Soviet war.140 On the other hand, on 15 August 1941, Germanydid offer to declare war on the USA if Japan attacked it.141

From June 1941, the USSR was ‘fixed’ by Germany, and although theUSSR would now be Japan’s enemy, it was no longer regarded as such aserious threat to Japanese ambitions. The USSR was indeed now Britain’sally, but this carried less weight than the earlier unfulfilled threat of analliance of Britain with an unfettered USSR. Japan was no longer deterredand had a freer hand.

On the eve of world war, against this background of real politik, theJapanese continued to regard race as a substantial factor in their calcula-tions. Hara Yoshimichi, President of the Privy Council, speaking at theImperial Conference on 5 November 1941, noted that Great Britain,Germany and the United States, all had populations which

[B]elong to the White race . . . Hitler has said that the Japanese are asecond class race . . . I fear that if Japan begins a war against the UnitedStates and Great Britain, Great Britain, Germany and the United Stateswill come to terms, leaving Japan by herself . . . hatred of the Yellowrace might shift the hatred now being directed against Germany toJapan . . . We must give serious considerations to race relationsand exercise constant care to avoid being surrounded by the entireAryan race.142

He went on to note the historical importance of not giving in to Americanpressure: ‘If we were to give in, we would give up in one stroke, not onlyour gains in the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars, but also thebenefits of the Manchurian Incident’.143

The paradoxes and confusions about what these events meant in culturalterms were troubling but were made no clearer by war. Just before the

Grand strategy 83

attack on Pearl Harbour, one Japanese commentator sought to ‘square thiscircle’, defining Japan’s task as to ‘Asianize the Europeanization of Asia’.144

Of the attack on Pearl Harbour, Okuna Takao enthused that

All the feelings of inferiority of a coloured people from a backwardcountry, towards White people from the developed world, disappearedin that one blow . . . never in our history had we Japanese felt such pridein ourselves as a race as we did then.145

Some sought refuge in approaches that would circumvent the inevitableproblems of materiel inferiority – by ignoring them. At a conference inKyoto in July 1942 scholars identified ‘modernity’ as an essentiallyEuropean phenomenon and something to be overcome by the Orient. In asense, Shintoism, Bushido and Fascism had been combined in a ‘nativistrevolt’ by the ‘spiritual’ Orient against the materialism of the Occident,146

at least in the minds of some Japanese, but ironically using the tools ofWestern modernity to stage it.

Four years later in the face of catastrophe, the Japanese naval comman-der on Iwo Jima, Admiral Ichimaru, wrote a letter to President Rooseveltinforming him that ‘Only brute force rules the world’; and Japanesepropaganda claimed that the USA in battle had ‘no spiritual incentive andrelied upon material superiority’.147 Even in defeat some Japanese hopedthat the ‘spirit’ of the Orient might yet prevail because of it, rather as someRussians in 1905 had grimly welcomed their spiritual refreshment throughtheir own bloodshed. As the war came to a close, some philosophers atKyoto University saw Japan’s impending collapse as an opportunity torestore traditional values.


5 Military strategyThe paradox of inevitability and surprise

From 1907 to 1940, Japan’s naval strategy was essentially based on a planof ‘interception and attrition’. Following the Washington Conference, theJapanese Navy’s mission was to secure command of the Western Pacific,and as Japan’s strategy became more offensive, the location of the planned‘decisive battle’, the next Tsushima, moved further and further east, theconditions for success having been set by preliminary operations. Yet theforce ratios originally set for what was still a defensive strategy had scarcelychanged.

The Japanese Army faced even worse problems than did the Navy. Manyconservative officers rejected the modernization of the Japanese Army inthe 1920s, because Japan was a relatively poor country and could notexpect to win a war based on any material calculus. General Ueharadoubted that Japan even needed a technologically modern army to defeatChina or the USSR. Throughout the 1920s, Japanese military collegestaught the primacy of tactics over strategy;1 and in 1928, the General Staffrevived the Principles of Command which stressed the simple concept of anall-out offensive and the supreme importance of surprise attack and fight-ing spirit – 1904 and 1914, refought. The role of spiritual elements wasemphasized, and some even argued that strong firepower was inhuman.2

They were not alone. In the West after the shock of the First WorldWar there was also a growing rejection of ‘materialism’ and the ‘soul-killingtechnology’ of science which was seen in some way to have inspired it.

The Japanese strategy of 1941 would be similar to that of 1904, aswould the Japanese tactical approach – high morale, surprise, well-considereduse of ground and costly bayonet assaults. Every Japanese infantry manualfrom 1909 to 1945 stressed the role of the offensive, and training included‘spiritual education’ in the certainty of victory, in loyalty, tradition, dutyand esprit de corps.

The eventual triumph of new offensive tactics and technologies in 1918,combined with the imperative to avoid a long war of attrition, encouragedGermany to adopt an offensive strategy in the 1930s and to develop furtherthe tactical and operational means to prosecute it using tanks linked toclose air support by radio. The Japanese also sought to adapt their model

to exploit these offensive technologies, albeit on a more modest scale, butwith more emphasis on amphibious-air than land–air operations, ‘maritimeBlitzkrieg’. Amphibious concepts had developed rapidly after 1914 when theJapanese had carried out wide-ranging operations in the Pacific to seizeGerman islands. It was largely as a result of this experience that in 1941–2the Japanese were able to mount the largest amphibious operations yet seen.3

In land operations, however, the Japanese were far from innovative,sticking to what they believed to be the traditional key to success –determination and ‘spiritual’ factors. These values, especially whenexpressed in hand-to-hand combat at night, seemed to have been vindicatedin action against the Chinese in the late 1930s, and more significantly whenmatched against superior Soviet firepower in a surprise night attack at LakeKhasan on 31 July 1938. The Japanese attacked again at Khalkhin-Gol inJune 1939, but were repulsed by Soviet and Mongolian forces led byGeneral G. Zhukov. The clash was significant in that it persuaded theJapanese to avoid further clashes with the USSR and to seek softer targetsfor territorial expansion further to the south and east. Nevertheless, theJapanese’s confidence in their martial prowess, and belief in shock-action tolaunch a campaign, remained undimmed; but they would prove a costlycombination after 1941.

Throughout the 1930s, Japanese officers searched for alternatives to awar of attrition; they studied how they might achieve victory with a singlepre-emptive and decisive blow. In the West, the military lessons of theRusso-Japanese War seemed outmoded by the 1930s, relative to those ofthe First World War and in comparison to the new opportunities offered bymechanization and armoured warfare. In the Japanese mind, however, theyremained entirely relevant and a model for strategic planning. If war was tobe fought, Japan needed a quick success in the Far East, neutralizingAmerican power in the region, forcing it to operate at great distances acrossthe Pacific Ocean, rather as the great land mass of Siberia had acted as anobstacle to the Russians in 1904–5. Such a plan offered the possibility ofnegating the adverse correlation of materiel;4 but it depended upon the USAlosing its political resolve and agreeing to negotiate.5

Encouraging new evidence was soon available to support these ideas. Thesuccess of Germany’s campaign in France in May 1940 reinforced the viewthat speed and surprise could offer disproportionate advantages; andGermany’s need for quick victories over the massive forces of the USSR inthe summer of 1941 followed the same logic as Japan’s in 1904. This wasagain confirmed as the model for a future campaign in the Asia-Pacific the-atre. Disturbing flaws in this concept became apparent by the end of 1941;but by then Japan had committed itself to its own ‘BARBAROSSA’ and wasto suffer a similar fate to the Germans’, in a prolonged war of attrition inwhich its opponent had the materiel advantage.6

Prince Fushimi, Chief of the Japanese Naval Staff advised the Emperorthat it would be hard to achieve successes such as those obtained against the


Russians in 1905 and that ‘war with the United States must be avoided’.7

The Japanese Navy’s exercises of spring 1940 showed that Japan had nochance of winning a war; but neither the Navy Minister nor the Naval Chiefof Staff told the Japanese Government or the Army.8 From September 1940,the Japanese Navy’s opposition to war with the USA became marginalizedby the Army’s more aggressive position, and naval planners turned theirattention to how such a war might be won.

The implications of the Asia-Pacific strategic conundrum were consideredin remarkable and visionary detail by the British journalist and secret agentHector Bywater, over the 20 years prior to the attack on Pearl Harbour. Hisfirst book, Sea Power in the Pacific, was published in 1921 and becamerequired reading for all senior Japanese naval officers at the Imperial NavalAcademy and the Japanese Naval War College.

Under the Washington Treaty, the USA agreed not to build any newdefences on islands in the Western Pacific if the Japanese scrapped someships. Bywater saw this to be to Japan’s advantage and recommended thatthe USA build bases to ensure that it could support an island-hoppingcampaign, which he saw to be the key to eventual American success after aJapanese attack. Bywater debated his points with F.D. Roosevelt, but thelatter maintained that the USA and Japan were too geographically removedfrom each other to go to war.

Partly in response to Roosevelt’s scepticism, Bywater published a largerwork in 1925, The Great Pacific War.9 This analysed strategy in the Pacific,and received even more international attention. Bywater’s scenario beganwith a Japanese occupation of China in 1930, and the destruction of the USPacific Fleet, but ended with American victory, following a campaign fromHawaii, via Truk to the Philippines. Bywater’s new work was not popularwith those in the USA involved in framing US–Japanese policy. The UnitedStates Marine Corps (USMC) saw merit in Bywater’s approach, but receivedno support. There had been no change in the American War Plan ORANGEsince 1917, and there were no plans to build up bases in the Pacific. In theevent of trouble, the US fleet would sail directly to the Philippines. Bywaterregarded this as flawed, and saw an amphibious ‘island-hopping’ campaignthrough the South-East Pacific as the best solution.

The Japanese noted Bywater’s work but felt the ending was toopessimistic, for many believed that Japan could win. Japanese planningsince 1907 had been based on drawing the American fleet out into the seasoff Japan and destroying it in a traditional major fleet action. Yamamotostudied Bywater’s works while the naval attaché in Washington DC from1926–8, and was inspired to devise a new approach. In 1928, he lecturedon a possible war between Japan and the USA, drawing on Bywater’s ideas,maintaining that Japan would lose if it based its plan on defence. On3 December 1934, Bywater discussed his ideas with Yamamoto at the latter’ssuite at Grosvenor House in London, where he was staying as a delegate atthe Naval Conference. The commander of the subsequent air attack on

Military strategy 87

Pearl Harbour, Fuchida Mitsuo, also claimed that Bywater’s books hadinfluenced Japanese strategy.

It was agreed that maintaining the military and political initiative wasessential if such a strategy was to succeed. In 1934, a lecturer at theJapanese Imperial War College addressed a group of senior officersattending a secret course, saying that in future wars Japan would shortenthe preliminary negotiating period to prevent its opponent from seizing theinitiative. Accordingly, between 1935 and 1941 the idea of a pre-emptivedecisive battle at Pearl Harbour took shape, under Minoru Genda, directedby Yamamoto. Even though this marked a change to earlier plans, it wasstill steeped in the Japanese experience of 1904–5, and inspiration camefrom some unexpected quarters.

The irony was that Yamamoto, the architect and chief executor of thewounding blow at Pearl Harbour, opposed going to war with the USA onthe pragmatic grounds that Japan would most likely lose. He admired thepreparation and judgement shown by the Japanese Command in 1905 inbreaking off its war and seeking peace at a time when their forces seemedtriumphant. He fretted that this might not be achieved against the Allies, forthe Japanese people were unlikely to accept a compromise while their forceswere successful; by the time they might accept a deal, the Americans prob-ably would not, had they ever been inclined to, which was improbable.

Apocalypse, rather than negotiation, seemed the more likely outcome.Yamamoto noted that should Japan opt for war, half measures would failand the object should be not merely the seizure of some islands in thePacific and some negotiated settlement, but an American capitulation inthe White House. He wondered if Japan’s leaders comprehended thesacrifices that such a favourable outcome would require. He himself did notbelieve it was possible, given the balance of resources.10

The belief in spirit over technology was widespread, even though menlike Yamamoto and General Yamashita Tomoyuki were well informedabout the material resources and technologies of the West. Yamamoto hadspent years in the USA and had seen much of its industrial capacity.Yamashita visited Germany in December 1940 and reported that Britaincould not defeat Germany, and that the USA would not be ready to fight anAxis of Germany, Italy and Japan until 1944. However, by the time of hisreturn to Japan early in 1941, he reported on the power and efficiency ofWestern armaments industries, the importance of airpower and the prob-lems that Germany was having in defeating Britain. He warned members ofhis delegation not to encourage any idea of going to war with Britain andthe USA.

Yet Japanese observers who noted the resilience of London under airattack, and warned not to dismiss British power, were regarded as yet morewho had had their ‘heads turned by the West’.11 The Japanese were amazedat the early German victories in Europe, and decided that they must joinin to gain its benefits before it was over. Once Japan was at war, the


fundamentals could not be avoided. Yamamoto described it as a competitionbetween Japanese discipline and American technology.12

Yamamoto believed that the only hope was to inflict such early destruc-tion that it would have a decisive effect on the morale of the US Navy andthe American people.13 On 11 October 1941, he wrote, ‘I find my presentposition extremely odd – obliged to make up my mind to pursue unswerv-ingly, a course that is precisely the opposite of my personal views. Perhapsthis, too, is the will of Heaven.’14 As Japan was set on a course for war,Yamamoto noted,

Now that things have come to this pass, I’ll throw everything I have intothe fight, I expect to die in battle on board the Nagato.15 By that time, Iimagine, Tokyo will be set on fire at least three times and Japan reducedto a pitiful state . . . I don’t like it, but there is no going back now.16

Yamamoto’s plan called for a decisive early attack at Pearl Harbour andthe interception of an American fleet, before it could come to the relief ofAmerican Pacific island bases. It would be defeated in a major fleet action,his own ‘Trafalgar’ and second ‘Tsushima’. The problem was, however, thatthe attack on Pearl Harbour was itself intended to be the decisive blow,when the chances of it actually being so were more a matter of politicaljudgement about the psychology of the American response than any purelymilitary calculus.

The ‘decisive’ Pearl Harbour operation might prove a sudden andshocking blow, as was the attack on Port Arthur; but it was unlikely to bedecisive in the sense that Tsushima was.17 Tsushima caught Russia at thepoint where it could not sustain the war politically and had no immediatemeans of replacing its fleet. Although Russia remained extremely powerfuland its land forces were far from expended or beaten, by Spring 1905 it wasapproaching its ‘culminating point’ strategically, on the home front, if notin the field. In a sense, Togo’s knockout blow came after a year of materialand psychological attrition against a failing state. By comparison, in 1941,the USA had not yet begun to fight, had massive resources and the will toapply them. Yamamoto’s painful blow merely wakened the ‘sleeping giant’.The miscalculation was that the USA would negotiate, as the Russians hadin 1905 with American encouragement.18 The attacks on Pearl Harbourwere indeed as decisive in their way as the Battle of Tsushima, but only inas much as they ensured that the USA was bound to apply its full poweragainst Japan in a war which Japan could not be expected to win. It wasnot that the concept of a knockout blow was invalid, or that Tsushimawas a defective model, it was just that Pearl Harbour was not going to bea Tsushima in terms of timing or possible decisive scale. If anything this wasa tribute to Togo’s victory, immaculate in timing and proportion.

In the mid-1940s, Chihaya Masataka wrote a devastating critique ofJapanese strategy and tactics.19 He criticized the Japanese character and


cultural approach to complex strategic issues, holding these to be responsiblein large part for Japan’s downfall. He saw an emotional attachment to themodel of Tsushima, the single decisive battle, as an alibi for rigorousplanning and analysis, for success in such a sudden blow apparentlyobviated the requirement for all other uncomfortable considerations, onesfraught with internal political complexity and inter-Service rivalries.

Chihaya Masataka maintained that it was related characteristics such asreckless impatience, delusional thinking, short-sightedness and deficiency inendurance which blighted Japanese endeavours throughout the war: ‘Thegreat defect of the Japanese character is the lack of cooperative spirit.’20

Chihaya Masataka claimed that the prevailing group dynamic of theJapanese Navy leadership was one in which individuality was‘engulfed . . . absorbed and . . . annihilated . . . the Navy drifted into war byinertia’.21 Chihaya Masataka complained that Japan did not make adequateassessments of American power; that it did not study its enemies, theAmerican and British armies;22 and that its institutions were not capable ofcoherent and cohesive action but were plagued by individualism. Thisundermined cooperation in what would have to be a great and complexpiece of teamwork. He attributed to the Allies, overgenerously, great unityof purpose and actions, which the Japanese could not match. He claimedthat the Japanese underestimated the capacity of the ‘materialistic’ and‘spiritually degenerate’ Americans, believing that they could neither standup for an ideal such as the liberty which they proclaimed nor sacrifice theirindividuality in heroism in death. This analysis may seem surprising, for itwas displays of collective patriotism, cohesion, the capacity for self-sacrificeand team spirit, certainly at the tactical level, that so often impressedJapan’s enemies, as they had in 1904–5.

According to Chihaya Masataka, there was much in Oriental fable andtemperament to explain Japanese action ‘Let us seek life in death itself.’23

That Japan’s strategic miscalculation in 1941 was not appreciated at thetime, except by a few such as Yamamoto, does indeed seem to validateChihaya Masataka’s criticism. Yet, in a sense it was appreciated, andaccepted, in a strategic calculation which was indeed very ‘Japanese’. Japanhad no clear expectation of victory, it merely saw the opportunity to attackat Pearl Harbour as the only possible course in what appeared to be a hope-less strategic predicament. It accepted the risk, and there was a clear under-standing of that risk. Tojo argued,

When hardship comes, the people will gird up their loins. At the timeof the Russo-Japanese War, we took our stand with no prospect ofvictory, and that was the situation for one year, from the Battle of theYalu River. Yet we won.24

As Tojo explained, ‘Sometimes people have to shut their eyes and take theplunge.’25


The decision-making process which accepted such risks may bequestioned, but given its historical and cultural perspective, it seemed thatJapan’s only alternative would have been to accept that it was not a greatpower like Western nations, had no right to its own empire and that it wasa second-class nation for essentially racial and cultural reasons. Given thedetermination not to give up its new-found status, it did indeed risk all ona ‘spin of the wheel’, and was clear about the implications, just as it hadaccepted the equal odds on defeat in 1904. Yamamoto ‘accepted his fate’like any ancient Japanese hero and made a whole-hearted commitment tohis course of action once the decision to fight had been made. At the sametime, Yamamoto would probably have agreed with Clausewitz’s convictionthat ‘In the whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles agame of cards.’26 As an inveterate gambler, he was well equipped bytemperament to follow his chosen course.27

As Yamamoto had foreseen, the challenge for Japan, once committed,was how to replicate the timing of 1905 and end the war quickly afterinitial, early and relatively easy successes, in this case after seizing the richresources of South-East Asia. On the eve of Japan’s attack on the USA,Hara Yoshimichi maintained that

[W]e cannot avoid a long-term war this time, but I believe that we mustsomehow get around this and bring about an early settlement. In orderto do this, we will need to start thinking now about how to end the war.28

Staff officers noted Yamamoto’s irritation and depression, and like himunderstood that ‘To end a war while it’s going favourably for ones own siderequires a different, special kind of effort. Even the Russo-Japanese Warwas only brought to a favourable conclusion with great difficulty.’29

Japanese success made Yamamoto’s desire to seek peace politically impos-sible for both sides, and thus ultimately sealed Japan’s fate. The Battle ofMidway could be seen as Yamamoto’s attempt at a second victory thatwould set the conditions for an elusive peace deal, but it was not to be.

The Americans trod a similar path of intellectual exploration in this novelstrategic circumstance. Nevertheless, prior to 1904, the Russians ratherthan the Japanese seemed the most likely threat to American interests. TheNWC ‘Problem of 1902’ had the USA in alliance with Britain and Japanfighting Russia in a war which, 50 years too early, reached stalemate inKorea on the 38th Parallel.

The first planning study at the US Army War College (AWC) which con-templated war with Germany and Japan was conducted in 1904. The USAbecame even more apprehensive after Japanese victory in 1905, given thatJapan was closer to the USA’s newly acquired Pacific possessions than it wasitself.

In 1906, without a Panama Canal, NWC exercises envisaged the US fleetsailing via the Suez Canal to meet a fresh Japanese fleet, as Russia’s had had


to do the year before. In August 1907 Roosevelt maintained that ‘ThePhilippines form our heel of Achilles. They are all that makes the presentsituation with Japan dangerous.’30 The voyage and travails of the ‘GreatWhite Fleet’s’ friendly visit to Japan in 1908, made possible only by char-tering many foreign support ships, revealed the hazards of the Americanpredicament in the Far East. An American fleet arriving in the Philippineswould have no coal or base from which to operate.

By the late 1930s Japan had become the ‘inevitable enemy’. The US Navybecame so familiar with the scenario that it became the ‘American mission’to find a way of dealing with an enemy who was likely to hold local navalsuperiority in the area of the Philippines and possess fortified bases in theCaroline, Mariana and Marshall Islands, cutting across American lines ofcommunications. This was analogous to the Russian problem in 1904, ofhow to hold on in the remote Far East before its massive materiel superior-ity could be brought to bear. The outlook was bleak, and by 1911 Japanhad been codified as opponent ORANGE in US naval planning.

Britain’s thinking on imperial defence was studied with care by the USNavy as if it were almost a model for its own analyses, and Britain (RED),was the opponent of choice for the most demanding war games. By theearly 1930s, awe of Britain’s power had evaporated and the US Navy couldmeet the Royal Navy on equal terms; but that was not to say that the USAcould defend its interests in the Pacific against the rising power of Japan.

In 1932, the former chief of staff of the US Army, Peyton March, saidthat the US military was ‘impotent’; in 1938, the US War Departmentreported that USA did not have a single complete division.31 US rearma-ment effectively only began on 14 November 1938 when PresidentRoosevelt initiated a massive aircraft construction plan. Fortunately for theUSA, much of the thinking on how best to employ the impending flow ofmilitary might had already been conducted at its war colleges, and it wasfamiliar to most of those who would lead its forces after 1941.

In 1934, AWC planners considered war against Japan, and in subsequentyears, war against a combination of Germany and Japan. It was assumedthat Japan would strike without a declaration of war and that thePhilippines would soon be lost. An interesting aspect of the 1934 planningwas the minority report that called for a generous peace with a defeatedJapan, in the light of what was regarded as the excessively harsh termsimposed on Germany after 1918, and the vacuum that a crushed Japanwould leave to be filled by the USSR. A rebuilt Japan, modelled on thecommercially powerful, but militarily weak Netherlands, seemed apossibility.

The census of Hawaii of 1920 showed that of a population of 255,912,109,274 were Japanese. By the 1930s there was concern about the loyaltyof the now 121,000 residents of Japanese descent. In 1936, PresidentRoosevelt received reports that Japanese Americans in Honolulu often


greeted and entertained crew members of visiting Japanese merchant ships.He wrote to the Chief of Naval Operations,

One obvious thought occurs to me – that every Japanese citizen or non-citizen on the Island of Oahu who meets these Japanese shipsor has any connection with their officers or men should be secretly butdefinitely identified and his or her name placed on a special list of thosewho would be the first to be placed in a concentration camp in theevent of trouble.32

Planning of 1937 noted that dependencies of the United States with apopulation composed largely of coloured, oriental and mixed races couldnot be depended upon to assist in the event of war against a foreign power.It was also noted in 1934 that Australia would look primarily to the USNavy rather than to the British Royal Navy for its security.

Over the years, critical perceptive insights emerged in AWC planning thatwould indeed be significant factors in the coming war with Japan. Forexample, planning in 1935 noted that the Japanese ‘generally begin their warsby surprise attacks before there is any declaration of war’; however, it wenton to conclude that Japan would probably adopt a defensive strategy.33

That year the AWC also studied the prospect of the USA and its allies fight-ing a German–Japanese alliance. While Europe was seen to be the priority,it was deemed essential that a strong naval force be stationed in the Pacific.

The Americans had the same problem with the Philippines as theRussians had had with Port Arthur, the Germans with Tsingtao, the Dutchwith the East Indies and the British with Hong Kong and Singapore. All ofthese fell to the Japanese in various wars in similar ways and by a similarlogic. These bases could be either a source of power, or a lethal andexpensive vulnerability; it was hard for policy makers to decide which, andto invest accordingly. There was no hope of holding such ‘imperial’ posses-sions without huge expenditure on dockyards and fortresses, yet such vastexpense, like that of the British at Wei-hai-wei, the lease for which wasvoluntarily surrendered after the Washington Conference in 1922, couldprove to be a self-defeating waste of money, like the walls of RenaissanceSienna, merely making the potential loss the more grievous.

The Philippines were 9,000 miles from the continental USA, a forwarddeployment offering the Japanese a tempting weakness to exploit. Hawaiiwas a powerful base and far removed from the Japanese, but even thismight prove vulnerable. If the Philippines had to be held, the issue was forhow long, and whether a relieving force would be able to reach it in time.This led the Americans into calculations similar to those of the British tosave Singapore.

From 1898 to 1941, the USA failed to fortify the Philippines adequately,even though it was regarded as the key to early success or failure in a war


with Japan, a war which seemed increasingly inevitable. After the Russo-Japanese War, the Americans planned to build a base at Subic Bay;and this ‘Port Arthur’ would be tasked to hold out for 3 months untilAmerica’s ‘Baltic Fleet’ from the Atlantic could sail to the rescue. Mahan’sreaction to this plan was, ‘That we should have a stronghold impregnableas Port Arthur . . . Absit omen’.34 In 1907 the US Joint Board recognized theneed for the Philippines to hold out until reinforcements could arrive; butby 1908 the balance of investment had been switched to Hawaii, and in1919, Captain H.E. Yarnell, a US Navy planner, predicted the loss of thePhilippines and the capture of its garrison.

From 1914–20, it was a working assumption at the NWC that thePhilippines could not be held against a Japanese invasion. The WashingtonConference in effect gave Japan naval dominance of the Western Pacific inreturn for agreeing to work with American financiers to develop China.In 1921–2, Captain D.W. Knox claimed that the USA had thereby given up‘all chances of defending the Philippines’.35

The issue of the Philippines continued to dog planning efforts. AWCplanning for 1936 concluded that ‘We did not feel that there need be anygreat apprehension as to the security of our West Coast, the HawaiianIslands or the Panama Canal. The Philippines, of course, we expectedwould be overrun by Japan very shortly.’36 Yet in a letter to GeneralH.A. Drum, commanding the Hawaiian Department, on 25 July 1936,General Douglas MacArthur observed complacently that ‘The United Statescan look with perfect serenity upon the developments in the Pacificsituation in the decades to come.’37

The planners were more realistic. If the garrison of the Philippines couldhold out, victory would be cheaper and quicker; but if it couldn’t, then theslow and painful process of establishing bases in a steady advance acrossthe Pacific seemed inevitable. This was the accepted view at the NWC from1933, and at the AWC from 1939. The AWC study of 1938 envisaged abold thrust to the Philippines to fight an early decisive battle, but planningthereafter directed that there should instead be a methodical island-hoppingcampaign.

The expectation in the late 1930s was that the Philippines would receiveindependence in 1946, and this complicated American calculations aboutheavy expenditure on bases that would soon be handed over. In the event,American bases in the Philippines would remain until 1992. Some at theAWC looked for a way around the problem, advocating the construction of‘a Guantanamo at Dumanquilas Bay and making it an American HongKong’,38 on the grounds that Congress would not fund a purely militarybase, but that the US Navy could use a commercial base in the event of war.

In practice, over 40 years, little was done to make Manila defensible.Some saw the US garrison in the Philippines as a liability rather than anasset. Major (later General) Lawton Collins observed in 1939, ‘When weconsider the actual situation in the Philippines today, it seems to me nothing


short of a crime that the Army and Navy let themselves get into the hole weare in the Philippines.’39 He noted that Manila and Olangapo wereindefensible and that millions of dollars had been poured into Corregidor,which all agreed could not be held.

Major General J.L. DeWitt, Commandant of the AWC believed that theUSA would pay heavily for its failure to fortify the Philippines. Hemaintained that after independence in 1946, the Philippines would liewithin the Japanese political sphere of influence, not the USA’s – ‘I don’tthink we as a nation can depend on them after 1946.’40 GeneralJ.M. Wainwright, who had contributed to the AWC planning study of 1934and who was to surrender the Philippines in 1942, wrote to his daughter on17 August 1941, ‘The P.A. (Philippines Army) troops are not well-trainedand so I will have a job getting them ready to fight.’41 B.G. Chynoweth,who assumed command of a Philippine Army division shortly before theoutbreak of war, described the situation as hopeless and that ‘MacArthur’sarmy was mostly a political myth’. He claimed that MacArthur was ‘lazy,shiftless, frivolous, uncommunicative and uncooperative . . . and a supremeemotional actor’.42

AWC planning of 1938 estimated that the Japanese would find it hardto take and hold Hawaii, and would therefore go on the defensive hav-ing taken Guam and the Philippines, fighting a long and expensive war ofattrition lasting 3 years. The US Navy estimate was that it would take noless than 4 years to defeat Japan. Contemporaneous Japanese logic was thatJapan could not fight such a war of attrition which it was doomed to lose,and that it would have to strike a painful enough blow to make successappear too expensive for the USA, which would seek a negotiatedsettlement – similar analysis, but with opposite concluding assumptions.

There were other contrasting expectations closer to home. The Americanpublic expected rapid success, yet there was only a remote chance ofaccomplishing it. This caused some planners to suggest the need for allies,most probably either the USSR or Britain. Some have criticized the failureof the US military, which had clearly identified the USA’s strategic dilemmas,to communicate these to the American public, or rather the failure of theirpolitical masters to do so. Ultimately, the obstacle to dealing with theJapanese threat and securing the commensurate funding was Americanisolationism, often expressed as Anglophobia and opposition to Europeanimperialism in general.

It was widely accepted up to December 1941, not least in AWC planning,that ‘War with Japan is not probable in the immediate future, [but] warwith Japan is ultimately inevitable.’43 When war came, Japan would takeadvantage of strategic and tactical surprise and seize the Philippines andGuam. Ironically, the US military could describe in advance the Japanesewar plan of 1941, almost exactly, as the AWC did in 1939, and deem warwith Japan to be inevitable, and note that the element of surprise would beat the heart of Japanese planning. The moment when Japan would attack


was predicted intellectually by Major General J.L. DeWitt, Commandant ofthe AWC in 1939, as the moment when ‘economic pressure on Japan . . . isgoing to bring on a world war right away’. Thomas Handy, who had beenon a planning team at the AWC in 1935, and spent most of the SecondWorld War in the War Plans Division, noted after the war that the Japanesehad little choice.

If they had to jump us, what could have been a better time? You see,the war in Europe was going very well for the Germans . . . wepractically told the Japanese to give up their ambitions in Asia, just likeif some body told us to give up ours in America.44

Clearly he shared the concerns of Tasker Bliss, the President of the AWC,who had noted in 1904 that an extended Monroe Doctrine would be themost probable cause of the future wars which the USA would fight.

For the US Navy’s part, the notion of a decisive fleet engagement, aTrafalgar, was as enticing as it was to the Japanese, and as the dream of aVernichtungschlag ‘Cannae’ was to the German General Staff. The US Navyplanned consistently throughout the 1920s and 1930s to fight an AmericanTrafalgar, even though its preparations often had the unfortunate appear-ance of another ‘Jutland’.45 Subsequently, some in the US Navy fretted thatthe Battle of Midway and the escape of the Japanese fleet was indeed insome way the US Navy’s Jutland, and not the Trafalgar that they also hopedfor. Even the Battle of Leyte Gulf brought disappointment, but with thesame consolation as Jutland, that the enemy’s sea power had effectivelybeen broken, even if his fleet had not been destroyed.


6 Tactics and technologyNovelty repeated

The early twentieth century was a period of speculation and visionarythinking about warfare. In 1906, N. Stern’s Die Eroberung der Luft hadenvisaged aircraft technology as a force for good, binding nations togetherin peace, while others such as Paul Scheerbart, with his Die Entwicklungder Luftmilitarismus und die Auflösung der Europaeischen Landheere,Festungen and Seeflotten of 1909, had seen aerial militarism as so terrifyingthat it would lead to the dissolution of armies and navies. The Frenchman,Ferdinand Ferber, believed that aircraft would prove very effective in war,while the German, Wilhelm Kress believed that their frightfulness wouldhelp to deter conflict.1 In 1908, H.G. Wells published The War in the Airwhich envisaged an airborne armada of German Drachenflieger attackingthe USA. This force determined the outcome of a great naval battle bydestroying the American Dreadnoughts with bombs, and went on to leaveNew York a ‘furnace of crimson flames, from which there was no escape’.2

The notion that aircraft might give a nation such a first strike capabilitywas mooted in practical terms by Helmut von Moltke. On 24 December1912, he told the War Ministry that

In the newest Z-ships we possess a weapon that is far superior to allsimilar ones of our opponents and that cannot be imitated in theforeseeable future if we work energetically to perfect it. Its speediestdevelopment as a weapon is required to enable us, at the beginning ofa war, to strike a first and telling blow whose practical and moral effectcould be quite extraordinary.3

The performance of German zeppelins on this count proved relativelydisappointing during the First World War, but their operations did provokea counter theory by those seeking revenge. The British Secretary of State forAir played with the idea of starting ‘a really big fire’ in German cities toundermine German morale.4 In 1914, Wells published The World Set Free,coining the term ‘atom bomb’ and describing the instant destruction ofcities by this new weapon.

It was the torpedo and daring naval tactics that brought Japanoperational success at Port Arthur in February 1904. Over the next 37 yearsthere were significant advances in torpedo technology, but most impor-tantly, in the manner in which torpedoes could be delivered. Russia led theway in building a submarine force with the potential to fire torpedoes; butnot in time for its war with Japan.5 On 10 November 1910, the American,Eugene Ely, flew a plane off the USS Birmingham, and on 18 January 1911landed a plane on the USS Pennsylvania.6 In 1911, the Italian, Captain A.Guidoni, had flown a Fairman biplane carrying a 350 lb torpedo. Thatyear, Lieutenants Kimura and Tokuda of the Imperial Japanese Navy tookflying instructions in France. In 1912, Japanese pilots were trained inHammondsport, New York, others were trained in Germany, and in 1912the Japanese set up a Naval Air Service.

In 1913, Admiral Sir Percy Scott wrote to The Times of London,‘Battleships are no use either for defensive or offensive purposes.Submarines and aeroplanes have entirely revolutionized naval warfare.’7

That year the British Admiralty became interested in air-launchedtorpedoes, and in 1914 Captain M.F. Sueter was tasked to convert threesteamers to carry aircraft to positions to attack enemy ships. On 19 March1914, Sueter and Lieutenant D.H. Hyde-Thomson, applied for a patentrelating to seaplanes carrying torpedoes.

In August 1914, Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) aircraft hit threeTurkish ships near the Dardanelles using 1897-pattern torpedoes and theBritish planned to attack the Goeben with aerial-launched torpedoes. On25 September 1914, a seaplane from the Japanese Wakamiya Maru mayhave sunk a German torpedo boat off Tsingtao with a converted naval shell.Some cite this as the first occasion that an aircraft sank a ship.8

Acknowledging these dramatic changes in naval warfare, Admiral Fisherinsisted of the Royal Navy in April 1915 that ‘You must have aeroplanes’,9

and events were soon amplifying his point. On 17 August 1915, FlightCommander C.H.K. Edmonds sank a Turkish military transport in the Seaof Marmara with a 14-inch torpedo dropped from his Short 184 biplane,flying from the seaplane carrier Ben-my Chree. Some regard this as the firstsuccessful aerial torpedo attack.10 The idea proved attractive, and on 1 May1917, a German Brandenburger aircraft sank the British merchantmanGena with a torpedo. By 1917, the British were planning to make shallow-water torpedo attacks on the German High Seas Fleet in Wilhelmshaven,using the specially designed Sopwith T1, but the war ended before theoperation could be mounted. The RNAS vented its frustration in 1919 by‘attacking’ the British Atlantic Fleet off Portland with inert torpedoes,proving that such attacks were feasible.

By 1918, Britain had the greatest experience of operating with aircraftcarriers, possessing the only three in the world. The Japanese lacked thetechnology and tactical capabilities to develop their naval air arm, andBritain agreed to assist its ally. The British Naval-Air Mission, led by the


traitor, Colonel W.F. Sempill,11 operated in Japan from 1921–2, and itswork marked the beginning of an effective Japanese naval air force.Sempill’s team provided a comprehensive package of training and technologytransfer, including demonstrations of aerial torpedo attacks atKasumigaura. The Sempill team left Japan aboard a British warship.Steaming 2 hours out from Yokohama, a formation of Japanese aircraftbade them farewell by flying overhead – a gracious but portentous gesture.The Japanese built their first carrier, Hosho, and in February 1923, WilliamJordan, a former RNAS pilot, became the first man to land and take offfrom a Japanese carrier.12

The proposition that the carrier would be more important than thebattleship in future naval warfare was hotly debated in many nations. In1921, the American, Billy Mitchell, conducted a series of controversialexperiments to demonstrate the vulnerability of armoured warships toaerial bombing, eventually sinking the former German battleshipOstfriesland in the Chesapeake Bay. In April 1926, he predicted that Japanwould initiate a Pacific war with a surprise attack using aircraft carriers.13

On 21 July 1923, Admiral Sir Percy Scott again wrote to The Times,‘Everyone ought to realize that our base at Singapore should be defendedby submarines and aeroplanes, which would keep any battleships fromcoming near the island.’14 Meanwhile in Japan, the relatively juniorYamamoto declared in 1925 that ‘The most important ship of the futurewill be a ship to carry aeroplanes.’15 He envisaged the sort of naval warwhich would prove the key to American success in the Pacific, as describedby Hector Bywater.

Naval operations in the future will consist of capturing an island, thenbuilding an airfield on it in as short a time as possible . . . moving up airunits, and using them to gain air and surface control over the nextstretch of ocean.16

Despite that, the Japanese went on to build the mightiest battleships everseen, yet also stole a lead in the theory, technology and tactics of naval-airwarfare. Yamamoto resented the money spent on big ships like Yamato andMusashi, which could have been spent on naval aviation. It was said inJapan at the time that the three great follies of the world were the GreatWall of China, the pyramids and the Yamato.17

Japanese carrier aircraft practised dive-bombing in the early 1930s, andthis capability was greatly enhanced with the arrival of the D3A bomber inthe mid-1930s. By the early 1930s, the emphasis in Britain and the USA wason dropping bombs. The Japanese concentrated instead on dropping torpe-does, sinking their old battleships Satsuma and Aki with oxygen-breathingtorpedoes that were twice as powerful as any British or American ones.Japanese I-Type aircraft of 1938 were capable of 300 knots with a range of650 nm, dropping 24-inch torpedoes from 1,000 feet at maximum speed.

Tactics and technology 99

At the same time the British Swordfish was capable of just 100 knotswith 18-inch torpedoes dropped from 18 feet. These Japanese technicalcapabilities remained secret.

Airpower had not been factored into the Washington Treaty ratio and ithelped, in Japanese eyes, to make up for their disadvantages. A concentrationof aircraft required the close concentration of carriers as well. Gendaconceived the idea of the carrier task force in 1936, but the concept was notrealized until 1 April 1941, when the First Air Fleet, based on carriers, wasformed at Yamamoto’s request. There had seldom been more than 180aircraft assembled, but Yamamoto believed that about 400 would benecessary to make the Pearl Harbour operation viable, and this became theurgent requirement.

Yet, ideas about the power of naval aviation were also vibrant in Britain.In 1929 E.F. Spanner published the prophetic work, The Broken Trident,which described the destruction of the British surface fleet by torpedoeslaunched by enemy aircraft. The British squandered their early lead in navalaviation, and in 1935 the American Chief of Naval Operations reportedthat ‘Britain has virtually no airforce in the navy’.18 By 1936, the Japanesehad overtaken the British in carrier design, and many in the Royal Navyseriously underestimated the efficacy of naval airpower.19 In 1938,‘Bomber’ Harris joked of Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, the future commanderof the ill-fated Force Z, ‘Tom, when the first bomb hits, you’ll say, “MyGod, what a hell of a mine”.’20 The two capital ships of Force Z, HMSRepulse and HMS Prince of Wales, commanded by Phillips, were sunk byJapanese aircraft on 10 December 1941.

Churchill had believed that the destruction of the Bismarck would havea salutary effect upon the Japanese. The effect it did have was to convincethem that, but for attacks by Swordfish torpedoes, Bismarck would havemade port safely. Admiral Phillips, like Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvenski in1905, had also found himself despatched on a mission to retrieve a deteri-orating situation in the Far East. Both became increasingly aware of theirvulnerability the closer they came to an enemy possessing superior navaltechnology. That said, in the event Force Z was sunk by the Japanese land-based 22nd Air Flotilla, a ‘child’ of Yamamoto.21 Repulse and Prince ofWales were in a similar predicament in the Far East to German battleshipsin European waters, hunted and sunk; and Japan’s capital ships would alsobe destroyed, primarily by airpower. The Battle of Tsushima in 1905 wasthe ultimate demonstration of the primacy of the armoured battleship, theheir to Nelsonian navies and doctrine. The demise in 1945 of the Yamato, thelargest battleship ever built and the ultimate expression of that technologyand doctrine, was the final evidence that both had yielded to others.

The US Navy was also developing its naval aviation. In exercises inJanuary 1924, carrier-based aircraft attacked ships at Colon, but werecriticized for ‘low-level stunting’. In American exercises for Fleet ProblemVII, conducted in 1928, the carrier USS Langley launched a surprise attack


on Pearl Harbour and was deemed to have succeeded. In 1929, the USNavy practised even more elaborate exercises using carrier-borne aircraftover the Panama Canal, the USS Saratoga launching eighty-three planes inone night. Fleet Problem XIV of 1932 involved the undetected approach ofaircraft carriers to Hawaii. Admiral Yarnell ‘attacked’ Pearl Harbour beforedawn on a Sunday morning with 152 aircraft from the USS Saratoga andthe USS Lexington and achieved complete surprise. In August 1937,Lieutenant L.C. Ramsey wrote an article for the US Naval InstituteProceedings, entitled ‘Aerial Attacks on Fleets at Anchor’.22 In 1938,Admiral King also achieved success in an exercise against Pearl Harbour.

In 1927–8, Kusaka Ryunosuke had written a plan at the Japanese NavyStaff College for an attack on Pearl Harbour which he recommended as thebest way of opening a war with the USA; but it was not until November1936 that the first specific studies of an air attack on the US fleet atPearl Harbour were conducted. In August 1939, Yamamoto was madecommander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet and became convinced that anair attack on Pearl Harbour could succeed. He conducted low-altitudetorpedo trials against targets in shallow water in Kagoshima Bay, selectedfor its many similarities to Pearl Harbour.

On 7 January 1941, Yamamoto wrote to the Navy Minister OikawaKoshiro, expressing his opinions on preparations for war and the initialoperational plan. This started with a statement of the main lesson learnedin the Russo-Japanese War: the need for a surprise attack on the enemymain force at the outset, ‘deciding the fate of the war on its first day’.23

A precedent for a devastating surprise air attack was set by Japan’s FirstCombined Air Force on 14 August 1937. It flew from Taiwan to attackairfields at Kuangte and Hangchow, virtually knocking out the ChineseNational Air Force in the first trans-oceanic air attack in history.24 On9 December 1941, this feat was repeated when 200 Japanese aircraft fromTaiwan caught most of the US Far East Air Force on the ground at ClarkField near Manila, destroying the majority of it at a cost of just seven planes.

MacArthur had been ordered to use his B-17 bombers to fend offJapanese attacks and was given 10 hours’ warning of the Japanese attack onthe Philippines and news of the attack on Pearl Harbour, but he apparentlylocked himself in his room all morning and refused to order an attack onJapanese forces on Formosa. The destruction on the ground of half of allthe USA’s heavy bombers was arguably a more severe blow than the dam-age inflicted on its elderly battleships at Pearl Harbour just hours earlier.25

For unexplained reasons, MacArthur’s failure was ignored by GeneralGeorge Marshall who heaped praise on his ‘resolute and effective fighting’in the Philippines and quashed any attempt to hold an enquiry into thedebacle in the Philippines, even though there was an extensive enquiry intothe attacks on Hawaii.26 MacArthur’s failure to distribute urgently requiredfood and combat supplies was also overlooked as he acquired the aura ofa hero.27


Despite the obsolescence of their Swordfish biplanes, it was the Britishwho first demonstrated the devastating effects of naval airpower, flyingagainst the Italian fleet at Taranto on 11 November 1940.28 This had aprofound effect on the calculations of other navies, for it was now evidentthat the problem of shallow-water attack had been solved. In his letter of7 January 1941, Yamamoto stated that the attack on Port Arthur was to bethe strategic blueprint for Pearl Harbour; but in the event, its executionwould be based more on the British Operation JUDGEMENT at Taranto.29

Port Arthur/Taranto became the model for the attack on Pearl Harbour on7 December 1941.

On 15 December 1940, two German officers, Baron von Gronau andColonel J. Jebson surveyed the aftermath of the British attack at Taranto,and their findings were forwarded to the Japanese. The Japanese assistantair attaché in London, Genda Minoru, had also been asked to report on theBritish attack;30 and in February 1941, Yamamoto asked him for his viewson the feasibility of an attack on Pearl Harbour. He supported the plan andbecame air staff officer of the First Air Fleet for the operation.

A major Japanese delegation, led by Rear Admiral Abe Koki visitedTaranto from 18 May to 8 June 1941 to make a more detailed analysis ofthe British operation. Lieutenant Naito Takeshi, the assistant naval attachéin Berlin had visited Taranto a few days after the attack to take measure-ments of depths and distances; and on 23 October 1941, he gave a lectureon Operation JUDGEMENT to Yamamoto’s staff, which included his oldfriend Fuchida, who would lead the attack on Pearl Harbour. The Britishsuccess at Taranto seems therefore to have tipped the balance once moreback in favour of the plan to attack Pearl Harbour.

Admiral J.O. Richardson, commander of the US Pacific fleet, had alreadycomplained to Admiral H.A. Stark, the Chief of Naval Operations, thatPearl Harbour was too vulnerable to Japanese attack, but his views weredismissed. He raised the matter with President Roosevelt at a lunch on8 October 1940 and was subsequently relieved of his command for raisingthe matter outside the chain of command. The Americans did, however,take note of the British operation at Taranto. On 22 November 1940,Admiral Stark wrote to Richardson, ‘Since the Taranto incident, myconcern for the safety of the fleet in Pearl Harbor, already great, has becomeeven greater.’31

Admiral H.E. Kimmel assumed command of the Pacific Fleet on1 February 1941 and joined with his predecessor, Richardson, in pointingout to Stark the deficiencies in the defences of Oahu. He was told that thefleet must accept greater responsibility for its own security. On 5 February1941, Admiral Kimmel received a letter from Secretary Knox who, mindfulof the British attack on Taranto, warned, ‘If war eventuates with Japan, itis believed easily possible that hostilities would be initiated by a surpriseattack upon the Fleet or the naval base at Pearl Harbour.’32 Major GeneralW.C. Short, who assumed command of the Hawaiian Department


on 5 February 1941, was clear from the outset that the primary threat camefrom aerial attack using bombs and torpedoes. Yet, on 7 February 1941,Secretary for War, H.L. Stimson declared that ‘The Hawaiian Departmentis the best equipped of all our overseas departments.’33 Oahu was some-times referred to as the ‘Gibraltar of the Pacific’. On 15 February 1941,Stark wrote a letter to Kimmel, which he received on 8 March, pointing outthat British torpedoes had been launched into water 14–15 fathoms deep(about 90 feet).34 He concluded that torpedo nets were unnecessary at PearlHarbour because a minimum depth of water of 75 feet was required to dropa torpedo from an aircraft.35

The issue of the depth of water at Taranto continues to perplex. The Hartenquiry into the attack on Pearl Harbour found that the British had droppedtorpedoes in 45 feet of water at Taranto. In 1944, the Secretary of the USNavy, J.V. Forrestal noted that the US Navy had information in April 1941that the British had successfully launched torpedoes into 42 feet of water,against the French battleship Richelieu at Dakar. These reports of Britishdevelopments do not appear to have been noted in Hawaii where, prior tothe Japanese attack, it was still believed that the water was too shallow.

Major General F.L. Martin of the Army Air Corps, and Rear AdmiralN.L. Bellinger commanding the Naval Air Base at Hawaii made an estimateof the air defence of Pearl Harbour in March 1941 and noted that Axispowers often attacked on weekends and public holidays and that Japan‘had never made a declaration of war, before launching hostileactions’. . . and that Japan might ‘send a fast carrier raiding force to make asudden attack, with no prior warning, to Pearl Harbor’.36 Despite thesewarnings, the War Plans Division in Washington still maintained that ‘Thedanger of sustained air attack against air fields in Hawaii from carrier-based aviation is not serious.’37 In April and May 1941, American planesreduced their patrols over the seas north of Hawaii.

On 13 June 1941 Rear Admiral R. Ingersoll sent a memo to all navaldistrict commanders, citing the attack at Taranto and noting that 75 feetshould no longer be regarded as the minimum depth for a successfultorpedo attack, ‘no minimum depth of water may. . .be assumed as providingsafety’.38 On 10 July 1941, the American Military Attaché in Tokyoreported that Japanese aircraft had been secretly practising torpedo attackson capital ships in Ariake Bay. The Secretary of the US Navy, Knox, wasalso concerned about the implications of the British attack. The defence ofPearl Harbour was the responsibility of the US Army, and Knox wrote toSecretary Stimson in the War Department, citing the attack on Taranto as apossible model for an attack on Pearl Harbour and urging that its defencesbe increased. He was told that the US Army was aware of its responsibilitiesand that defences were already better than adequate.

On 18 July 1941, Roosevelt told his cabinet that Indochina wouldprobably be occupied in a matter of days; but apart from cutting offsupplies of high-grade aviation fuel he apparently took no significant action.


Strangely, on 20 October 1941, Churchill went so far as to tell theCabinet’s Defence Committee that he did not foresee a Japanese attack onMalaya. On 25 November 1941, with a Japanese naval force, including fiveinfantry divisions sailing south, probably to attack British or Dutch posses-sions, Roosevelt noted that ‘The question was how we should maneuverthem [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot withoutallowing too much danger to ourselves.’39 That day Roosevelt told hiswar cabinet that ‘We are likely to be attacked as soon as next Monday1 December, for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack withoutwarning.’

On 27 November 1941, the British Joint Intelligence Committeeconsidered the Japanese fleet to be a threat to Pearl Harbour and apparentlyinformed President Roosevelt, through the British Security Organization inNew York. On 29 November 1941, the US Secretary of State, Cordell Hullwarned the American Chiefs of Staff that war with Japan was imminent, yetthere were still no torpedo nets in Pearl Harbour. Stimson clearly expecteda Japanese attack. Days before the attack, he urged the Chinese NationalistT.V. Soong ‘to have just a little more patience and then I think all things willbe well’.40 On the night before the attack on Pearl Harbour, Rooseveltobserved to Harry Hopkins of the Japanese position, ‘This means war.’

No warnings were issued to the fleet but fortunately, contrary to normalweekend custom, both the carriers USS Lexington and the USS Enterprisewere out of harbour during the attack. Having looked at the fourteenthsection of Japan’s final communication, Admiral Stark is said to haverefused his staff permission to pass on the warnings to Hawaii.41 As theAWC had divined, the USA would fully expect such an attack and would atthe same time be surprised by it.42

There are four lines in historiography on British warnings of the Japaneseattack on Pearl Harbour: that the British knew nothing of it in advance;that they knew but did not tell the Americans; that they told the Americansbut no one thought it credible; and that Roosevelt was warned but he chosenot to warn American forces in Hawaii. Many of the theories propoundedabout the true course of events leading up to the attacks on Pearl Harbourhave been regarded merely as sensational journalism, and the episode isoften regarded as a lightning conductor for conspiracy theorists. Manyof these theories have, however, passed beyond that; it seems probable thatthe orthodox ‘received’ account as purveyed by those in power at the timeis wanting and often misleading. The ‘cranks’ now seem to have a measureof orthodoxy on their side, and the onus is now perhaps on others toprove them wrong. This is unlikely to be possible without the release of allavailable documents.

Some would perhaps prefer to believe that, on ‘the day of infamy’, theAmerican Government and armed forces were surprised by the Japaneseattack, that Roosevelt and others were horrified at the USA being propelledinto a war that they had sought to avoid and that blame for the damage


should lie with the tactical commanders in Hawaii who failed to appreciateand act upon the threat. They would prefer to believe that the British alsohad no warning of the Japanese offensive; and that if they had, they wouldcertainly have warned the American Government, which in turnwould surely have acted decisively on receipt of such intelligence. They wouldprefer to believe that these conclusions are based on the full availability ofall the relevant records in the USA and the UK, but these illusions are hardto sustain.

Despite his unpopular ideological bent and flawed reputation, DavidIrving’s record as a researcher has sometimes been formidable. He hasmaintained that the British started to read Japanese Naval Code JN-2543 inSeptember 1939, and that George Marshall wrote to Roosevelt complainingthat the British were not releasing their intercepts to them. He claims thatalthough the British read Japanese secure communications, none, if any, areapparently available for public scrutiny, while transcripts of Americanintercepts are. Irving maintains that if the British displayed transcripts fromafter 1941, they would also have to display those before December 1941which would be embarrassing. The British intelligence files on Japan for themonth preceding the attack on Pearl Harbour have apparently beenremoved from public view; and there is no reference to the intercepted‘Winds’ messages by which the Japanese alerted their diplomatic staffabout the outbreak of war. Certain British Foreign Office files forSeptember–December 1941 have also apparently been withdrawn. TheUnited States Navy Office of Censorship, which would have recorded thetelephone conversations between Roosevelt and Churchill were, Irvingclaims, ordered closed in perpetuity by President Truman at the end of thewar.44 The matter is far from clear or resolved.

On balance, it seems likely that Britain did have reason to expect anattack on Pearl Harbour on 8 December 1941 and warned the Canadiansof this.45 However, the British decision not to publish an authoritativeaccount of these events means that little that is definitive can be stated ofwhat was known and who knew it. The British Foreign Secretary appar-ently announced in 1997 that records referring to the matter would remainclosed for the foreseeable future.46

After the attack, Stimson was relieved that events had been brought to ahead, uniting the American people, a view shared in the offices of Timemagazine in New York where journalists ‘were gleeful . . . it was the rightwar and it had to be fought and won’.47 Stimson encouraged Roosevelt toblame Hitler for Japan’s attack and to declare war on Germany, but Rooseveltdeclined. It was left for Hitler to declare war on the USA on 11 December,blaming the Chinese and the British and American desire to dominate theOrient. Prince Konoe is thought to have been appalled by the attack onthe USA, anticipating the national catastrophe that would ensue.

The events of 9 December 1941 were rich in historical echoes and strangeironies.48 According to Chihaya Masataka,49 the inspiration for the


Japanese naval operations in 1904–5, and hence 1941, owed much to thestudy of Western history. The attack on Port Arthur was itself inspired bythe bold actions of the American Admiral Farragut dashing into Mobile Bayon 5 August 1864, and by Admiral Dewey’s entry into Manila Bay on1 May 1898. The American attempt to block Santiago Harbour in June1898 was studied by the Japanese attaché in Washington DC, CommanderAkiyama, who was attached to Admiral William Sampson’s fleet; it wasAkiyama who blocked Port Arthur in 1904.50 Chihaya Masataka alsoclaimed that the attack by the Confederate torpedo boat David on the NewIronsides off Charleston in 1863 set the example to those Japanese pilotswho attacked Pearl Harbour in December 1941.51

Admiral Togo had used such shock tactics against the Chinese in 1894, andhe repeated these in 1904 with a surprise attack by ten destroyers, armedwith Whitehead torpedoes, on the Russian Second Pacific Squadron at PortArthur, commanded by a Russian, Admiral Stark, who was having dinnerashore at the time. The Times of London commented that that attack was‘destined to take a place of honour in naval annals’. The US President,Theodore Roosevelt, who said, ‘I have done all I could, consistent withinternational law, to advance her interests, I thoroughly admire and believein the Japanese’,52 called their surprise attack, ‘a bold initiative’ and referredto ‘gallant little Japs’.53 Roosevelt was equally enthused about the Japanesevictory at Tsushima: ‘This is the greatest phenomenon the world has everseen . . . I could not believe it . . . as reports came, I grew so excited that I myselfbecame almost like a Japanese, and I could not attend to official duties.’54

The absence of a declaration of war had long been regarded as normal.The American Homer Lea noted the Japanese preference for action prior toany declaration of war, and he observed that of the 120 wars fought in theOccident between 1790 and 1870, only ten had begun with a declarationof war. ‘All such formality in modern conflicts has been and is consideredby nations prepared for war as superfluous. Only those countries unpre-pared groan at such activity, and the overpowering advantage this initiativegives to their adversaries.’55

The Japanese plan for the attack on Pearl Harbour was code-namedOperation Z,56 in honour of Admiral Togo’s ‘Z Signal’ flown at Tsushima,itself modelled on Nelson’s ‘England expects. . . . ’ at Trafalgar 100 yearsearlier: ‘On this one battle rests the fate of our nation. Now let every mando his utmost.’57 On the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbour, Yamamotoissued his final order from his anchorage at Hashirajima in precisely thesewords,58 and on Akagi, Admiral Kusaka raised the ‘Z Signal’, the very flagthat had flown from Togo’s Mikasa during his attack on Port Arthur in1904. Commander Fuchida Mitsuo, who led the attack on Pearl Harbour,astonished to see the American fleet below him, asked ‘Had the Americansnever heard of Port Arthur?’.59

The echoes were not only naval. In March 1942, the Japanese FourteenthArmy in the Philippines made a point of celebrating the thirty-seventh


anniversary of the Battle of Mukden, even though still engaged inoperations against the Americans. For the rest of the world, most of thelessons of the Russo-Japanese War were learned or lost by December 1914,and were apparently of little further relevance; but for the Japanese, 1941was a replay of 1904 in strategic dimension, risk and execution.

The emotions on both occasions were similar. On hearing that Japan wasat war with Russia in 1904, Staff Officer Moriyama Keizaburo of theSecond Fleet wrote,

At that moment I felt as if something had hit me hard in the head. Ilooked down and felt tears streaming down my cheeks. That momentthe feeling that went through my entire body was for our greatJapanese Empire which had continued for more than 2,500 years.Would it perish forever because of this war?60

Similar powerful emotions were also commonly expressed by Japaneseofficers in 1941. The author, Hayashi Fusao, on hearing of the attack onPearl Harbour felt ‘as if a heavy load had been lifted from my shoulders’.61

Less than 4 years later, the fate of Japan was symbolized by that of theappropriately named Yamato; yet the Yamato did not fight in a ‘big fleetaction’, leading ‘ships of the line’. The pride of the Japanese Navy sailed toits destruction ‘for honour alone’.62 The Yamato might have seemed like anarmoured kamikaze warrior, but its crew were not on a suicide mission,although most perished. Their aim was to distract the American forceattacking Okinawa, but to survive and fight again if thwarted.63 Like Force Z,the Yamato’s task force would lack air cover despite the protests of its com-mander, Admiral Ito. He was told, ‘You are being requested to diegloriously, heralding the deaths of 100,000,000 Japanese who prefer deathto surrender.’64 Contrary to the ‘mindless sacrifice’ noted of some Japanesesoldiers, the crew of the Yamato questioned the sense of their hopelessmission which would achieve so little at such cost. The irony was clear:‘What country showed the world what aircraft could do by sinking Princeof Wales?’65 It was in a sense a desperate and futile gesture, as much ofhonour as the voyage of the Russian Baltic fleet in 1905 and Force Z in1941, even though in all these cases many managed to persuade themselvesthat they could succeed.

The psychology of the suicidal Oriental warrior has troubled Westernobservers who have generally characterized it as mad fanaticism; some,however, have seen it in a different and noble light. Yamamoto did notapprove of the suicidal tradition of captains going down with their ships, atradition inherited from the British Royal Navy, which found great culturalaffinity in Japan.66 The typical Japanese volunteer for the Tokkotai humantorpedo corps was a humanities student with an interest in Germanphilosophy, French literature and Marxist economics. In The Nobility ofFailure. Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan, Ivan Morris described


kamikaze pilots as ‘quiet, serious and above average in both culture andsensibility’.67 He described them as ‘individuals who waged a forlornstruggle against overwhelming odds . . . eager, outrageous, uncalculatingmen whose purity of purpose doomed them to a hard journey leadingultimately to disaster’.68

The Allied assault on Okinawa in April 1945 was named OperationICEBERG. Into this ‘iceberg’, on 6–7 April crashed the task force of tenJapanese vessels led by Yamato. The war in the Far East started withdramatic evidence that the battleship had been replaced by the carrier as themost important element in naval warfare. The naval war ended with thisphenomenon confirmed, with the sinking of Yamato. It was the end of theship and the Japanese Navy, and symbolic of the demise of the country afterwhich it was named. It was a tragedy greater and even more ironic than thedestruction of the triumphantly named Russian battleships Knyaz Suvorovand Borodino at Tsushima in 1905, whose defeat had confirmed thesupremacy of their own genus and the concept of the decisive great battle.69

Yet, still the beguiling dream of a Tsushima lived on. On 17 June 1945, theEmperor Hirohito70 urged Admiral Shimada to, ‘Rise to the challenge,make a tremendous effort, achieve a splendid victory like at the time of theJapan Sea naval battle [Tsushima].’71

The German Navy entered the Second World War with a similarpessimistic fatalism and pride. Admiral Erich Raeder reported the Battle ofthe Atlantic lost on 3 September 1939, the day that Britain declared war onGermany, saying,

Today the war against England and France broke out . . . It is self evidentthat the Navy is in no manner sufficiently equipped in the Autumn of1939 to embark on a great struggle with England. . . .Surface forces . . .arestill so few in numbers and strength compared to the English fleet thatthey . . . can only show that they know how to die with honour.72

The shock and shame of the attack on Pearl Harbour were not forgottenand were expressed in the symbolism of defeat at the surrender ceremonyon 2 September 1945. MacArthur and Nimitz were ferried to the USSMissouri on the destroyer USS Buchanan, named after the first American toland in Japan. In an affirmation of the potency of air power, four hundredB-29s flew over the battleships as the proceedings concluded. One of theflags displayed on the USS Missouri during the ceremony had flown overthe White House on the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. Thedeeper historical perspectives were also noted. The flag flown by AdmiralPerry on his flagship USS Powhatten, when he had forced open Japan fortrade in 1853, was brought hurriedly from Annapolis to complete themessage, both of retribution, but also perhaps of the start of a different,broader relationship.73 However, even as Japanese newspapers publishednews of the surrender, they also noted the racial superiority of the Japanese.


Japan failed against a larger opponent in a massive theatre for much thesame reasons that Germany had failed against the USSR. Unlike 1905, therecould be no intermediary74 and peace would come, not at the conferencetable,75 but after collapse in Manchuria76 and atomic strikes, symbolic ofthe Sun-God’s decisive power in the determining of human affairs.77 In1941, the Japanese confirmed their cultural preference for a sudden decisiveblow to achieve their desired objective, but ironically, it was the Americanatom bomb in 1945, not Japanese torpedoes, that resulted in a rapid capit-ulation, in a style understood exactly by this national psychology. Japanesedefeat was not merely a ‘Blochian’ socio-political collapse, but representeda moral earthquake.78 It confirmed, just as certainly, the dominance of theUSA’s position in the Pacific, foreseen in Japanese eyes at the Treaty ofPortsmouth in 1905, and seemingly accepted by it since 1945. It also con-firmed the demise of the West European Empires in the Far East, albeit in aless cataclysmic manner. The long-term consequences of this, and thelongevity of that American dominance, have yet to be determined.


Part III

Imperial tectonicsThe plates shift. A centennial perspective

Viewed over the hundred years since 1905, the Russo-Japanese War hasbeen most remarkable for beginning a major realignment of global powerwhich is as yet incomplete. It was the first time that Western powers hadhad to deal with an Asian power on equal terms, and they had seen theOrient victorious in war. Over the next 100 years, Asia may yet come intoits own after a century of unfulfilled predictions.

Britain initially welcomed the success of its ally in the Russo-Japanese War.In October 1905, the Japanese Minister of Marine declared that ‘Our navyever since its creation has been modelled on that of Great Britain’.1

A British journalist wrote, ‘An admiral [Togo] who received his earlyprofessional training in England and served afloat in British men-of-war haswon the greatest naval victory in history, not excepting Trafalgar, with men-of-war constructed almost exclusively in British shipyards’.2

A British poem of 1905 enthused,

The die is cast, the East is now aflame!Colossal Russia fights her gallant FoeJapan – styled ‘England fair of Eastern Seas’.3

That year, Britain withdrew its China-Station battleships and Sir IanHamilton suggested an exchange of troops, with Japanese infantry servingin India and the British sending cavalry to Japan. On hearing therecommendation that in the event of war the British fleet in the Far East beplaced under Japanese command, the First Sea Lord, Walter Kerr, observedthat ‘I would not mind serving under Togo’s leadership’.4

The triumphant Japanese impressed foreigners with their modesty, ‘AJapanese who boasts of his country’s warlike prowess is to me inconceiv-able.’5 The Japanese qualities of 1904, typified by Admiral Togo, wereadmired well into the 1930s; yet, disillusion and anxiety about Japanemerged shortly after the War and there were inklings, even in 1905, that thefuture might be rather different. ‘Japan is on her good behaviour this time;and next time she can permit herself to indulge in the usual barbarities ofChristian nations.’6 In a private letter in February 1907, Sir Ian Hamiltonwrote ‘We have our rupture with Japan. If it comes it will be definite andinstant, i.e. in what is apparently time of peace, a Japanese fleet will sail for,say Hong Kong or Singapore to strike the first blow.’7 In 1909, Hamilton, afirm admirer of Japanese military capability, wrote to The Times of London,protesting against the ‘bloody tyranny, cruel bullying and oppression’ of theJapanese Army of occupation in Korea. Observing the growing commercial

7 Europe bows out

rivalry between Britain and Japan, he concluded that ‘My own belief is thatwe have no more deadly enemies in the world than our Japanese allies.’8

Thirty-two years later, Hamilton’s fears were realized. Despite decades ofanticipation, the Japanese attack on Malaya in 1941 still seemed to take theBritish garrisons of Malaya and Singapore by surprise. The BritishCommander-in-Chief in the Far East, Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham reported to London that ‘We are ready. We have had plenty ofwarning and our preparations are made . . . we are confident. Our defencesare strong.’9 Sir Shelton Thomas, the Governor of Singapore was woken byGeneral Percival and told that the Japanese had landed in Malaya. Thomasreplied, ‘I trust that you’ll chase the little men off.’10

From overestimating the ‘racial’ and cultural characteristics of theJapanese after 1905, Westerners suffered from underestimating the qualitiesof the Japanese once they became their potential enemies – a scorn born offear.11 The complacency and derision with which British commandersdescribed the Japanese had the ominous ring of the Russians’ in 1904.12 InApril 1941, the British military attaché in Tokyo, Colonel G.T. Wards,lectured the Singapore garrison on the outstanding military qualities of theJapanese. The Commander of Singapore, General Bond countered thelecturer with the reassurance to his men that ‘What the lecturer has told youis his own opinion and is in no way a correct appreciation of the situa-tion . . . I do not think much of them and you can take it from me that wehave nothing to fear from them.’13 General Blamey, Commander-in-Chief ofthe Australian Army and Commander of Allied land forces in New Guineabuoyed up his troops by saying that ‘Your enemy is a curious race, a crossbetween the human being and the ape . . . he is inferior to you and you knowit. You know that we have to exterminate these vermin.’14 A common viewwas that Japanese soldiers, ‘were like clever animals with certain humancharacteristics, but by no means the full range . . . this is not murder, killingsuch repulsive-looking animals’.15 Two fifths of US Army chaplainsinterviewed after the Second World War apparently regarded killingJapanese prisoners to be legitimate.16

The war against Japan caused far greater emotion in the USA than didthe war against Germany. This was caused in part by anger at the humiliationof Pearl Harbour but also by racial animosity, a feature of the propagandaof both sides. A US State Department report of 30 April 1942 noted the‘cultural inferiority’ of the Japanese, their ‘well-known intellectual sterility’,the absence of any sense of ‘abstract justice’ in Japanese culture and theJapanese ‘insensitivity to true ethics’. Some have sought to play downthe racial aspect of the war in the Asian–Pacific Theatre, which certainly sitsuncomfortably with current mores; but it was undeniably an importantelement in the thinking of the time and it has remained an important factorin the subsequent debate about that campaign.

In the event, the Japanese proved formidable soldiers, just as they had36 years earlier. Every Japanese soldier was issued with the booklet,

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Just Read This and the War is Won. It described the enemy as, ‘Theweak-spirited Westerner’, and urged readers to, ‘Regard yourself as anavenger come at last face-to-face with your father’s murderer.’ The Japanesecommonly railed at the ‘arrogance’ and ‘impudence’ of the Allies andexpressed the desire to kill them all. Early Japanese successes apparentlysupported their claims of Western decadence.

The war was frequently viewed by the Japanese in broader racial terms.American history was characterized as one of aggression against Indians,Negroes and now the people of Asia. The Americans were described as‘albino apes’, devoid of humanity. The Japanese, by contrast, regardedthemselves as a race descended from God, and their war as a divine mission.As the Yamato race, they were unique, pure and foremost among other‘master races’, ‘friendly races’ and ‘guest races’ in Asia. In summer 1943, aJapanese Commission called the war, ‘The counter-offensive of the Orientalraces against Occidental aggression’.17

Turning the Japanese claims of uniqueness against them, the Allies oftenportrayed their enemy as ‘genetically delinquent’, ‘pathologically abnormal’and scarcely human.18 Prime Minister John Curtin justified Australia’sentry into the war against Japan in terms of its commitment to the princi-ple of ‘White Australia’. After victory at Milne Bay in August 1942, thecommander of the Australian 7th Brigade described the destruction of theJapanese as, ‘a most effective way of demonstrating the superiority ofthe White race’.19

The position of European empires in the Far East began to erode evenbefore the attacks of 1941. It was not merely the defeat of Europeans in theFar East that undermined the moral strength of their empires; it was alsotheir defeat at the hands of other Europeans. In June 1940, the Frenchphilosopher, Simone Weil, observing the presence of German soldiers on thestreets of Paris, noted in her diary that it was a great day for the people ofIndochina, for the humiliation of France gave encouragement to Japaneseambitions. In 1942, the British suffered at Singapore a worse and quickerfate than that of the Russians at Port Arthur, in the direst disaster in Britishmilitary history about which no official investigation has yet beenpublished.20 The British were concerned that their performance hadrevealed decadence and cultural degeneracy, or that they were too civilized.

Yet, this disaster made very little difference to the outcome of the SecondWorld War. Its effect was far greater in the wider context of nearly500 years of European involvement in the Far East as the perception ofBritain’s imperial power, built at such expense over centuries, collapsed inweeks.21 Adolf Hitler had celebrated Japan’s early successes. After theattack on Pearl Harbour, he exclaimed, ‘The fact that the JapaneseGovernment, which has been negotiating for years with this man, has at lastbecome tired of being mocked by him in such an unworthy way, fills us all,the German people, and I think, all decent people in the world, with deepsatisfaction.’22 On later reflection he bemoaned that ‘What is happening in

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the Far East is happening by no will of mine’; and he was moved by thedemise of Europe’s Asian empires: ‘Three centuries of effort are going up insmoke. . . . The White race will disappear from those regions.’23

Winston Churchill, on the other hand, saw the long-term strategicconsequences of the USA’s entry into the War after Pearl Harbour ratherdifferently, musing on the night that he heard the news, ‘So we had wonafter all! . . . We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to anend . . . the Japanese, they would be ground to powder’.24 In 1943 heobserved that it was a blessing that Japan had attacked the USA. ‘Greatergood fortune has rarely happened to the British Empire.’25

Immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbour, the Japanese governmentbanned the term ‘Far East’ on the grounds that it was an obnoxious reflec-tion of the notion that England was the centre of the world. It would notbe again. The British Empire may have appeared to have enjoyed a reprievein 1945, but the long-term effect of the war against Japan was to knockEurope out of the Pacific strategic equation permanently, leaving a vacuumto be filled by a freshly confident USA.

The shock of the fall of Singapore was, nevertheless, keenly felt in theUSA. Admiral E. King, US Chief of Naval Operations and a frequent criticof the British, argued that Australia and New Zealand must be savedbecause they were ‘White men’s countries’,26 echoing Churchill’s convictionthat ‘We could never stand by and see a British Dominion overwhelmed bya Yellow race.’27 Stimson had warned Roosevelt that the fall of Singaporewould be ‘an almost vital blow to the British Empire as well as to our owncommercial interests in the Pacific’.28 Another senior US official assertedthat the loss would ‘lower immeasurably . . . the prestige of the White raceand particularly of the British Empire and the United States in the eyes ofthe natives of the Netherlands East Indies, of the Philippines, of Burma andof India’.29

The need to fight and defeat Japan was seen in a long-term racialperspective and any idea of a negotiated settlement was unlikely. In 1942,Patrick Hurley believed that Japan’s defeat was essential to prevent Japanleading Asia against the White race. That year Herbert Hoover describedhis fears of Asian unity:

The White man has kept control of the Asiatics by dividing parts ofthem each against the other . . . Universally, the White man is hated.Unless they are defeated, they will demand entry and equality inemigration . . . that may take a million American lives and eight or tenyears, but it will have to be done.30

Some Americans were concerned that, even in the event of an Alliedvictory, the stability of Asia would be seriously disrupted by the war withJapan. In March 1943, Senator E.D. Thomas expressed alarm at the forcesbeing unleashed, ‘Genghis Khan got into Europe, and we can loose in Asia


forces so great that the world will be deluged and there will be no way toprevent it’.31 In 1941, Admiral King32 worried about the repercussions ofJapanese victories among the non-White peoples of the world, andRoosevelt’s Chief of Staff, Admiral Leahy, feared that Japan might ‘succeedin combining most of the Asiatic peoples against the Whites’. In March1945, Roosevelt observed that ‘1,100,000,000 potential enemies are dan-gerous’. His son Elliot apparently favoured bombing Japan until half thepopulation had been killed. Admiral Halsey believed that the near elimina-tion of the Japanese race was necessary if ‘White civilization’ was to sur-vive. In April 1945, Paul McNutt, the Chairman of the War ManpowerCommission, is reported to have called for the extermination of theJapanese race in toto.33

The racial threat was sometimes seen as internal, from JapaneseAmericans, as well as an external one from Japan. General DeWittmaintained that ‘A Jap’s a Jap, it makes no difference whether he is anAmerican citizen or not’.34 Some also saw the possibility of an insurrectionby the Black population of the USA, heartened by Japanese successes.35 TheBlack activist Elijah Mohammed was jailed for declaring that he favouredJapan so that Black Americans could be freed by another coloured people.Gandhi observed to Roosevelt that ‘The Allied declaration that they arefighting to make the world safe for freedom of the individual soundshollow, so long as India, and for that matter Africa, are exploited by GreatBritain, and America has the Negro problem in her own home.’36

The Allies soon realized that their assumed superiority over the Japanesemight be misplaced. Contempt for the ‘Yellow Dwarfs’, which had beenprevalent in Hawaii before the attack on Pearl Harbour, soon turnedto near panic. Stunning Japanese victories in 1941 and 1942 and thedetermination of the Japanese soldier37 soon caused another radical andunbalanced shift in Western perceptions. These had a positive aspect andmirrored those of 1905. The legend of the Japanese as being unbeatable inthe jungle soon spread, and there were expressions of admiration for theJapanese, emphasizing the ‘spiritual’ element: ‘They believed in something,and were willing to die for it, for any smallest detail that would help themachieve it. What else is bravery? . . . They came on using their skill and rage,until they were stopped by death.’38

It soon became clear that Japanese military equipment, such as theMitsubishi Zero, was not merely the product of clever imitators, but ofinnovative designers and high-quality production – ‘it is actually superior toour own planes of a similar type’.39 Equally,

The greatest surprise to our fighter and bomber pilots in the SouthPacific was the remarkable accuracy of Japanese gunnery . . . On manyoccasions the Japanese pilot demonstrated admirable skill . . . this maybe explained, at least partially, by the determination of the attackingJap and his insistence on ‘closing’ with his enemy.40

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Such observations were tantamount to praise for Japanese courage andtherefore had to be caveated.

While we would hardly describe the fatalistic Jap as a ‘brave’ man, he,nevertheless, does have an unbelievable courage (or lack of imaginationif you will) in coming to close grips with his enemy and in bravingmurderous fire to attack his man. Of course, the Jap’s religious fanati-cism and his firm belief that ‘to die for the Emperor is to live for ever!’is the most logical explanation of this trait among warriors. But it hastrebled, even quadrupled the problem of defeating him.41

Soldierly respect for the Japanese caused alarm in Allied governmentswhich countered vigorously with their own propaganda. As late as 1945,the training syllabus at the Australian jungle warfare training school stilllaid down that recruits be told that the concept of the Japanese ‘super-soldier’ was a myth.42 As one Australian soldier noted, ‘He is a tough nutto crack, this so often despised little Yellow chap.’43 The Australian officialhistorian Dudley McCarthy described the Japanese as ‘superb in theiracceptance of death as a soldier’s obligation’;44 but judged that this wasonly possible for men fighting with an alien world view and untroubled bythe complex internal struggles of the Occidentals.

Respect for Japanese military prowess was soon to be matched bycontempt; and by 1945, ‘the Japanese had passed from being figures of funto figures of awe and then to figures whose humiliation was a source ofjoy’.45 The Japanese were seen often to fight to the death when they couldhave improvised, survived and fought again. Their courage was seen to bedysfunctional, resulting in poor tactics. ‘They are game blighters – ormad.’46 Japanese tactical rigidity was constantly seen to be the cause ofunnecessary casualties.47 One diarist wrote that ‘The enemy has donenothing to entitle him to our respect during the operation.’48 ‘Japanese’characteristics were seen as explanations for defeat, just as earlier they hadbeen explanations for Japan’s victories. Nippon remained a mystery to theWest, its society and culture often appearing to have unseen dimensions likethe secret floors of Himeji Castle, and the confusion remains today.

The victory over Japan in 1945 was not a victory for, or even the salva-tion of European empires, but the start of the process of their removal fromEast Asia, which in Britain’s case was determined by 1971, with a completewithdrawal of troops from Singapore in 1976.49 The departure of Britainfrom its empire was not only a consequence of its experience in fightingJapan and the rise of Asian nationalisms, but also at the USA’s insistence,on moral principle and in American self-interest, making Britain’s empirediplomatically unsustainable. Ho Chi Minh declared in 1945 that the Whiteman was finished in Asia.50 Yet the USA was victorious, expansionist and‘White’; and it would soon fill much of the imperial vacuum left by theEuropeans, despite ‘Uncle Ho’s’ efforts 20 years later.


The British did not regard their empire as merely one of cynical self-aggrandizement. To many it had a ‘civilizing mission’ which broughtWestern notions of social, economic and political development, even ifthese could not all be implemented immediately in profoundly differingcultures. By any historical measure, however, Britain’s imperial achievementon these grounds was impressive, albeit at a cost endorsed by few after itsdemise. The idea that Britain was fighting for a noble cause was supportedby commanders like Field Marshal Slim who wrote after the War, with trou-bling contradictions, that his Army had, ‘fought in a just cause . . . covetedno man’s country . . . we wished to impose no form of government on anynation. We fought for the clean, the decent, the free things of life’.51

In Britain there was a new and sometimes ill-tempered debate about howto manage the country’s new circumstances, how the colonies would begoverned and whether the Empire could or should survive in any form. Forthe most part, the British accepted that their days of empire were numberedand few had any appetite for rebuilding from the wreckage. Meanwhile, inthe USA the national sentiment was quite the opposite.

The pragmatic acceptance that ‘the Whiteman was finished in Asia’, or atleast so far as the British were concerned, was bolstered by the ideologistsof the Left who had persistently opposed the Empire on moral grounds. TheBritish Army also prepared its men through education schemes for thedissolution of empire, discounting the need for ‘possessions’ and assertingthat ‘self government is better than good government’, or more irreverentlythat colonies ‘had the right to make a mess of their own affairs’. TheEmpire seemed to many to be more of a burden than a benefit; whateverthe sentimental baggage, the financial costs of maintaining it clearly seemedprohibitive. Most Britons believed that winning the war in Europe hadbeen Britain’s greatest achievement, and interest in the Far East and anyimperial prospectus was limited.

Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour ensured that Britain and the USA wouldbecome de facto allies, and this relationship was at its most successful inEurope. In the Far East, however, from where that warfighting relationshipprimarily sprang, the alliance was characterized by ill-feeling and funda-mental differences over the nature of the war, its objectives and the futureof the Pacific region. What was hard for the British to accept was that theyshould dismantle their empire at the insistence of the USA, which seemedeager to take its place, in all but name, as an imperial power; reaping thebenefits, while claiming the moral high ground as an anti-imperial force.

Disagreements between Britain and the USA at that time are still oftenglossed over, but they had serious consequences in subsequent decades. Theremnants of the antagonisms, rooted in the Far Eastern ‘Alliance’, were seenlater in the Suez crisis, with severe mistrust on both sides. It was alsoevident in the British Government’s lack of military support for the USA inVietnam, where the USA was perceived by many to be reaping thewhirlwind of policies which it had earlier condemned in Britain and France,

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there being more of the nationalist than the Communist in their opponents,whatever the superficial appearances.

In the 1930s and 1940s, it was policy over China that proved the princi-pal point of disagreement between the USA and Britain. The Americans sawChina as a close ally to be supported and a source of liberal political viewsin Asia. They were keen to support China militarily and were upset that theBritish seemed lukewarm in their support. Relations between British forcesand the Anglophobe General Joseph Stilwell were poor throughout most ofthe campaign. Stilwell noted in his diary, ‘The more I see of the Limies, theworse I hate them, the bastardly hypocrites do their best to cut our throatson all occasions. The pig-fuckers.’52 He believed that the British were half-hearted in their efforts and wanted the Americans to do all the fighting andpay all the bills in order to restore their empire.

The Atlantic Charter, signed on 12 August 1941, raised issues of inter-pretation and created imperial tensions for the British. Article 3 declared,‘The right of all peoples to choose the form of government under whichthey live.’ Clement Atlee declared that this applied to all peoples and racesof the world. Churchill’s response was that this could not possibly apply tothe peoples of say, Africa. The Burmese Prime Minister, U Saw, wrote toThe Times in October 1941, asking,

What Burma wants to know is whether in fighting with many othercountries for the freedom of the world, she is also fighting for her ownfreedom . . . The demand for complete self-government is a unanimousdemand of the Burmese people, and it was made incessantly, longbefore the Atlantic Charter.53

The USA’s entry into the war and material support to Britain causedalarm to some. Patrick Hurley complained to Roosevelt that ‘British impe-rialism seems to have acquired a new lease of life . . . ’ through ‘the infusion,into its emaciated form, of the blood of productivity and liberty from a freenation through lend lease.’54 American policy was to ensure that in SouthEast Asia Command, the USA did not come to be associated with the Britishand British imperialism. The word ‘Ally’ was not to be used when referringto the British, lest it also label Americans imperialists, rather than agents ofanti-imperialism. MacArthur might well tell British officers that ‘It hadalways been my firm wish to see a strong British Empire and to see the bestof relations between the peoples of America and the British Empire’, but herejected the transfer of command of part of the South West Pacific Area tothe British on the grounds that it would lead to a ‘deterioration of Americanprestige and commercial prospects throughout the Far East’.55

There was also disagreement between Britain and the USA about whetherMountbatten had the right to operate in French Indochina without theagreement of Chiang Kai-shek and his American staff officers. The OSSPsychological Warfare Division advised American propagandists to avoid


referring to ‘British’ Malaya, and not to associate the USA with Britain.Even the Duchess of Windsor, in an unusual foray into foreign policy,confided to an American State Department official that ‘The Empire mustbe cut down, particularly in the Far East.’56

In 1942, one American survey showed anti-British feeling to be greaterthan anti-Russian or anti-Chinese feeling. About 40 per cent of Americansin 1942 believed that ‘The British got us into this war’, and a slightlysmaller percentage believed that ‘The British will try to get us to do most ofthe fighting.’57 Fifty-six per cent of those polled believed the British to be‘oppressors’. On 9 April and 7 June 1942, the Chicago Tribune maintainedthat it was the selfish policies of European imperialists that had helped tomake the USA itself unprepared for war. Many Americans tended to see theBritish as exhausted, cynical pragmatists who had lost their idealism.Marshall was so concerned at anti-British feeling in the US Forces that on19 December 1942 he called for steps to counteract ‘a marked hostility orcontempt for the British among American soldiers’.58

Wendell Wilkie’s book, One World, advocated a foreign policy opposedto all empires, including Britain’s. In December 1943, Stanley Hornbeck ofthe State Department asserted that

In the US, we place a much higher valuation upon the concept of polit-ical freedom and independence than do the British . . . we assume to afar greater extent that various and sundry now-dependent or quasi-dependent national groups have capacity for self-government.59

The historical irony that the USA was itself the creation of Whitecolonists who, far from liquidating their possessions, had held onto theircolonies at the expense of the indigenous population, who were neveroffered independence,60 was noted and irritated its erstwhile British allies.

American anti-imperialism jarred with the British who referred to theanomalous position of Puerto Rico in the light of such assertions. TheBritish claimed that they were no more embarrassed about seeking toretake Burma from the Japanese than the USA was about seeking to retakethe Philippines. The British enjoyed some perverse satisfaction at the highrate of collaboration, at least initially, by the Filipinos with the Japanese,whom they welcomed as liberators from American colonial rule.61

The British also resented the Americans taking a moralistic line on thepolitical liberties of the ‘oppressed peoples’ of its empire, given the state ofrace relations in the USA and in the American forces stationed in Britain.62

Lord Halifax noted that ‘The more I hear, the more I resent their criticismof us in India. We may have been a bit slow politically, but socially andadministratively we are miles ahead of them.’63 The British Cabinet debatedthe issue, and there was disagreement as to whether British forces in Britainshould be ‘educated’ to accept the American rules which maintained racialsegregation in their forces stationed in Britain.64

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Many in the USA maintained that after the war the British Empire, itsresponsibilities and privileges in Asia should be placed under internationalcontrol, ‘the function of British imperialism in the Orient will have beenfulfilled’.65 Herbert Feis, the State Department’s Economic Adviser declaredwith great vehemence to the Dutch Minister for Foreign Affairs that, ‘Neveragain would the great American nation allow the British and Dutch todictate the prices at which it could buy its tin and its rubber.’66 TheAmerican Ambassador to China noted in a letter to President Truman inMay 1945, ‘The question is, will we now permit British, French and Dutchimperialists to use the resources of America’s democracy to re-establishimperialism in Asia.’67

The American plan for the break-up of European Empires was based onthe notion of United Nations trusteeship, obviating the idea that the USAwas in some way the occupier or claimant to sovereignty over whatever ter-ritory it might hold after the war. Welles solved one difficulty by assertingthat the trusteeship principle need not be applied to the western hemispherewhere the USA needed bases for reasons of overwhelming strategic security.This logic was not, however, to be applied to Singapore which he proposedbe placed under international control. Roosevelt also hoped that Britainwould give up Hong Kong to China after the war as a gesture of goodwill.In Britain, these ideas caused an outcry as the war was seen to be the meansby which the USA would assume proprietary rights over its empire.

The USA was reluctant to see Britain regain its Asian possessions, andCongress planned to terminate lend-lease immediately after victory inEurope. Equally, France and the Netherlands were not to be permittedto take part in the battles against the Japanese in 1945, lest this be used tojustify claims to repossess their empires. That said, as victory came intosight, many American opinion-formers came to see the temporary utilityof the British Empire as a stabilizing influence, given the impracticality ofgiving independence to politically diverse and unstable populations.

The USSR loomed as a future threat in the Pacific, and the USA lookedfor ways to build alliances against it. Some in the Senate wondered if GreatBritain could give the USA the support it needed in a potential clash withthe USSR if the USA had undermined its global position. The Americansfound themselves in a dilemma. Elmer Davis, head of the Office of WarInformation noted that

Our policy is apparently based on the conviction that we need Britain asa first-class power; Britain cannot be a first-class power without itsempire; we are accordingly committed to the support of the Britishempire . . . there is a very real danger that . . .as a result, the Americanpeople (will feel) that they have been made dupes of British imperialism.68

Meanwhile in Britain, such ideas were already fast being overtaken byevents as public opinion realized that the days of Empire, as they had been,


were gone forever. In France the desire to hold onto its imperial possessionswas stronger than in Britain, and the USA became a party to theunsuccessful attempts to prevent its disintegration, inheriting a disastrouslegacy.69

In the early years of war in the Far East, Roosevelt had opposed thereturn of colonies to France, but this was reversed on 20 October 1945when he even denied that the USA had ever questioned French sovereigntyin Indochina. In 1949, the USA breached its own arms embargo on militaryassistance to France, delivering naval vessels from its west coast to Vietnam.On 8 May 1950, Dean Acheson declared the USA’s intention to provideeconomic and military aid to those, including the French, who opposed theadvance of Communism.70 The USA opposed France negotiating a settle-ment which made concessions to the Viet Minh and determined to helpFrance avoid military reverses. By 1952, the USA was paying almost half ofthe cost of the French war in Indochina.71 In 1952, Eisenhower urged thatthe French war in Indochina be seen not as a colonial war, but as ‘a matterbetween freedom and Communism’.72 From seeing European rule in Asia asvicious colonialism, the American Government now saw it as the bulwarkof freedom; but even the erstwhile imperialist British were now opposed toinvolvement in France’s war in Indochina, despite American urging not toappease Communism – for them the days of empires were over.

The USA by contrast, continued to support the French and consideredassisting the beleaguered garrison at Dien Bien Phu with atomic strikes.73 Iteven considered the possibility of supplying France with atomic weapons.Dulles was concerned about the reaction of Asians to the use of Americanatomic weapons; but there might also have been problems with its allies hadthe USA intervened, ‘If US intervention results in war expanding to China,and the Soviet Union becomes involved, British and NATO opinion mightwell be split as to support of the US in use of any British or NATO bases.’74

The dangers of intervention were keenly appreciated by the Americanmilitary. In 1953, Vice Admiral A.C. Davis, the advisor on foreign militaryaffairs to the Secretary of Defense declared that ‘Involvement of US forcesin the Indo-China war should be avoided at all practical costs’; and a CIAreport warned that ‘Even if the United States defeated the Viet Minh fieldforces, guerrilla action could be continued indefinitely . . . and the UnitedStates might have to maintain a military commitment in Indo-China foryears to come.’75

Eisenhower’s regrets at not intervening in Indochina were apparentlyedited out of his memoir Mandate for Change, ‘It is exasperating anddepressing to stand by and watch a free nation losing a battle to slavery . . .the conditions which prevented American intervention with military forceon behalf of the French Union was surely frustrating to me.’76 Herecognized, however, that those conditions were the anti-colonial traditionsof the American people which confirmed the timing of the departure ofFrance from Asia.

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While the War in the Far East was seen to bring about the end of theEuropean Empires, more immediately it resulted in Japan’s long-standingambitions for national aggrandisement, of at last being First in the World,being dashed, along with its hopes of some Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.Ironically, it was the justification of Western states, including the USA, fortheir own Asian empires that became an embarrassing prop for theJapanese facing criminal charges after the War.

The tribunal to try alleged war criminals sat in Tokyo from May 1946 toNovember 1948. It ran into difficulty at the outset when the Japanese wereaccused by the American Chief Prosecutor Keenan of trying to destroydemocracy and government ‘by and for the people’. The Indian JusticeR. Pal set this in context, noting that ‘It would be pertinent to recall . . . thatthe majority of the interests claimed by the Western prosecuting powers inthe Eastern Hemisphere including China were acquired by such aggressivemeans.’ He dwelt on the terms used by Western nations for their owncolonial and imperial expansion: ‘Manifest Destiny’, ‘the protection of vitalinterests’, ‘national honour’ and the ‘Whiteman’s burden’. When theJapanese behaved in a similar way they were now accused of ‘aggressiveaggrandizement’.77 He quoted the Royal Institute of International Affairson how the Japanese had followed the precedent of European imperialism;he compared the Japanese ‘Amau Doctrine’ of 1934, with its enunciation ofspecial rights and interests in China, with that of the USA’s MonroeDoctrine. He also pointed out that the reintroduction of European colonialrule in the Far East could hardly be ‘by and for the people’.

Proceedings proved unsatisfactory in many ways. An Imperial instructionto every Japanese soldier had told him that every order he received shouldbe regarded as one given by the Emperor himself. Yet, the Emperor wasdeemed not responsible for the actions of his soldiers or any war crime.Blame was instead placed on the ‘militarists’.78 This apparently absolvedthe ordinary Japanese soldier of guilt, along with the Emperor of waging‘aggressive war’, and all in a sense became victims of those militarists.79

Tojo spoiled this construction by saying that neither he nor his colleagueswould ever have acted against the Emperor’s will. His questioning was cutshort by the court, and one week later Tojo recanted and affirmed that infact the Emperor had always loved and wanted peace. This expression ofloyalty, the assertion that he had in effect all along acted disloyally andcontrary to the Emperor’s wishes, compared perhaps with the suicide ofGeneral Nogi on 13 September 1912, although Tojo’s own suicideattempt was less competent.80 He was restored to health to be hanged on22 December 1948.

While Western Europe’s empires enjoyed a short reprieve in the Far Eastin 1945, the Russian Soviet Empire sought to consolidate its position invictory, after what it regarded as 40 years of humiliation. For the Russians,the wound inflicted by the attack on Port Arthur had never healed. Eightdays after the Japanese attack in 1904, the Russian Government had issued


a communiqué declaring that ‘Russia was shaken with profound indignationagainst an enemy who suddenly broke off negotiations, and, by a treacher-ous attack, endeavoured to obtain an easy success in a war long desired.The Russian nation, with natural impatience, desires promptvengeance . . . ’. French officials noted, ‘Public opinion in Russia feels thehumiliation very deeply. In all ranks of society, including the rural masses,and in every part of the Empire irritation is becoming more and morepronounced.’81

Lenin viewed the Japanese victory over Russia in 1905 as a useful meansof bringing down the Tsar’s regime.82 The new Soviet Government,however, soon acquired a more nationalist outlook. The transition fromcovert ally of the Bolsheviks to outright enmity was caused partly byJapan’s prompt exploitation of Soviet weakness in the Far East in theaftermath of the Russian Revolution.83 By 1920, Lenin had condemned‘the colonial and financial strangulation . . . of the world . . . by a handful of“advanced countries” .’ The ‘three powerful world marauders, armed to theteeth’84 were named as the USA, Britain and Japan, recognition indeed ofJapan’s astonishing rise to international prominence. The Nazi–Soviet pactsof August and September 1939 secured Stalin’s western flank and gave himthe confidence to seek a revision of the Treaty of Portsmouth in return fora non-aggression pact. Instead he secured merely a neutrality pact and hisposition was suddenly undermined by the German invasion of the USSR inJune 1941.

Japan’s attack on the USA ensured that the latter would be the USSR’sstrategic partner against the Axis, but the terms on which the Sovietswished to base that cooperation surprised many, with their very specifichistorical references to 1904–5. On 14 December 1943, Stalin named hisprice for Soviet entry into the war in the Pacific: the restitution of territorylost by the Treaty of Portsmouth and the acquisition of the Kurile Islandswhich Russia had lost in 1875. Stalin also wanted to rent Port Arthur andDalny from China, along with the railways linking them to the USSR. Theissue arose again at Yalta in February 1945, when Stalin demanded‘The restoration of the rights belonging to Russia that were broken byJapan’s treacherous attack in 1904’ and, alluding to the psychologicalaspects of the problem, claimed that it was essential to have the termsformalized on paper so that ‘the Soviet people would understand why theUSSR will enter the war against Japan’.85 Stalin chose the same language asthe Tsarist communiqué of February 1904 to condemn Japanese action in awar, the prosecution of which his own party had not supported at the time,whilst encouraging insurrection on the home front.

Stalin chose similar phraseology on 2 September 1945 in his declarationof victory over Japan, ‘we have a special account to settle with Japan. Japanbegan its aggression against our country as early as 1904.’ He went on todescribe Japanese treachery, Russian defeat and the seizure of Russianterritory ‘tearing away Russia from its Far East’. He described Japan’s

Europe bows out 125

‘predatory’ actions of torment and plunder after 1918 and its offensives of1938: ‘The defeat of Russian forces in 1904 . . . left painful memories in theconsciousness of our people. It left a black stain on our country. Our peoplebelieved and waited for the day when Japan would be beaten and the stainwould be liquidated. We waited forty years, the people of the old genera-tion, for this day. And here we are, this day has come.’86 This hardlyreflected Stalin’s feelings of glee when Port Arthur had fallen to theJapanese in 1904 and the Tsar’s regime tottered: ‘Workers of the Caucasus,the time for revenge has come!’87

References to the trauma of 1904–5 recurred frequently in Soviet foreignpolicy. In many ways it proved a worse shock for the Russians than didPearl Harbour for the Americans; 60 years later, Japan and Russia have yetto sign a peace treaty to settle the end of the Second World War. The impactof the Russo-Japanese War on Russia might be compared to that of an out-come to the Second World War in which Japan had defeated the US Navydecisively at Midway, gone on to win the war and then occupied Hawaii,as a condition of a peace treaty.

In 1945, Stalin enjoyed some revenge for defeat in the Russo-JapaneseWar by controlling Port Arthur, before the Communist ChineseGovernment asserted its authority. He appeared obsessed by TsaristRussia’s defeat in the East, and this humiliation seems to have caused him,at times, to pursue policies for emotional reasons, even when these wereperhaps contrary to the USSR’s immediate interests.88 After the SecondWorld War, the USSR was apparently content to see its enemy occupied bythe USA, and slow to note its transformation into a base for Americanmaritime power, Japan’s proxy, ‘locking-in’ the USSR from its outlets to thePacific. It was only in August 1953 that the USSR sought a peace treatywith Japan, and talks took place in London in June 1955. The historicallyemotive issues of the Kuriles and South Sakhalin prevented a successfulcompletion of the negotiations, the Soviet Foreign Minister pointing outthat the Japanese attack of 1904 had negated the treaties of the nineteenthcentury. The opportunity to draw the wavering Japanese away fromAmerican influence to a neutral position was lost, as the power of historytook precedence over real politik and strategic self-interest.89

With Japan ‘neutralized’, the two great Communist powers of Asia,China and the USSR, enjoyed good relations following the Treaty ofFriendship, Union and Mutual Assistance in February 1950. However,China was soon regarded once more as a terrifying alien menace, andrelations deteriorated under Khrushchev who refused to pass nuclearweapons technology to China. During the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s, theSoviet dissident Andrei Amalrik published Will the Soviet Union SurviveUntil 1984?, which foretold of a terrible war with China and the collapseof the USSR. Fears of outright war between China and the USSR wereprevalent during the 1960s.90 Border disputes became a source of irritationin September 1963 when China raised the issue of ‘unequal treaties’, and in


1964 negotiations on the border broke down.91 In October 1964, Chinaconducted its first nuclear tests. The USSR feared that any conflict inEurope would be exploited by China’s numerical strength to overrunterritories on the border and it reinforced its garrisons in Asia.92

In the face of the perceived Soviet threat, China sought improvedrelations with the USA93 and Japan, and in August 1978 China concludedthe Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Japan, which included a clauseopposing Soviet hegemony. In April 1979 China announced that it wouldnot renew its Treaty of Friendship, Union and Mutual Assistance with theUSSR which was due to expire in April 1980.94 However, from 1982the presidency of Ronald Reagan was perceived as a common threat to boththe USSR and China; and relations between the two countries improved.Despite an apparent diplomatic rapprochement since 1986, underlyingattitudes in Russia towards China appear remarkably similar to those ofKuropatkin’s day. Not least because of Russia’s concerns about the‘demographic threat’ from China to Russia’s eastern territories, echoingWestern fears of ‘The Yellow Peril’ of a hundred years ago.

The collapse of the USSR weakened Russia’s position in the Far East,making way for other Asian powers to exercise their relative strength. Blochwould not have been surprised that in modern war, even a Cold War, theconsequence of defeat could be political, social and economic collapse.95

Maybe the Blochian character of the end of the Cold War sets the patternfor future conflict, which will not necessarily be military, but rather featurestruggles of other forms between systems, cultures and economic models.From 1905, war would be seen in terms of cultural values and competition,and in the Information Age cultural values could become a casus belli andin themselves constitute weapons of choice. This notion is itself a veryWestern one. Just as Marxism was a product of the European bourgeoisie,turned on itself, so perhaps the concept of Cultural-Darwinism is also apeculiarly European notion. It may also be the intellectual construct whichspawns and shapes the next challenge to the culture which produced it,invigorating those who reject the idea of a universal Western culture at the‘end of history’ and who believe that demography is also on their side.

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8 Asia on the march

If 1905 marked the waning of the Europeans in Asia, it also marked thewaxing of the Asians themselves. J.F.C. Fuller regarded the Russo-JapaneseWar as one of the great turning points in Western history for

It was not merely a trial of strength between an Asiatic and a semi-European power, but above all it was a challenge to Western supremacyin Asia . . . The fall of Port Arthur in 1905, like the fall ofConstantinople in 1453, rightly may be numbered among the few reallygreat events of history.1

Putnam Weale, writing in 1910, saw the rise of nationalist movementsacross Asia to be a direct consequence of Japan’s victory over Russia. TheWar of 1904–5 had had a profound influence on those Indian nationalists,such as Subhas Chandra Bose, who were to fight for the Japanese duringthe Second World War, and who would be recognized officially by theIndian Government 50 years later as heroes of independence. Pandit Nehrurecalled that ‘Japanese victories stirred up my enthusiasm . . . Nationalisticideas filled my mind. I mused of Indian freedom and Asiatic freedom fromthe thraldom of Europe.’2 Curle noted that ‘Ever since the Japanesesmashed the Russians . . . they believe they are now our military equals, andwould welcome the call to rise and drive us out.’3 ‘Japan is the pioneer ofthe new age: she is the hope of Asia’, wrote Kawai Tatsuo in 1938 in hisThe Goal of Japanese Expansion.4 The Indonesian nationalist, AhmadSubardjo, saw Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905, as the turning pointin the history of Asia; and its withdrawal from the League of Nations in1933 and its advocacy of a ‘return to Asia’ as a watershed in its foreignpolicy.

Admiration for the Japanese character and its wider strategicimplications persisted in the West right up to the outbreak of war in1941, evoking the cultural panic in Europe after 1905. In his forewordto a biography of Admiral Togo of 1937, B.A. Fiske eulogized

Togo’s noble character and equated it to that of Japan itself. He warnedAmericans that

Woe to us if we fail to read the handwriting on the wall . . . So hinderedare Americans by the multitudinous factions in our political and sociallife, so swept along are we by the forceful impulse of our ‘ruggedindividualists’, so obedient are we to the doctrine of ‘every man forhimself’, so eager are we in the pursuit of luxury and pleasure, that thepicture here presented of a modest gentleman – self-effacing and loyal,yet acclaimed, the world over as one of the greatest warriors – is almostunbelievable . . . No nation of self-indulgent individuals . . . can competewith a nation of self-sacrificing individuals . . . .5

He contrasted the state of contemporary American life with the ‘plain livingand high thinking’6 of the Pilgrim Fathers and compared the fall of earliergreat civilizations with the fate that awaited the USA.

In the 1930s, the black American, W.E.B. Du Bois, supported the Japaneseinvasion of China, a country regarded as some sort of international ‘UncleTom’, as this seemed preferable to its domination by Americans andEuropeans.7 The Jamaican Black activist, Marcus Garvey believed that thenew-found racial pride of non-Whites would inspire all those suffering fromracial oppression. J.S. McIntyre wrote, ‘Let the Negro pick a page from thebook of Japan with its united and phenomenally progressive people – ananswer to an impudent and degenerate Western civilization . . . .’8

Japanese success against Russia in 1904 had owed much to its intelligencepreparations and subversive operations in Russia itself. Similar actions hadbeen planned against China during the First World War and this formula wasrepeated prior to operations in Manchuria and throughout the latter’s occu-pation. The Black Dragon Society and Japanese military intelligence sup-ported Pan-Asianist societies such as the Morality Society and the Society forthe Great Unity of World Religions that were already active in Manchuria.They combined again in the late 1930s to fight a ‘deep battle’ to weaken theBritish Empire from within as Japanese forces struck. Their method was toencourage the creation, under Japanese control, of revolutionary nationalistarmies which would fight for the independence of European and Americancolonies, just as they had encouraged insurrection against the Tsar.

The Japanese consulate in Calcutta was the centre of Japanese espionagein India from 1936, in conjunction with the German vice-consul in the city,the Baron von Richthofen. Japanese infiltration of British India was oftenunder cover of Buddhist charitable movements, with Japanese agentsdisguised as monks making frequent visits to Benares and Gaya. TheJapanese supported the Indian revolutionary Rash Behari Bose in exile, andin April 1941, Subhas Chandra Bose reached Berlin via Moscowand Afghanistan, an ‘Indian Lenin’.

Asia on the march 129

Colonel Suzuki Keiji, a latter day Colonel Akashi, was tasked withkeeping the Burma Road closed, thereby disabling Anglo-American supportfor resistance to Japanese operations in China.9 Suzuki’s primary objectivewas to develop an offensive strategy against British Asia by enlisting thesupport of young nationalists across the region. In May 1940, he moved fromBangkok, setting up his secret headquarters in Rangoon. There he creatednetworks for the Minami Kikan, the Japanese subversion organization whichadvanced the cause of Asian nationalism against the colonial powers.10

Colonel Suzuki stirred up discontent in Indian Army garrisons in Singaporeand was especially active in Malaya where there were extensive Japanesecommercial interests whose employees also often acted as his agents.11

On 12 November 1940, Aung San, Thakin12 visited Japan to discuss thesetting up of the Burmese Defence Army (BDA), which he would command,and its cooperation with the future Japanese conquerors/liberators of hiscountry. Britain tried to negotiate with the Burmese nationalist politician,U Saw, to ensure Burma’s support in any war with Japan; but after theattacks on Pearl Harbour, he concluded that the Western powers would bedefeated by the Japanese, with whom he negotiated instead.13

The first exposition of a Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere appeared on1 August 1940. It included northern China, Indochina and Indonesia andwould be created at the expense of existing European influence. Japan wastorn between a conviction of its unique racial superiority and the idea of acommon Asian racial brotherhood which might conveniently entail eco-nomic advantages. The ‘Asian’ ideal attracted many Chinese, even from theKuomintang, who joined the Hsin-min Hui, the organization that promotedSino-Japanese collaboration. Many Koreans were prepared to collaboratewith the Japanese through organizations such as Nissen Kyowakai, and tojoin in hunting down resisters.

At an Imperial conference in July 1941, the Japanese Prime MinisterKonoe maintained that it was essential for Japan to obtain in East Asiawhatever it could not produce itself. By 30 July, this Sphere had expandedto include Australia and New Zealand. Japan did not wish to conquer theUSA; rather it wanted to drive the USA and the Europeans out of theWestern Pacific, which it considered its legitimate area of influence.Congressman Hamilton Fish noted that this was in effect a declaration ofJapan’s ‘Monroe Doctrine’.

The Japanese Government claimed that its war was ‘to emancipate theEast Asian nations from Anglo-Saxon domination and to construct a neworder.’14 Chandra Bose and others were taken with European notions ofnationalism with which to reject the West, and sided with the ‘spiritual’champion of the Orient, Japan, which made its challenge with the ‘modern’means inspired by the West. President Manuel Quezon15 of the Philippineswas relieved when Japan attacked, for he was worried that Japan would bea threat to the Philippines after its independence, due to be granted in 1946.He was confident that Japan would now be defeated and that the


Philippines would thereby be secure in the longer term. Nevertheless, in1942 he asked the USA to grant the Philippines independence so that hemight come to terms with the Japanese, pending American victory.16

The Indonesian nationalist Sjahrir Soetan had urged the Dutch governmentto liberalize its regime and unite with the people of its colonies to resist theJapanese, but he noted that most of his countrymen rejoiced at news ofJapanese victories. The Japanese entered Bangkok on Thai Constitution Day,with the full support of the Thai Government. The Japanese were cheered bythe people of Guam, supported by the Government of Mongolia, and morepredictably by the Government of Manchukuo and the Vichy Governmentin Indochina, the latter pledging its support against the Anglo-Saxons.Professor Miyazawa Toshiyoshi of the Imperial University in Tokyo wrote,‘The Anglo-Saxon influence is rapidly waning and in its place a rapid rise isbeing witnessed in Asiatic countries. The war of Greater East Asia will createa new and glorious page in the history of the world.’17

At the Great East Asia Conference in Tokyo in November 1943, Tojocondemned the hypocrisy of the Western powers who stressed the need touphold international justice and peace, but on their terms, based on imper-ial domination and colonial exploitation. He stressed the age, refinementand spirituality of Asian civilization which would save the world from thematerialism of the West. Yet the conference itself was intended to stress theneed for concerted planning and economic modernization.

Commanders such as General Yamashita Tomoyuki, the conqueror ofMalaya, declared their support for a benevolent East Asia Co-ProsperitySphere.18 Decree Number 1 of the Japanese Sixteenth Army in Java declaredthat the Japanese and Indonesians were of one race. Japan was said to beheir to the ancient culture of China and part of an Asian civilization thatwas both ethically and aesthetically superior to that of the West. Asianculture had lacked only the advantages of science. Japan would provideAsia with this scientific leadership, blending the Oriental and theOccidental cultures.

That leadership would also be military, and over half-a-million Chinesetroops served under the Japanese.19 The Japanese set up local security forcesin the Philippines, Java, and Malaya to fight against resistance guerrillas,such as the Hukbalahap in the Philippines.20 The Japanese were especiallyactive amongst the Indian Diaspora of South-East Asia. In May 1942 theIndian Independence League held its conference in Bangkok, seekingto unify the leadership of Indian populations across South-East Asia. On12 August 1942, 125,000 people gathered in Farrer Park in Singapore tohear Rash Bihari Bose call for the overthrow of British India. PrimeMinister Tojo offered Burma and the Philippines independence if theywould cooperate with Japan, and by 1943 India seemed likely to receive thesame offer. Burma was declared independent on 1 August 1943.

Much of the support for Japan’s great project was opportunistic, idealisticor feigned. With Japan at war with China, it was hard for all to accept


Japanese assertions of their benevolent Asianism; and it was largely Japanesecontempt for the Chinese that had prevented Japan from securing an advan-tageous settlement with Chiang Kai-shek in 1940. Even Subhas ChandraBose asked why Japan’s renaissance could not have been achieved, ‘withoutimperialism, without dismembering the Chinese republic, without humiliat-ing another proud, cultured and ancient race’.21 The Chinese in the BritishEmpire raised money and agitated in support of China in its war against theJapanese; and many of those who opposed British imperialism became therump of resistance to the Japanese. It is estimated that by 1939 there wereover 700 Chinese organizations dedicated to opposing Japan.22 TheJapanese in turn warned that the Overseas Chinese lay outside the ‘Asianbrotherhood’ and could expect no mercy in Japanese-occupied territories.

The Communist Party also supported the British against the Japanese aspart of an anti-fascist front, although its members were not always trustedby the British.23 The Chinese Communist leaders in Yenan and the IndianCommunist Party, loyal to the USSR, both urged the people of theircountries to support the Western powers they had formerly condemned, inorder to defeat imperial Japan. The Indonesian nationalist, MohammedHatta, regarded Japan’s Asian ‘mission’ as no more than a ploy by

Japan’s fascists who would hope to sink their teeth into Indonesia . . .Japan has continued to imitate the Western races. It has gone so far asto imitate Western imperialism in its dealings with the Asianraces . . . This desire to be seen as racially equal to the West, and theresultant willingness to behave just as they do – this is the psychologicalbasis for Japan’s mistaken policies.24

He saw the coming struggle, not as one between Asia and Europe, butrather between Fascism and Democracy.

The Japanese also failed to win over the Moslem populations of Asia. From5 to 7 April 1942, they held a conference for Islamic leaders in Singapore atwhich Japan promised to protect Islam. The Japanese Governor of Pahangasked the Mufti of Pahang, ‘Can the Malay States declare a holy war againstthe British and their allies?’ The Mufti replied, ‘Yes, provided the JapaneseEmperor is a Muslim.’25 The main effect of the conference was to create anawareness of a Moslem identity in the region separate from the state.

The Japanese were soon seen to behave like the European imperialpowers, for example, bringing in opium from China and Taiwan to sell inBurma.26 On 14 March 1942, the Chief Cabinet Secretary Hoshino Naokiproclaimed that ‘There are no restrictions on us. These were enemy posses-sions. We can take them, do anything we want . . . we must not promiseindependence to the local peoples or encourage any wilful ambitions.’27 TheJapanese warned the inhabitants of their occupied territories to cooperateor be crushed, and many of their Asian supporters soon turned againstthem on witnessing their atrocities in occupied territories. In Singapore,according to Yokota Yasuo, ‘The pompous English were replaced by the


rough, vulgar Japanese. Simply a change from bad to worse. Forms of racialdiscrimination never practised even by the British were imposed.’28 TheBurmese nationalist, and later Prime Minister Ba Maw, who had frequentlycalled for solidarity of Asian blood with the Japanese, rapidly changed hisview once subject to Japanese occupation, denouncing their ‘brutality,arrogance and racial pretensions’ and forced programmes of Japanization.29

In India, Gandhi30 had set his heart against the supposed Westerncorruption of human values. He organized non-violent displays of ‘soulforce’, and urged Indians not to support the British or to fight the Japanese.Others, however, such as Jawaharlal Nehru recognized the benefits ofWestern science that could modernize Asia, and the most successful Asianstates have accepted that proposition. Nehru also refused to makestatements against the British. ‘It distresses me that Indians should talkof the Japanese coming to liberate India. Japan comes here either forimperialist reason straight-forward or to fight with the BritishGovernment . . . it does not come to liberate.’31

By 1944, as the tide of the war turned, the BDA was already plotting toswitch sides to fight the Japanese; in February 1945, its commander, AungSan, Thakin, was making public speeches against the Japanese. MohanSingh, commander of the Indian National Army (INA), who had believedthat Japanese victories raised the morale of all Asians and brought shameon Europeans and the Americans, soon saw this credit ebbing away. Henoted that the inhabitants of occupied lands had less autonomy under theJapanese than they had had under their former colonial masters, and hecontinued to see the British in a favourable light.32 Plans for a united Asianempire fell apart, and on 17 August 1945, Sukarno declared Indonesianindependence, but this did not include Malaya. The Japanese told theMalayan nationalists that the dream of a Greater Asia was over, and that‘Malayan independence is now your problem. You are on your own.’33

The Japanese had failed to realize that the ideal of Asianism could not besustained while they were engaged in a prolonged war of aggression inChina, in the face of wide ethnic, religious and political diversity in theregion and in the light of the harsh behaviour of their occupying forces. Thewar with Japan in East Asia had turned out to be as much a series of civilwars, reflecting the diversity between the Indians, Burmese and Malayans,as about imperial rivalry between the major powers.

Nevertheless, Japanese idealism persisted to the end, even though it hadoften meant little in practice and was frequently self-serving. The Emperor’sso-called surrender speech of 15 August 1945 did not contain the wordsurrender; but it did express regret to Japan’s Asian allies who had cooperatedwith it in seeking the emancipation of East Asia.

[W]e declared war on America and Britain out of Our sincere desire toensure Japan’s self-preservation and the stabilization of East Asia, itbeing far from Our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty ofother nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandisement.34


Yet the first idea in this passage was not entirely invalid and the messageremained deeply attractive to many.

The consequences of Japan’s defeat in 1945 were not straightforward,and some believed that even in defeat, Japan had in a sense won its war.Many Asians warned against too harsh a treatment of Japan, for whateverthe USA’s attempts to dissociate itself from the European imperial powers,the issue was seen by many Asian nationalists quite simply in racial or, atleast, cultural terms. The war had been a victory for the Whiteman in Asia,and many were unhappy about it. This was evident in the nationaliststruggles against the departing Europeans, and more damagingly againstthe Americans in Vietnam, who in the mind of their opponents acted outthe role that racist Asians had attributed to them in 1945. Some Asiannationalists concluded in 1945 that the Japanese, though defeated in ageneral sense, had won the war in Asia by creating a situation in whichEuropean rule would end. It would be those nationalists in South-East Asiawho would evict not only the French, but also subsequently the Americansfrom Vietnam.

On the day of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour, Sun Fo, a Kuomintangofficial, anticipating the former’s defeat and the consequences for China,declared that it would now be ‘a world of America, Britain, China andRussia’.35 In the event, only the USA and Russia, the two most successful‘European’ empires of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have stayedthe course in Asia, while China’s potential remains unfulfilled. Ironically,Japanese success in 1941 created fear of a rising China, which wasencouraged by the visit of Chiang Kai-shek to New Delhi in 1942. ChiangKai-shek and his wife told Indian leaders that Asians had much in common;and some Chinese Marxists such as Li Ta-chao now believed that the classstruggle had turned into racial struggle. President Quezon of thePhilippines, even during its occupation by the Japanese, regardedthe Chinese as ‘the greatest potential danger in Asia, far greater thanJapan’.36 Equally, Sir Mohammed Zafrullah Khan of the Government ofIndia also expressed concern about China: ‘China after the war is going tobe a very formidable problem indeed.’37 To the end, the Japanese saw theSecond World War as essentially a Great East Asian War in which the issueof China was central, and that if this could be solved then accommodationcould be reached with the West. In that sense it was about who would bethe champion of Asia – Japan or China?

The years of cooperation between the USA and China, prior to theCommunists’ seizure of power in 1949, inclined Americans to take a morepositive view of the Chinese than did the British. The Americans saw theChinese as agents of emerging democracy and open trade. Roosevelt wasadvised by his envoy, Patrick Hurley, that Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinesepeople favoured democracy and liberty and were opposed to the principlesof imperialism and communism. Roosevelt assured Mountbatten, theSupreme Commander in South-East Asia, that it was a triumph to have won


over 450 million Chinese to the Allied cause, because they would ‘be usefultwenty-five or fifty years hence’.38 When Churchill argued with Rooseveltthat China presented a long-term threat to Indochina, he was rebuffed asout-of-date and unaware that, ‘A new period opened in the world’s history,and you will have to adjust to it.’39

Despite Japan’s achievements since 1945, the Second World Warestablished China as the major Asian power, albeit often a dormant one.Japan was both the military and economic expression of a resurgent Asia inthe twentieth century, but it is China that seems set to inherit the power thatwill flow from it in the twenty-first century.


9 America advances

The USA and the Asians

The USA took its ‘stride across the Pacific’ in the nineteenth century, yetsaw its moral position in the world to be on an entirely higher plane thanthe self-seeking empires of the Europeans. Commodore Perry intended tocarry the gospel of God to the heathen, but he also encouraged the Japaneseto adopt rapid economic modernization and the protection of the USAwhich would act as a balance against Britain, the ‘first-chop’ power in theregion.

The Spanish-American War of 1898 preserved the isolation of the USA inthe East but left it thoroughly enmeshed and engaged in the imperial politicsof the Pacific. Halford Mackinder’s world map of 1904, astutely showedthe east coast of the USA twice, to show how the USA was both a Pacificand an Atlantic power. The USA had a moral and political problem inasserting its Monroe Doctrine while at the same time denying Japan theright to enforce its own version of that doctrine in Asia – a point noted byTasker Bliss, the President of the AWC, in a paper of 1904.

There is no doubt that this will result in due time in the formulation ofa second line of foreign policy; we shall then have one policy based oncontact with, and another policy based on isolation from, the rest of theworld. We may yet find ourselves fighting for our Monroe Doctrine onone side of the world, and fighting somebody else’s Monroe Doctrineon the other side of the world. However, that time has not yet come.1

In a memorandum to the Joint Board on 10 June 1904, Rear AdmiralTaylor concluded that ‘The sacredness of the Monroe Doctrine [would]drop to second in the national mind, and our trade relations with east Asiaassume first place, and become the primal cause of war.’ In his mind, tradewith China was the ‘ultimate objective’.2

American commercial expansion in China and the Pacific continued afterthe Russo-Japanese War, although there was reluctance to equate this withthe imperialism of European nations. Americans were involved in

the Chinese opium trade, imported Chinese coolie labour to the USA andthe USA maintained its extraterritorial rights in China.3 The USAcondemned the imperial process yet accepted many of its advantages.

This was an accident of history, that we Americans could enjoy the EastAsia treaty privileges, the fruits of European aggression, without themoral burden of ourselves committing aggression. It gave us a holierthan thou attitude, a righteous self-esteem, an undeserved moralgrandeur in our own eyes that was built on self-deception and haslasted into our own day . . . 4

Work conducted by the NWC and the AWC before the Second WorldWar was pragmatic military, rather than political, planning; and there wereevident limits to American ‘missionary zeal’. The USA was not prepared togo to war against Japan to defend China, any more than it had beenprepared to defend European nations against Nazi Germany. After Japanhad attacked Pearl Harbour and Hitler had declared war on the USA in1941, some in the USA were inclined to believe that that was what they haddone. Nevertheless, once committed, both notions had utility in sustainingthe American war effort and in setting the moral and ideological tone forthe USA’s position in the post-war world.

The future of Japanese-mandated Pacific islands became an issue. Despitecriticism of British imperialism, some such as Senator P. McCarran wereforthright in their support for a new American imperialism, ‘I’m a hell-tootin’ American from out West, and ‘I’m for keeping the mandates underthe Stars and Stripes.’5 In November 1944, the State Department made itclear that it expected to maintain bases in Egypt, India and Burma after thewar; and that it would demand rights on French, Portuguese and Australianterritory. The USA claimed to need bases in the Marshalls, Carolines,Philippines, Formosa and the Chinese coast, as well as the formerlyJapanese-mandated islands. The New York Tribune, of 15 August 1945observed that ‘We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that ours is the supremeposition.’ The Chicago Daily News of 31 January and 25 June 1945proclaimed,

Manifest destiny is bigger than we are . . . Destiny has cast us in the roleof protecting others too weak to protect themselves. If we are to acceptthe responsibilities destiny has thrust upon us, we must have thosenaval and air bases.

The list of islands required by the USA included some under Britishsovereignty, which provoked further ill feeling; and it was pointed out thatunder American rule Guam would have less political freedom than it hadhad under the Spanish. The idea of self-determination would take secondplace to the security interests of the USA, which saw no need to discuss this

Amercia advances 137

with other nations any more than it had the annexation of Hawaii and thePhilippines 50 years earlier. Many Americans believed that the world couldonly be saved by reorganizing it under American leadership and that thatleadership depended upon the USA, rather than some alliance, winning thewar. It was accepted that American values would be good for the peoples ofAsia who were in a sense nascent Americans, and Office of StrategicServices (OSS) reports continued to stress the hunger of Asian peoples forAmerican leadership.

Nevertheless, Roosevelt was cautious, and he envisaged these territoriesbeing held in trusteeship by the USA at the request of the United Nations,with authority to fortify them without a decision on permanent sovereignty.Far from being resentful, Churchill was pragmatic and keen to see Westerninterests dominant in the Far East. He told Bernard Baruch, ‘You can takethe whole Pacific Ocean, whatever America wants there will satisfy us.’6

Some Americans were uneasy with the contradictions in American plansfor the Pacific. Ralph Bunche feared that the USA would not have ‘cleanhands’. ‘If we free the Philippines on the one hand and take over the Japanesemandated islands on the other hand, it won’t prove much and would lead tothe development of an American empire in the Pacific.’7 Some like Welles andHornbeck raised warnings about possible embarrassment ahead for the USAshould the United Nations trusteeship principle also be applied to Hawaii,the Philippines and the Panama Canal Zone. Representative Eaton, forexample, asked whether, ‘it was intended that the Virgin Islands, Puerto Ricoand Hawaii should be placed under the trusteeship principle’,8 which theUSA insisted upon for European territories in the Far East.

MacArthur feared that true independence for the Philippines would meanrevolution, and he was influenced by the old elite of illustrados, familiessuch as Aquino, Marcos and Soriano. The nationalist lawyer, SergioOsmena, who had become President in exile in the USA in August 1944 wasregarded as a threat by MacArthur. On witnessing the handover ofindependence to the Philippines on 4 March 1946, MacArthur announcedin Manila that ‘America buried imperialism here today.’9 Cynics noted thatit was Japanese not American imperialism that he had buried.

MacArthur made every excuse not to work with Osmena after formalindependence in 1946, and instead he supported Manuel Roxas who hadcollaborated with the Japanese, along with 5,000 other illustrados. InAugust 1945 MacArthur exonerated them of all collaborationist crimes. In1946 Roxas became the first President of the Philippine Republic,supported by MacArthur, and the islands were in effect recolonized culturally,politically and economically. The US gained Subic Bay naval base and ClarkAir Base almost rent free, and its personnel on those bases received legalimmunity – a form of the imperial notion of extraterritoriality in China,once so condemned when applied to European interests.10

US commanders increasingly took account of commercial factorsafter the war, and the need for the USA to win the war alone was clearly


understood.11 Despite its support for Chiang Kai-shek, the USA allowed hisregime no say in running the war against Japan.12 Even in 1941 duringhostilities against Japan, it still seemed to some Chinese that the USA, withits urge to Americanize the world, was the greater long-term threat.13 EliotJaneway, sounding like many American businessmen over the previoushundred years, noted that after the war, the USA would have to findcustomers for its unprecedented industrial production, and it would needallies like China to soak up this surplus. China would be the ‘new economicfrontier’ keeping America’s ‘shop open for business’. In January 1943, theUSA had forced Britain to relinquish its extraterritoriality rights in China,although an agreement of the same year granted extraterritoriality rightsin China to the USA.14 By 1945 this extended to 60,000 American troops inChina, much to the annoyance of the Chinese Communists.15

At Yalta, Roosevelt had in effect given the USSR an empire in EasternEurope in exchange for American dominance in the Far East, but he hadagreed to the USSR’s keeping southern Sakhalin and the Kuriles, and the useof the railway through Manchuria to Port Arthur. The matter was notdiscussed with Chinese, restoring to Russia the ‘former rights . . . violated bythe treacherous attack of Japan in 1904’.16 Roosevelt wanted Port Arthurto be internationalized, even though Manchuria had been Chinese, and thatinternationalization would contradict the principles of the AtlanticCharter.17 In the event, US and Soviet interests in Korea were split with thedivision of the peninsula. As the Second World War drew to a close, theUSA became more concerned about containing a future Soviet threat, andthe US Navy considered establishing bases in China in preparation for whatwas thought to be the coming war with the USSR.

The USA occupied and ruled South Korea without introducing democ-racy. General Hodge prosecuted thousands of left-wing Koreans for treasonin American courts martial rather than in Korean courts. In October 1949the US National Security Council (Statement NSC-48) described the islandchain of Japan, Okinawa, Taiwan and the Philippines as ‘our first line ofdefense and, in addition, our first line of offense from which we can seek toreduce the area of Communist control, using whatever means we candevelop’.18

The forces that spawned the Russo-Japanese War re-emerged in new butfamiliar forms as historical shadows. The Korean War was an ideologicalstruggle between the two pseudo-colonial powers of the Cold War; but italso replicated the Russo-Japanese War, by proxy, with the US/UN, the‘maritime’ power, defending Japanese security interests against the NorthKoreans, representing the Chinese and Russians, the ‘continental’ power. Itended with the division of the country along the line proposed by theJapanese to separate their own and Russian forces in the aftermath ofthe Sino-Japanese War of 1894–5.

One young observer of the final throes of the Russo-Japanese War had beenDouglas MacArthur, ADC to his father Major General Arthur MacArthur.


His statue stands today on a hillside overlooking Inchon, also known asChemulpo, the site in 1950 of his greatest military achievement. It was alsothe site of the successful amphibious landings by the Japanese in 1894 andfrom 10 to 27 February 1904. Although he only arrived in Korea in March1905 as the War was ending, as a guest of the Japanese Army, DouglasMcArthur was moved by the War’s scale and novelty, and he studied the bat-tlefields and their lessons. He may have drawn inspiration from the Chemulpolandings for his own crowning masterstroke 45 years later.

One consequence of the Korean War was that the USA would remain an‘Asian’ power, with military garrisons spread across the region for an indef-inite period. This has been seen as a vital stabilizing factor, a provocativeintrusion, an anachronism, or even all three. In Vietnam, the USA wouldfight what was not so much a Communist movement as a nationalist one,a relic from the Second World War, when so many nationalist groups hadfought both against the Empire of a conquering Japan, and with theJapanese against long-established ones, including that of the USA. Defeat inVietnam 20 years later did not mark the end of the United States’ presencein Asia, as it had for France. On the contrary, the USA’s departure fromVietnam in a sense strengthened its position in support of Japan, SouthKorea and Taiwan; and economic and cultural factors remained vitalelements in American ‘imperial power’ in Asia. The former Japanese PrimeMinister Hosokawa Morihiro noted that it was after US forces withdrewfrom Indochina and Thailand in the 1970s that economic growth in South-East Asia gained momentum and economic relations with the USA began toexpand. Edward Luttwak has noted the irony that ‘The American conquestof Vietnam began the moment the last American helicopter flew out ofSaigon.’19

The USA and Britain

The British and Americans had been concerned about the fate of their pos-sessions in the face of the Japanese onslaught; but the British were also con-cerned about the consequences of American victory. For most of the 1930s,American military planners continued to consider war in the Atlantic andCanada against Britain (RED); but by the end of that decade this planningwas merely to exercise against the most demanding case, and the threat inthe East was seen to come from Germany (BLACK). It was also clear thatthe German-Soviet Pact made the USSR an unlikely ally in the Far East. Theonly realistic ally for the USA was Britain, its empire and the Dominions;and yet by strange irony, the war in the Pacific would also represent animperial struggle between RED and its reluctant but de facto ally, the USA,which had not been foreseen in interwar planning.

American military planners were mainly Anglo-Saxon in culturaloutlook, but the views of the American public were more complex and


strongly isolationist, with the result that politically, such an alliance was farfrom obvious right up until the attack on Pearl Harbour. The residue ofAnglophobia remained a powerful theme in the USA’s relationship withBritain throughout the war and into the 1950s.

Nevertheless the idea that British Imperialism was at odds with Americanideals remained powerful until 1948, when the Soviet threat and the demiseof the British Empire ensured that the USA would be dominant in anyAnglo-American relationship. The new relationship was then seen toenhance American power, rather than to exploit or diminish it.

Anglophobia appeared in virulent form soon after the First World Warended, for Britain was seen, as the New Republic pointed out, as ‘the onlygreat power which is in a position seriously to damage or threaten theUnited States’.20 In 1921, Hearst newspapers began a campaign attackingthe positive view of Britain portrayed in school textbooks which were‘falsifications of history . . . written by men of “British mind” ’.21

Anglophobia and opposition to British policy in Ireland were the forcesin American politics which impeded the Versailles Treaty and put aRepublican in the White House. The British Empire was termed by someAmerican Anglophobes, ‘the evil empire’ which had imposed slavery onthree fifths of the world.22 The US Navy noted that every commercial rivalof Great Britain had eventually found itself at war with the Royal Navy,and Congressman H.C. Pell maintained that the USA was now in‘Germany’s position as the chief enemy of England’. He urged that the USAseize ‘the maritime control of the world’.23 Ironically, the Four PowersTreaty of 1922 was opposed by many Congressmen even though it endedBritain’s alliance with Japan, because it was seen to make the USA an allyof Britain.

The US Navy saw the Treaty rather differently. In 1920, Britain’s battlefleet was the size of the next five powers combined. Its willingness to cut itsfleet 2 years later was greeted with astonishment by the US Navy which hadalways had the utmost regard for the Royal Navy’s ‘imponderable moralascendancy’. ‘Having measured four years in blood to hold a historicalprimacy, they meekly surrendered with mere ink four centuries of strategictradition.’24 The Battle of Jutland was never the ‘Trafalgar’ that some hadexpected; and by 1922 the Royal Navy had taken on the aura of failure –of a force in Spenglerian decline.

Anglophobia in the 1920s was about commercial rivalry, naval parityand apprehension about British strength. In the 1930s, Anglophobia wasmore about British weakness and fear that the USA was paying to prop upa decaying empire which still ruled one quarter of the globe. Those whowanted the USA to build a larger navy were accused of wanting to useAmerican power to save Britain’s decaying empire, ‘to pull England’schestnuts out of the fire’.25 Naval rebuilding in 1938 was condemned bymany Congressmen who feared that they would be mere auxiliaries of the


Royal Navy in pursuit of a policy made in Downing Street, not the StateDepartment. The Republican Senator Hiram Johnson noted of America’snew ships that ‘We may need it to whip the Japs; but we don’t need it as anauxiliary of Great Britain.’26

By the end of 1938 Britain’s popularity was very low in American publicopinion. Polls in 1939 showed 83 per cent of Americans were againstsending American troops to help Britain and France. In October 1939, pollsshowed that 40 per cent of Americans believed that it was Britishpropaganda that had caused the USA to go to war in 1917; there wasconcern that British propagandists were at work again to inveigle the USAinto another war. Many in Congress continued to oppose Britain, equatingHitler’s expansion to that of British imperialism; as H.S. Johnson, directorof Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration put it, ‘Britain is fightingher own war . . . for continued imperial domination over weaker andexploited, subdued and subject peoples.’27

In June 1940, Stafford Cripps predicted bleakly that after the War, theworld would be divided into four big power blocks: an Asian one underJapan, a Euro-Asian one under the USSR, a European one under Germanyand an American one under the USA, incorporating Great Britain, with thebalance of power shifting to the USA.

Henry Luce saw the opening up of global markets as ushering in an erain which the USA would be the guardian of that environment; and theexpanded Asian market would be essential to it. As early as 1941, in hisarticle ‘The American Century’, Luce urged Americans to prove thatAmerican democracy could create

A vital international economy and . . . an international moral order. Inany sort of partnership with the British Empire, Great Britain isperfectly willing that the USA should assume the role of senior part-ner . . . With due regard for the varying problems of the BritishCommonwealth, what we want will be okay with them.28

Even before the USA had entered the war, Gaullists were convinced thatit would be the real ‘winner’. In September 1941, Verité declared, ‘TheAmericans are going to be the principal, eventual winners. The role of theUSA is hourly becoming more significant. It is they who will be dictatingthe terms of the peace to the Boche.’29

The USA justified its own role in the Asian–Pacific Theatre partly on thegrounds that it was anti-imperialist; but some noted the uneasy irony that‘It will be a long, hard war, but after it is over Uncle Sam will do the talkingin this world.’30 Many commentators noted the advantages of British defeatand the dismemberment of its empire. Senator G.P. Nye suggested thatGerman victory might help US trade ‘by removing our chief competitor’.31

Nye also noted, following the attack on Pearl Harbour, ‘It’s just what theBritish planned for us.’32


British interests in the Far East before the Second World War were greaterthan those of the USA, and there was considerable commercial frictionbetween the two.33 In autumn 1942, the British War Office feared that theAmericans wished to replace a Pax Britannica with a Pax Americana.

Churchill encouraged the USA to play a wider role in the world, ‘Thepeople of the United States cannot escape world responsibility’,34 buthe would be dismayed when this entailed encroachments on the BritishEmpire and a relative diminution of British power. Churchill believed thatthe Anglo-Saxon peoples and their civilization could share power ‘in orderto confer the benefit of freedom on the rest of the world’.35

In their hopes for a new post-war world order, the British were caughtbetween two contradictory fears: one, that the USA would be isolationistand cut itself off from their concerns; and on the other hand, that Americanimperialism would take over their empire and expand its commercialinterests at their expense. The prospect of some equal relationship seemedelusive, and would certainly have been unacceptable to the USA. Britain’sDominion’s Secretary Clement Atlee reported that prominent Americansspoke as if the British Empire was in the process of dissolution, and therewas concern in the Dominions over the

Economic imperialism of American business interests, which is quiteactive under the cloak of benevolent and avuncular internationalism. Inparticular, the activities of Pan American Airways and of radio interests instaking out claims for the post-war period are viewed with considerableapprehension.36

General Brehon Somervell saw the world protected by a ring of Americanbases, with markets and resources available to the USA by the maintenanceof an ‘Open Door’ policy.

On 10 January 1942, the Chicago Tribune declared that the United Stateswas, ‘The natural leader of the democratic forces. If there is to be apartnership between the United States and Britain, we are, by every right,the controlling partner. We can get along without them. They can’t getalong without us.’ Even in June 1942, a Gallup poll found that less than20 per cent of Americans felt that there should be closer cooperation withBritain after the war. Polls that month showed that 60 per cent ofAmericans believed that the British were oppressors, and the South EastAsia Command (SEAC) was often nicknamed Save England’s AsianColonies. Even Roosevelt noted that ‘We will have more trouble with GreatBritain after the war than we are having with Germany now.’37

Men like Hornbeck and Morgenthau realized that Britain was ruined andspoke of the opportunities to get British agreement to virtually any plan,given that the British were ‘dependent upon us for their preservation’.38

Morgenthau maintained that the US Army did not want the British in thePacific, and that if they were to be there, they should have an ineffective


role – it was to be an American victory. He noted that the power of thedollar would mean that

The United States, when the war is over, is going to settle what kind ofEurope it is going to be . . . Who is going to pay for it? We are going topay for it. The English are going to be busted . . . I think it had better beFranklin Roosevelt, without Winston, who writes the peace treaty.39

This new Anglophobia was not based merely on isolationism, but alsoupon a swelling American nationalism, the urge to further the USA’snational interests and in effect a growing imperial sentiment, although itcould seldom be acknowledged as such. The US Undersecretary of StateAdolf Berle gloated of the lend-lease of fifty un-seaworthy destroyers toBritain, ‘With one single gulp we have managed to obtain a large part of theBritish Empire, in return for nothing.’40

Australia and New Zealand had been forced to turn to the USA for securityand resented the way in which Britain had apparently neglected their defence,although Britain’s dire circumstances in 1940 were evident enough. In sum-mer 1940, the fostering of an American belief in ‘common interest and closeideological ties with the peoples of Australasia’ was regarded by theAustralian Department of Information as being ‘an Australian defence mea-sure of the first importance’. The Prime Minister, Menzies, told his AdvisoryWar Panel in November 1940 that in the event of the defeat of Great Britain,‘a regrouping of the English-speaking peoples might arise’.41

At the same time, Australia and New Zealand soon came to regard theUSA’s replacing of Britain as even more culturally challenging, and by theend of the war, were keen to do all they could to support the BritishEmpire’s revival in the Far East. Australian officers such as General SirThomas Blamey and Lieutenant General E.K. Smart were angry thatAustralia had had little say in the conduct of the American-led war. Itdawned on Australia that it might in effect become a satellite of the USA;and as the war drew to a close, anti-American sentiments were expressed –very different to those of 1941. The relationship between Britain andAustralia would, however, never be the same again. The Australians andNew Zealanders insisted on representing themselves at the surrenderceremonies, and Commonwealth, not British-led, forces formed part of theoccupation force, then under the command of the US Eighth Army.

By the time of the Teheran Conference of 28 November–8 December1943, it was clear to both the British and to Roosevelt that ‘at the end ofthe war there would be only two great powers in existence – Russia andAmerica . . . ’.42 From January 1944, the USA’s most important relationshipwas with the USSR rather than Britain; even the Anglophile Harry Hopkinsfeared that Britain might be trying to inveigle it into an alliance againstthe USSR. Churchill felt that the Americans were effectively taking over theBritish armed forces or causing them to be misdirected.43


Harry Hopkins was, however, alarmed by the extent of AmericanAnglophobic opinions, and he observed in August 1945 that ‘To hear somepeople talk about the British, you would think the British were our potentialenemies.’44 The US State Department also feared that underminingEuropean interests in the Far East would weaken the position of the USA,which was apprehensive about the prospect of nationalist revolts, and manyof these would soon become synonymous with Communist revolution,which often seemed no more than a ‘flag of convenience’ for those revolts.

The siting of the headquarters of the UN in New York symbolized theend of European domination of world affairs. The USA became increasinglyaware of its new power, and neo-imperial instincts were hard to suppress.Between 1939 and 1945, American GNP grew from $88.6 billion to$198.7 billion, establishing the grounds for the USA’s post-war dominanceover a ravaged global economy. Apart from neutral countries, most devel-oped nations were bankrupt. The American journalist T.H. White describedMorgenthau’s world view at Bretton Woods in July 1944: ‘Only the Britishunderstood [the] American dream of restoration. The British had central-ized the 19th Century world that America was now trying to re-create.’45

Roosevelt would use the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund(IMF) and the US Dollar to force open the British and French empires’trading systems to American industrial produce.

The American ‘Empire’ had much of the British imperial ethos about it,and the belief that foreign policy had a ‘civilizing mission’ was evident inthe American press. In July 1942, the Christian Science Monitor asked,‘How many have considered what a different balance the world might havetoday were not the Generalissimo (Chiang Kai-shek) a Christian and hiswife American-educated?’ As Japan surrendered, President Truman spokeon the radio denouncing the ‘forces of evil’ represented by Japan which hadthreatened to overthrow God’s civilization. MacArthur referred to the waras a ‘Holy mission’ to save civilization, the Japanese having rejected enlight-enment and progress to oppress and enslave.46 As Supreme Commander ofthe Allied Powers in Japan, MacArthur believed himself to be embarkedupon a civilizing mission; bringing democracy and Christianity. He distrib-uted thousands of bibles and claimed to have brought about a ‘spiritualrevolution’, which ‘almost overnight tore asunder a theory and practice oflife built upon 2,000 years of history and tradition and legend’.47 In 1951,MacArthur remarked that in terms of modern civilization, the Japanesewere in a ‘very tuitionary condition’ and ‘a nation of twelve-year-olds’.48 Hemaintained that ‘The future and indeed the existence of America, wereirrevocably entwined with Asia and its island outposts . . . Western civiliza-tion’s last earth frontier.’49

The US Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, had in effect made it acondition of the USA’s helping Britain to defeat Hitler that Britain and itsempire should be bankrupted;50 and despite the many similarities inoutlook between Britain and the USA, Anglophobia remained rife in the


USA in the immediate post-war years. Henry Wallace, former VicePresident, but now Secretary of Agriculture, condemned WinstonChurchill’s ‘shocking’ ‘Iron Curtain Speech’ at Fulton on the grounds that,‘It was not a primary objective of the United States to save the BritishEmpire’,51 and that Britain was now trying to lure the USA into an anti-Soviet alliance.

Victory in the Second World War made the USA, a non-Asian nation, thecontinent’s dominant power. The scale of the Soviet threat to the USA soonalso persuaded most Americans that an alliance with Britain wasindispensable to defend American national interests around the world; andsome even regretted that Britain chose to withdraw from its empire sorapidly, especially in the Middle East. In practice, over the next 50 years thenew American Empire went on to inherit many of the imperial securityresponsibilities of the British Empire in the Levant, Mesopotamia, thePersian Gulf, Afghanistan and the Far East. Some saw this as merely thecontinuation of an instinct for dominion by military conquest.52

In many ways, the USA also inherited the mission of the British Empireto take ideas of personal and collective freedoms to the rest of the world, ifnecessary by force. Its Victorian tone would have been very acceptable toBritain’s empire builders, but less comfortable among the more cynicalpolicy makers of Britain in the aftermath of the Second World War. TheUSA was both loved and resented by many Asians, who often foundAmerican and Western culture materially and morally attractive andgratifying, yet somehow also alien, domineering and, therefore, unwelcome.Debates about the purpose of an American military presence in Asia, andthe methods employed in pursuing it, became even more intense during theperiod of the USA’s war in Vietnam.

After the Cold War, the USA was in the supreme military position53 andhad an instinct for global leadership. ‘The drive to inflict American leader-ship upon the world . . . reflects a definition of US interests that is a tapestryof ideological, security and economic factors. To remove one thread wouldunravel the entire fabric.’54 Madeleine Albright asserted that ‘If we have touse force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. Westand tall. We see farther into the future.’55

In 1998, enjoying this supremacy, and before the USA had embarked onits ‘Global War on Terror’, Ralph Peters described the growing wealth ofthe USA in the Information Age, by which its empire would enjoy an evengreater advantage over others. ‘We are not Trojans. We are mightier. Werule the skies and seas and possess the power to rule the land when we aresufficiently roused.’56 He noted that this power would cause envy in thosewho would ultimately attack a complacent West, and those future enemieswere the ‘perfect embodiment of all the evil potential that lies at the heartof man’. They would be let loose on the children of the West who in turnwould be ‘sent out to fight the legions of darkness57 . . . Man not space is thelast frontier’.58 Peters struck a Darwinian note, asserting that in this


great global competition, the losers would have only themselves andtheir ancestors to blame. Peters, often cast as the wayward radical, hadanticipated the new orthodoxy of American strategic thought that was todominate the next decade.

Ideas that were commonplace a century ago, but had since been on themargins of academic respectability, resurfaced. For example, it wassuggested that an ‘Anglosphere’, with its strong traditions of civil society,would be uniquely suited to compete in the coming century of technologi-cal, economic and social change.59 American self-belief had echoes of theEuropean empires that the USA helped to bring down. Alexander Joffe, forexample, maintained that ‘Ultimately, the only answer for a stable andprosperous planet will be a global system that is structurally and morallysimilar to the American Union’,60 in a sense the most ambitious imperialprospectus ever.

Yet, the idea that the USA was somehow an imperial nation wasvehemently opposed by many. Thomas Barnett, for example rejected thenotion on very traditional grounds, ironically in seeking to explain a novelstrategic geography.61 In effect, however, he merely affirmed Americanexceptionalism. He regarded empires as narrowly malign, and since theUSA’s motives were benign, its objectives and actions should not be seen asimperial. ‘America has displayed a generosity towards its empire thatrenders the word ludicrous.’62 ‘All attempts to explain ourselves in unselfishterms are immediately dismissed by the isolationist wings of both left andright as either sheer hypocrisy or betrayal of our historical roots.’63

Nevertheless, American imperial self-confidence seemed evident: ‘TheAmerican military is now the strongest the world has ever known . . .stronger than the Wehrmacht in 1940 . . . than the legions of Rome at theheight of Roman power. For years to come, no other nation is likely evento try to rival American might.’64 Comparisons between the AmericanEmpire and Britain’s seemed increasingly valid and were analysed in a floodof literature by historians such as Niall Ferguson.65 Max Boot maintainedthat when it came to protecting the USA’s imperial interests and fightingenemies all over the world, ‘There is no finer example of how to do thischeaply and effectively than the British Empire.’66


10 Nippon resurgat

Japan’s military catastrophe in 1945 was also seen in a cultural context.Like many Europeans after the Russian defeat in 1905, some Japaneseattributed their own bloody demise in 1945 to decadent worldliness: ‘Wehave been too wedded to selfish ethics; we have forgotten true progress.’Defeat could even be seen to be culturally and spiritually beneficial – echoesof Solovev and Bruisov. ‘How else can Japan be saved except by losing andcoming to its senses. We will lead the way. We will die as harbingers ofJapan’s new life. That’s where our real satisfaction lies . . . .’1

Japan would rise again, transformed; renouncing 40 years of militaryaction that had been in large part responsible for the rise of Communistregimes in both Russia and China. Just as the Russo-Japanese War waslargely responsible for the eventual demise of the Tsar and the rise of theJapanese client Lenin, so it was war with Japan that undermined ChiangKai-shek, devastated China and helped to bring the Communists to powerunder Mao Zedong.2 No wonder that in 1972, Chairman Mao reputedlythanked the visiting Japanese Prime Minister for his country, Japan’sinvasion of China which had destroyed the regime which he had sought toreplace.3

Economic rebirth and confused identity

An enduring feature of the struggle between empires in Asia has been accessto its huge economy. The frictions have been over raw materials, markets,investment and protecting labour. They have also been about how to use themilitary power that flows from economic power to protect nationalinterests, which are often seen to include national culture as well as wealthand political freedom of action.

After 1945, Japan regained the image of the ‘good Asian country’, whilethe Korean War soon gave Communist China the image of the ‘bad Asiancountry’. Under American rule, Japan adopted a Constitution, Article Nineof which prohibited it from having armed forces and waging war.4 Japannow turned wholeheartedly to the construction of a first-class economy,with all the advantages that would flow from it.

Before the war, military power had seemed a necessary element in theequation; but now ironically, the military power which Japan needed for itseconomic and political security was provided free of charge by the nationwhich Japan had only recently felt compelled to fight to achieve thatsecurity. There was a political and cultural price to pay for this, yet in 1941,despite much theorizing and initial and attractive appearances to thecontrary, Japan had not been able to offer its Asian vassals a true ‘Asianmodel’. By contrast, the USA now seemed to offer a broadly attractiveWestern model, which the Japanese and many other Asians felt disposed toadopt, or at least to adapt.

On surrender in 1945, Japan’s caretaker Government under PrinceHigashikuni authorized payments to the zaibatsu cartels for unfulfilled warcontracts, ensuring that they would survive, albeit at huge cost in inflationand hardship for the Japanese people. Japan’s prospects did not look good.The USA had spared Russia paying Japan reparations in 1905, nowMacArthur announced that Japan would pay no reparations, but even sohe told The Chicago Tribune, ‘Japan has fallen to a fourth-rate nation. Itwill not be possible for her to emerge again as a strong nation in theworld.’5 From the outset of the occupation, the USA sought to dismantlethe zaibatsu which were seen to be elemental to Japanese militarism. EdwinReischauer, a post-war ambassador to Japan, wondered if the Japanesewould ever again be able to achieve a reasonable standard of living, arguingthat Japan should have opened up its economy to foreign investment in thepost-war years and relied on its cheap labour to attract even more.

In the mid-1950s, US officials noted that the Japanese were intent onpreserving their unique culture, which they believed to be superior to thatof the USA. Equally, the Japanese continued to be unsure whether they werepart of the Far East or the Far West, rather as the Russians could not besure if they were Europeans or Asians.

The Korean War brought a change in American policy, the zaibatsu werenow to be saved; it was thus, indirectly, thanks to the Russians/Soviets thatthe foundations of the modern Japanese economic superpower were laid.6

In 1944, Japanese industrial production was twice that of 1934, but by1946 half that of 1934. By 1956, Japan was the world’s largest shipbuilder.The Japanese sought access to raw materials and markets, but alsoeconomic control over their domestic economy. This required controlover the ownership of capital, and that depended upon having certainfinancial structures and a propensity to save to generate investment. Thiswas a familiar model, for the Japanese have always sought to maintaincontrol over their own capital flows and to avoid reliance on foreigninvestment. There remains relatively little stock of foreign capital inJapan; in 1885, 1905 and 1945 the Japanese were prepared to makesacrifices to generate their own savings and investment, giving them greatercontrol over their own affairs, thereby preserving their national culture andidentity.

Nippon resurgat 149

After 1945, the USA encouraged Japan to develop its markets in regionsformerly associated with its military expansion. John Foster Dulles andDean Acheson were determined to replace Britain’s trading position in theFar East with one based on the US–Japanese model, with Japan’s economicpower acting as a bulwark against Communism in the region. In the late1940s, Dulles encouraged Japan to engage with South-East Asia, tradingmanufactured exports for raw materials. In later years the region would alsoprovide the Japanese with a source of cheap labour for their companies.Exports to South-East Asia would also soak up Japanese production,protecting American manufacturing from the dumping of Japanesesurpluses in the USA. Ironically this Asian economic regime shared manyideas with Japan’s former and ill-fated Co-Prosperity Sphere; it was now theAmerican hope that Japanese demand for raw materials would stimulatethe economies of its South-East Asian allies.

The USA believed that this arrangement was preferable to Japan’s havingsome kind of special economic relationship with China. Trading with Chinawould, in the words of the Secretary of Defense C.E. Wilson, be like ‘sellingfirearms to the Indians’.7 In July 1952, Japan was obliged to enter into asecret agreement with the USA restricting its trading relations with China,beyond those agreed in public. Trade with the USA was seen as a means ofreinforcing Japan in the face of Communism, and between 1953 and 1956Japanese exports to the USA doubled.

The USA wanted to keep Japan economically dependent, but therewere soon historical echoes in the concern about the effect of these importsfrom Japan on American manufacturing jobs. Pressure on Japan to curbits exports grew, and by the late 1950s Japan had agreed to reduce itsexports to the USA. Yet it was hard for the USA to insist that Japan shouldimpose such restraint but not allow it to trade with China instead. Therewas concern between 1954 and 1956 that Japan might even become aCommunist state,8 and ironically President Eisenhower eventually agreedthat Japan must be allowed to trade with China to keep it in the Westernsphere.

The Japanese saw the strategic logic rather differently. After the war thathad freed Asian nations not only from European imperialism but also fromJapanese occupation, those nations which Japan had sought to colonizenow sought its economic help. Japan believed that its capital would be atleast as effective in pursuing its national objectives as American militarypower would be in pursuing American interests.9 The Japanese thus dis-tanced themselves from the American idea that the ‘dominoes’ of Asiawould fall to Communism.10 It suited Japan to be seen as a bulwark againstCommunism and to have the USA maintain a military presence in Japan inexchange for its economic freedom; but many influential Japanese saw lit-tle cause for such defences. Japan hardly felt threatened until the end of theCold War with the perceived menace from a well-armed and economicallydesperate North Korea. On 27 January 1951, Prime Minister Yoshida


observed that ‘We do not have the slightest expectation that the Communistcountries will invade Japan.’11

Just as Japan benefited from the Korean War, so too it suited the Japaneseeconomically to have the USA bogged down militarily in Vietnam. Thewar was good for the Japanese economy and it ensured a greater degreeof American accommodation of Japanese wishes. The Japanese were intenton trading with potential ‘dominoes’ and with the Communist states thatapparently threatened to topple them. Thus Japan continued to tradewith East-Asian Communist nations, especially North Vietnam, throughoutthe Vietnam War. Before the Vietnam War, the USA had a trade surpluswith Japan, thereafter it would have a deficit; it seems likely that theWar was worth about $1 billion per year to the Japanese economy.However, any thought of American defeat or loss of resolve was highlyalarming, as it might have led to a partial American withdrawal from theregion and threatened the security upon which Japanese prosperitydepended.

Growing prosperity in the 1960s allowed the Japanese to see themselvesas a pillar of the global system, on a par with the USA and Western Europe.By 1967, Japan lay third behind the USA and the USSR, although withhindsight the true GNP of the USSR at that time must remain a mystery.China could not become the market that Japan hoped for because of theself-destruction caused by Communist economic policies. Despite that,trade between the two countries increased from $136 million in 1963 to$560 million in 1969, and was widely regarded as that with the greatestpotential for further growth.

In the 1960s, President de Gaulle referred to the visiting Japanese PrimeMinister as a transistor salesman; but the phenomenal scale of Japan’seconomic success, and its sometimes disturbing implications, were onlyfully appreciated in the 1970s. Commentators started to discuss theconsequences of Japanese economic power, and whether it would alsobe expressed in political power and military regeneration. ‘The Japanese areno longer coming. They have arrived.’12

By the late 1960s, American patience with Japan was wearing thin. Itseemed to many that Japan had no affection for, or true alliance with, theUSA but regarded itself as having to cooperate in a relationship which itwould exploit for its own advantage. It was hard to deny the Japanese sucha privilege if other nations were entitled to pursue their own nationalagendas, and the Japanese took great care never to overstep the mark wherethey could be justifiably criticized. However, it was often hard for Westernnations, especially the USA, to identify exactly where that mark might be,let alone whether Japan could be proved to have overstepped it.Nevertheless, it was felt that Japan was profiting from American defenceguarantees while failing to pay its way.

The Japanese understood that they could only prosper if the internationaltrading system remained open to them, and this required international

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cooperation and support for international institutions. Yet, Japan’s tradingpartners still saw their own positions continue to deteriorate.

Japan survived the oil shock of the 1970s and became the world’s mostefficient user of energy. Japan’s trade amounted to 6 per cent of the worldtotal in 1970, and other nations became ever more irritated by its export-oriented industrial policy and the trade barriers that seemed to protect theJapanese market. During the 1970s, Japan’s trade increased by 700 per cent,but it was only after 1982 that it achieved consistent trade surpluses; and28 per cent of the USA’s trade deficit was with Japan.13 Business, ratherthan aircraft carriers suddenly gave Japan global reach.14

The USA increasingly saw Japan as a major competitor, and theirrelationship became at least as much about bilateral trade as about regionalsecurity. Henry Kissinger declared that strategic cooperation was onlypossible when there was economic cooperation, which trade statisticsseemed to question. Japan continued to pursue its own economic interests;in 1978, China and Japan signed a treaty of Peace and Friendship. Therewere also talks about integrating China into a system of raw materialssupply, investment and technology.

In 1980, Japan had only one of the world’s top ten banks, but by 1986 ithad seven. American economic and cultural panic at the rise of Japancentred on matters of great substance, such as American debts, but wasoften portrayed symbolically in terms of the loss of leadership in keytechnologies, such as semiconductors. Pessimists recommended that theUSA abandon any industry in which the Japanese had decided to compete.15

By 1986–7 the US trade deficit with Japan was $59 billion. This, combinedwith high US interest rates, made Japanese investment in the USA highlyattractive. However, growing American criticism caused the Japanese toswitch more investment and exports to Asia, although this trend hadalready begun, for even in 1985 Japan was China’s leading trading partner.

The conventional economic explanations of commentators such as HughPatrick now seemed inadequate in the face of Japan’s remarkable achieve-ments. The so-called revisionists of the 1980s, such as Chalmers Johnson(MITI and the Japanese Miracle)16 and Clyde Prestowitz (Trading Places)17

purveyed a more radical and menacing theory, that Japan’s economicmiracle had all along been due to its different form of democracy, a brandof capitalism that was somehow not of a genuinely Western sort, and thatall had been directed by the usually hidden hand of the Ministry ofInternational Trade and Industry (MITI) and LDP manipulators.

With the rise of Japanese economic power in the 1980s, some wonderedhow this would be expressed on the international stage. Prime MinisterNakasone Yasuhiro spoke of the need to spread Japan’s ideals of Yamatoismaround the world; but by its very self-proclaimed uniqueness, Japan seemedunable to offer a viable political, social and intellectual model to others,despite its widely copied industrial approach and its talents in aesthetics.


Notwithstanding the economic tensions, Japan had to be concernedfor its own security in a dangerous world, and its relationship with theUSA remained central to it. In the 1980s, fear of the USSR ensured thatstrategic cooperation between the USA and Japan would be close. In 1981,during a visit to the USA, Prime Minister Suzuki Zenko formally usedthe term ‘alliance’. This caused such an upset in Japan that he had topretend that there had been a mis-translation of his words. The same ‘mis-translation’ occurred when Prime Minister Nakasone spoke in the USA in1983 of Japan’s role as the West’s ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ in the Pacific,and of the USA and Japan constituting a ‘community of destiny’.18 In 1984,a joint strategy for the region assigned Japan the task of patrolling1,000 miles of sea lanes; Japan became steadily more confident in inter-national affairs.

In 1987, Japan’s nominal per capita income ($19,553) overtook theUSA’s ($18,570), thanks largely to an inflated exchange rate; but despitethat, Japan’s trade surplus continued to rise to almost $100 billion in 1987,mainly with the USA. This created the impression that Japan was behavingselfishly. Japan’s perceived new assertiveness was reinforced by books suchas Ishihara Shintaro’s A Japan that Can Say No.19

In 1987, the Japanese social critic, Eto Jun noted how Japan had rebuiltitself since 1945 and exulted of Japan,

Hey boy, you still call after him, but he is no longer willing to do allyou want him to . . . Under the mask you gave us, our own physiognomyis taking shape . . . We feel the time has come when we should show itto the world. The real face is our own global strategy.20

Marvin Wolf’s The Japanese Conspiracy21 described how Japan wasplotting to takeover Western industry. Russell Braddon’s The OtherHundred Years War22 asserted Japan’s long-standing struggle to match theWest. Clyde Prestowitz saw the rise of Japan as heralding ‘The End of theAmerican Century’.23 In Trading Places he maintained that this was surelythe first time in history that a territory in the process of being colonized hadactually paid for the right to defend the colonizer.24

On 19 October 1987, the US stock market fell sharply, in large partdue to the US trade deficit which persisted despite a depreciated dollar;many saw this as an indicator that the USA had overstretched its strategiccapacities. In May 1987, the Japanese MITI gave warning to the USA of theconsequences should Japan refuse to buy US Government bonds, and evensuch a warning had an immediate effect on American mortgage rates.

The rise of the Yen gave the Japanese major ‘shopping’ opportunities inthe USA, both as consumers and investors. To some, the power of the Yenmade life in the USA like that of the expatriate living in a developingcountry. It even seemed that the Japanese were building a separate economy

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of their own within the USA, which had now itself become part of its Co-Prosperity Sphere.

In the late 1980s, Hawaii was sometimes jokingly referred to as the 24thPrefecture of Tokyo, and suggestions were made that the USA might sellHawaii to Japan in lieu of its debts.25 The MITI think tank even speculatedthat the USA’s debts to Japan might be paid off by exporting elderlyJapanese from their overcrowded islands to retirement homes in the USAwhere they would be cared for by low-paid Americans. In 1989, in a speechladen with historical ironies, Kurokawa Masaaki, the chairman of NomuraSecurities International, reportedly floated the idea of a common currencywith the USA and the establishment of a joint economic community inCalifornia, to enter which neither Americans nor Japanese would requirevisas. California would take several million skilled Japanese workers tocomplement the state’s own pool of cheap labour, raising productivity toJapanese levels.26

In 1988, Daniel Burstein told a cautionary tale about how by 2004 Japanhad become the world’s richest country and the financially battered USAwas obliged to accommodate Japanese strategic wishes – Pax Nipponica.27

As a debtor, the USA would have to permit ever-greater Japanese controlover the running of its economy and endure austerity measures imposed onit by international institutions. Burstein believed that American indebted-ness could be used as a political lever by the Japanese, and that the USAmight even face a ‘financial Pearl Harbour’.

There was a growing feeling that the USA might face a militarilyresurgent Japan, bent on revenge and buoyed up by its ‘miracle economy’.28

In the care of Japan, moreover, it is not just any foreign country towhom we’ve sold our birthright. Japan is our mirror image and ourfiercest competitor. Japan is strong precisely where we areweak . . . Japan is becoming a superpower in its own right. A Japaneseempire is being born that will pose a fundamental challenge toAmerican power in every sphere.29

Many urged that the USA adopt aspects of the successful Japanese modeland set up its own MITI to organize and support American strategicindustries. Demoralized Americans were urged to set aside selfish economicpractices and to pull together, E Pluribus Unum, lest their nation go under inthe face of Japan’s strategic economic onslaught.30 Predictions that the USAwould lose its innovative lead, and the wealth generation arising from it, weremisplaced, but the issue of debt remained: could the USA continue to sustainits twin deficits, which seemed likely to continue to grow, and maintain itssupreme position in the world while remaining its largest debtor?

In 1988, a poll showed that 68 per cent of Americans believed Japanto be the greatest threat to the USA, compared with only 22 per cent citingthe USSR;31 in 1990, Lieutenant General H.C. Stackpole asserted that


American forces were based in Japan to prevent the rise of the ‘monster’ ofJapanese nationalism.32 There was a further genre of literature predictingthe decline of American power and the rise of Japan at a time when thefamiliar threat from the USSR was looking increasingly implausible. TheComing War with Japan of 1991 by G. Friedman and M. LeBard33

highlighted American concerns about Japan’s growing economic strengthand some believed that the USA had lost its independence after over200 years. ‘If we become a fourth-world country with all our assets ownedabroad, won’t our political, economic and even leisure decisions come to bemade abroad? What are the hazards of becoming a colonial territoryagain?’.34 Robert Kearns’ Zaibatsu America: How Japanese Firms areColonizing Vital US Industries35 encouraged these fears.

Yet between 1989 and 1993 Japanese investments in the USA fell by50 per cent. The more the Americans complained about exports to, andinvestment in the USA, the less they could complain about the Japanesesending these elsewhere and building up their position in Asia in its new‘Co-Prosperity Sphere’. Between January 1980 and January 1990, Japaninvested overseas ten times what it had over the previous 30 years, and theUSA’s share of the world’s economic production was falling.

Experts are frequently wrong about Japan, as Prestowitz, a leadingprophet of American doom maintained, although he may well have beenwrong himself.36 Even in the late 1980s the overestimation of Japan’sstrength or, rather, underestimation of its latent weaknesses was evident.Japanese assertiveness soon seemed like hubris, for in September 1990 theJapanese ‘bubble’ burst. The Tokyo stock market fell by 48 per cent andproperty prices began their slide. By 1990, Japanese overseas investmentwas falling fast, from $137 billion in 1987 to $43.6 billion in 1990.

As so often over the previous hundred years, the West found it hard toassess Japan. On the one hand some criticized Japan’s incoherent, chaotic,impenetrable decision-making, while others asserted the quality of itssupreme, focussed, strategic-planning. In the economic doldrums of the1990s, those who had cited MITI as the agent of Japan’s economic prowessnow had to explain why the workers of miracles had ceased to performthem. Their first reaction was often denial that there was a problem, or evento maintain that the bursting bubble was but a Government policy topunish speculators. Others who had never accepted the ‘miracle’ model forJapan provided a new revisionist explanation. This held that the magichands of MITI and the LDP fixers had never been as effective as some inthe 1980s had maintained.37

By the late 1990s, American comment on the woes of the Japanese econ-omy was often triumphalist. M.B. Zuckerman exhorted, ‘Let us celebratean American triumph . . . The mantra is privatize, deregulate and do notinterfere in the market.’38 Unfortunately, the American formula for success,while valid in many respects, was built largely on debt financed by others;and there were growing doubts about the staying power of the USA.

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The USA’s position in the Asia-Pacific region after 1945 was shaped bytwo factors, the Cold War with the USSR and American economicdominance. By the early 1990s, the first factor had essentially disappearedand some believed that ‘American economic hegemony has waned moreslowly but no less dramatically.’39 Economic power was seen to bemore important in international relations than ever, and the USA seemed tobe in relative decline while the power of many Asian economies was growingrapidly. American decline in Asia was seen by many Asians to be linked toits moral and spiritual deficiencies associated with the USA’s failure to solveits own social and economic problems.40

It was also possible that Japan had not been weakened to the extent thatsome claimed. Ivan Hall lamented the USA’s ‘colossal inattention andeuphoria toward Japan in the 1990s’.41 He was convinced that the USA hadbeen systematically deceived by the Japanese and that, despite the apparenteconomic setbacks of the 1990s, the Japanese had grown increasinglypowerful and continued to evade fair trade to gain advantage over the USA.Despite Japan’s economic recession, its current account surplus over thedecade of the 1990s was $987 billion, 2.37 times that of the 1980s. Itsexternal assets increased fourfold in value in the 1990s.

There was similar concern in parts of Europe, in France in particular,which saw Japanese investments transforming the UK into a ‘Japaneseaircraft carrier’. Le Nouvel Economiste proclaimed that ‘The Japanese areKillers’ and explained ‘How the Japanese have patiently and pitilesslyorganized the encirclement of European economies’,42 rather as theJapanese themselves had spoken of European empires in Asia 50 yearsearlier encircling them. In 1991, the French Prime Minister, Edith Cressonsaw the issue as one of Japanese world conquest. French criticism ofinternational investments and takeovers had previously been levelled atAmerican multinational corporations; but now complaints about theJapanese seemed to overlook similar transactions by Americans and otherEuropeans, thereby taking on a cultural dimension. Fifty years earlier itmight have been termed racial rather than cultural.

The 1990s were, according to Hayashi Fumio, the lost decade for Japan,lacking political and economic reform and resulting in reduced interna-tional power and influence. It became clear that the hype of Japan as No.1had been misplaced, and that after the Cold War it was instead the USA thatwas ‘Number One’. It also became clear that the scale of Japanese powerwould have to be measured in proportion, not only to that of the USA, butalso to the rising power of China which clearly viewed its rightful histori-cal position to be that of ‘first-chop nation’, ‘the Middle Kingdom’ to whichtribute would eventually have to be paid.

By 2004, Japanese wages were twenty to thirty times higher than thosein China, yet Japanese industry retained many advantages, for example, infast computers, nanotechnology, automobile technology and pharmaceuti-cals, and it was estimated that only one fifth of Chinese exports competed


with those of Japan.43 Some saw Japan in the new millennium as enteringits third great modernization. Its apparent recovery in early 2004 waspartly due to corporate restructuring, but largely to a massive demandfrom China and the rest of Asia for Japanese products.44 ‘Japan and Chinaare so complementary. A greater, stronger more successful China helpsJapanese industries sharpen their focus on what they are good at.’45 Theenergy generated by China’s economic growth was seen as a new kamikazedivine wind, blowing Japan’s Kansai region from the rocks of economicrecession. In 2003, the Director of Osaka’s Port and Harbour Bureaumaintained that ‘something like a big industrial complex is being createdwith China’.46

Nevertheless, the Japanese Government’s debt stood at 160 per cent ofGDP, the population was ageing, and the prospect of economic dependenceon a vibrant China, with its political implications, could prove uncomfortable.In the longer term, Japan sees the growth of China’s virtual empire withapprehension and resentment, threatening the local economic foundationswhich underpin Japan’s regional status.

Cultural reflections

There have been frequent reminders in Western media about the aliennature of Japanese culture.47 Japan is often popularly depicted in terms ofsome Oriental fantasy land, a delusion prevailing in the West prior to 1904,encouraged by the works of Pierre Loti. Today that cultural image has amodern face:

Japan you will hear, is a beeping neon, sci-fi wonderland where hi-techgnomes inhabit soaring skyscrapers and even the lavatory seats havecontrol panels. Others will talk of misty mountains and rice paddiestended by old men in pointy hats or return with tales of hospitality, orcourtesy and almost embarrassing kindness . . . each is accurate . . . but afraction of the whole.48

The latter characteristics have been common in reports of Occidentalencounters with Japan over the last hundred years.49

James Clavell, a former prisoner of the Japanese, wrote Shogun (1975),which appeared as a film in 1980, portraying the dominant themes inWestern perceptions and experiences of Japanese culture. It portrayedJapan as a mystifying combination of exquisite cultural refinement andshocking, exotic violence – civilization and barbarity as one, both inherentin and defining that society: the seemingly irreconcilable, reconciled and theOccidental left baffled. The extraordinary outbursts of violence in Westernsociety in the twentieth century tend by contrast to be seen in the West asaberrations, rather than a perplexing systemic cultural contradiction; ittherefore does not diminish its own cultural assumptions about its own

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civilization. It seems difficult for the West to make such a separation whenviewing the Orient, its culture and behaviour across history.

Western perceptions of Japan which have barely changed in over acentury remain complex, contradictory and unresolved, and it is the cinemathat continues to be the medium through which societies tend to blurt outtheir caricatures of each other most engagingly. During the occupation ofJapan, MacArthur banned the Kabuki play, The Tale of the 47 Ronin,which honoured the loyalty of samurai to their defeated lord, to the death.The story was transformed into the film, Ronin (1998), with a contempo-rary American plot, and its tragic heroism struck a chord with Westernaudiences. The Magnificent Seven (1960) had similarly paid veiled homageto the nobility of the samurai tradition portrayed in The Seven Samuraiof 1954.

Tales of ninjas comfortably fitted Western preferences for a vision of theOrient at once exotic, violent and suffused with low-cunning. Perhaps itwas not chance that the fashion for films about ninjas coincided withWestern fears about the insinuation of Japanese economic interests into itssocieties.

Ezra Vogel’s Japan As No.1,50 which celebrated Japan’s new position ofpower in the world, came as a shock to those who had defeated it militar-ily 40 years earlier. How could the Japanese have recovered their strengthso quickly? Did Japan now constitute some new threat in some ill-defined,non-military, yet menacing form? These questions led to intensive studies ofthe ‘Japanese phenomenon’, very similar to the socio-ethnic analyses thattypified Western confusion after Japan’s shocking victory in 1905. TheJapanese were seen to have accepted the West’s technology as they had inthe nineteenth century, studied its techniques and now appeared to havebeaten it at its own game. While their military empire had been defeated,Japan now seemed to have built a powerful new kind of empire under thevery noses and protection of those who had humbled it.

Yet again it was postulated that the Japanese had found a previouslyunknown formula for success, which might be unique to themselves, thatcould possibly be transferable in part to Western society; but, moredisturbingly, might be one which was unattainable by others. In theDarwinism of the market it might herald the long-term decline of the Westand the triumph of the Orient, despite the outcome of the Second WorldWar. Just as Europeans wallowed in self-doubt in 1905 and sought to re-engineer their societies to revitalize their performance to match the newlyvibrant Orient which seemed to have learned from them too well, soWestern companies in the 1970s and 1980s were encouraged by theirgovernments to study the success of Japanese business and to emulate it.

Much of what has often been assumed to be modern Japanese businesstheory was learned by the Japanese in the 1950s from Americans, such asL.O. Mellen and W.E. Deming, who evangelized the needs of the customerand the ‘total system’, with cooperation, not competition, the key to


achieving top quality. Deming advocated long-term objectives rather thanmaximum production, and bringing the workforce into the decision-makingprocess.

These industrial techniques along with cultural factors were identifiedas the causes of Japanese economic success, along with unfair tradeprotection. Lessons were learned about the need to create a new culture ofthe workplace in terms of human relations, organizations and industrialtechniques. Western businesses developed an easy familiarity with terms suchas Kanban and just-in-time stock delivery; and declared their devotion toKaizan, continuous improvement. ‘Quality control’ and ‘zero defects’ werekey tenets, and it was judged important that every worker could contributehis or her ideas through Workers Voluntary Group Activities, or Jishu Kanri.51

Corporations such as the Nippon Steel Corporation practised ‘senioritymanagement’, whereby salary depended upon years of service, not respon-sibility or performance. ‘Even a very able employee cannot be promotedwithout a minimum number of years of service in the organization.’52 Whilecurious to the Western mind, this was seen to have the benefit of encourag-ing loyalty, cohesion, respect and a long-term approach. Connected to thiswas the system of ‘lifetime employment’ in a single enterprise, which wouldallow such long-term seniority, career and remuneration planning. Theproblems would come when economic forces were such that an organiza-tion was not able to maintain ‘lifetime employment’, and with the sense ofbetrayal that would result, or the inefficiency that would be a consequenceof the failure to restructure. Even this system was seen by the Japanesethemselves to have a racial dimension, ‘The adoption of seniority wagesystem is made easier in Japan by the racial homogeneity of the Japanesepeople . . .’.53

There were long debates in the West about the meaning of being Japaneseand the characteristics that distinguished Japanese culture and society fromthose of the West: group harmony versus individualism, particularismversus universalism, subjectivity and intuition versus ratiocination, concili-ation versus litigation. The inter-business relationships known as keiretsu,and dango, the system of consultation prior to submitting bids, were notedas being particularly Japanese, as was the role of government in businessrelations and long-term planning. Asian values were held to include ideas ofhuman and social capital, trust, loyalty, hierarchy, respect for elders and thegroup, personal thriftiness and public-spirited attitudes. The factors thatwere deemed to constitute the foundations of Japanese economic strengthseemed disturbingly similar to those identified with the military ‘Yamatospirit’ of 1904 and 1941.

The Japanese took pride in their economic achievements and, as in thepast, were prone to ascribe their success to unique racial and culturalfeatures, so-called Nihonjin-ron.54 These assertions did little to reassureWesterners, yet the notion had perils, for if uniqueness explained success,then Japan should take care not to undermine it. In the past, Japan

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had proved the exemplar of how to adapt the ideas of others, but in anincreasingly globalized economy, it could now be put at a comparativedisadvantage if it sought to preserve its uniqueness too rigorously.

Some found it discomforting when men such as Prime Minister NakasoneYasuhiro made frequent reference to the importance of, race, in preservingthe national character which accounted for Japan’s success. In 1986, heclaimed at a Liberal Party meeting that Japan’s intellectual level was higherthan that of the USA because of the presence of ‘blacks, Puerto Ricans andMexicans’, and that this multiracial complexion was holding back theUSA’s progress, whereas Japan’s homogeneity was an advantage.55 Aconnection between race, culture and progress has proved a popular andenduring theme in the debate over the last 150 years.

Asian assertiveness grew, echoing the sentiments of Japan as No.1 in the1980s, as did the proselytizing of Asian values, particularly by Singaporeand Malaysia in the 1990s.56 At the end of 1995, the Far East EconomicReview declared that ‘As we move towards 2000, Asia will become thedominant region of the world: economically, politically and culturally. Weare on the threshold of the Asian renaissance.’57 Europe was now widelyseen to be afflicted by ‘economic sclerosis’, a lethargy similar to its malaiseof the early 1900s, when Japan seemed so vital; and meanwhile the USAwas seen to be dependent on Japanese capital, a ‘loan-junkie’, a reversal ofthe situation in 1905.

The glamour of modern hi-tech Japan was matched by another moremenacing cinematic perception in the likes of Black Rain (1989), whichfeatured the treachery of a violent and exploitative industrial Japan, whichwas beyond the ken of the American hero, portrayed by Michael Douglas,who nevertheless prevailed. Similar menacing ideas were articulated mostvehemently in 1992 in Michael Crichton’s novel Rising Sun. This sawJapanese inward investment to the USA between 1986 and 1991 as abroader challenge than merely a shifting of capital in a global market,rather, a no-holds-barred conflict in which control of American technologywas the fiercely coveted prize.58 Tom Clancy’s Debt of Honor of 1994envisaged the possibility of an all-out war between the USA and Japan.

The Asian slump of 1997 left many Asian countries disappointed andbitter, believing as they had that they had been about to overtake the West.The Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad saw global competitionin a racial light that few in the West would care or dare to emulate. Heapparently viewed the Asian economic collapse in terms of racial struggleand colonialism, claiming that foreign powers were trying to re-colonizeMalaysia. He blamed currency dealers and stockbrokers for destabilizinghis country. ‘Whitemen’ would not stop their attack on Malaysia’s economyuntil they had ‘100 percent’ control of it. ‘Remember, those who created theeconomic turmoil that we are facing now are just like the colonialists.’59

Even after recovery was well underway, Mahathir and some of hisneighbours were equally sensitive and blunt on issues of security.60


Some of the dramatic predictions of Asian dominance had proven ratherpremature in the face of this collapse, but such temporary economic woesseemed unlikely to prevent the rise of Asia, merely to ensure that theconsequent reforms made its development more stable and sustainable.Even so, on retirement, Mahathir apparently regretted that he had notachieved more in racial terms. ‘I have achieved too little in my principal taskof making my race a successful race, a race that is respected.’61 Such aprospectus had long become taboo in the West.

The characteristics that led to Japanese success in 1905 and 1941 were laterseen to be the causes of disaster in 1945, which revealed the inadequacies ofthe selfsame system that had created its might. The admirable military quali-ties of the Japanese soldier were seen to be but one side of a coin with manyflaws. What had so recently seemed to be terrifying military strength, built onfactors that Western democracies could not possess or even understand, wasshown to entail fatal weaknesses, and those ‘qualities’ also to be lethally self-damaging and the causes of Japan’s systemic economic, political and, thus,military weakness. After 1945, blame for Japan’s disaster was placed upon thepowerful group of apparently unaccountable militarists who had led Japan toearly, surprising triumph, but ultimately to disaster. They had operatedunchecked by a head of state who held power in theory but not in practice.62

The Japanese people were thus to be regarded as the victims of what was anirresponsible, systemic weakness in Japanese society and public life.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the MITI was often cast as the civilian andindustrial equivalent of those militarists of the 1930s, delivering miraculousvictories over the forces, albeit industrial ones, of the West. When hardshiphit Japan’s new economic empire in the 1990s, the analysis and apportion-ment of blame seemed familiar, and the negative interpretation of theJapanese identity expanded as the Japanese economy contracted. As it haddone so often before, Western opinion veered violently from underestima-tion of Japan to excessive admiration, back again to criticism and then onto what seemed at times like gleeful enjoyment of its misfortunes.

Blame was placed on Japan’s centralized, unresponsive and apparentlyunaccountable bureaucracies, analogous to the militarist’s clique that tookthe blame in 1945 for Japan’s military problems – both somehow held to beproducts of an enduring Japanese identity, which was still not trulycomprehended. In the 1990s, as much as in the 1940s, the Japanese weredeemed to have succumbed to the ‘supremacy of tradition’, ‘submission toauthority’ and ‘avoidance of responsibility’,63 contradictions which couldbe as dangerous in a modern economy as in the Pacific War. Social cohesionwas now seen in negative terms as ‘regulation’, ‘collusion’, ‘covert socialsafety nets’ and ‘lifetime employment’. ‘Social capital’ could also beinterpreted as ‘vested interest’. Japanese economic structures and customswere now regarded as but anti-competitive ‘crony-capitalism’, and respon-sible for market rigidities that hindered ‘creative destruction’ and preventedthe adoption of new courses of action and reform.

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The merits of a society that saved to fund the heroic domestic investmentthat created a modern industrial state in the nineteenth century and rebuiltit after 1945, were now seen to be fatal flaws in the economy restrictingdemand: ‘Japan will never solve its chronic deficiency of demand until itshifts a greater share of national income to the consumer.’64

Japan’s economic problems caused it to look abroad once more forinspiration and American business practice was again being emulated bythe Japanese.65 Yet Japan seemed unable to implement the systematicrestructuring required to rejuvenate itself. Richard Katz maintained that‘Japan’s dysfunctions are so deep-seated that even if it did everything righttoday, it would take five years to achieve truly vibrant growth . . . Japan willnot do everything right today.’66 It seemed impossible for Japan to reformin the face of resistance from the ‘Iron-Triangle’ of banks, corporations andmembers of the LDP. Japan’s political system was a democratic one, and yetit seemed in some strange way to lack some characteristics of Westerndemocracies, and proved difficult to reform.

Once again Western portrayals of Japan changed, but only to confirm thecultural confusion. A less violent, but even less flattering view of Japan, orrather the West’s understanding of it, appeared in the Oscar-winning Lostin Translation (2003), which harked back to the ancient theme of the sheermutual incomprehension of Japanese and American societies.67 On theother hand, the samurai theme which cast Japanese martial prowess in avery much more favourable light was resurrected in Western cinema, just asJapan seemed to become less threatening politically. The Last Samurai(2003), once more revealed the West’s confusion and tension in coping withJapanese identity. The American hero comes to appreciate the ‘alien code’of Bushido, with its notions of honour, duty, integrity and acceptance ofdeath.68 He masters Japanese martial skills and sides with those seeking topreserve traditional Japanese society against the inroads of his own. Hefights with his samurai comrades, against the overwhelming forces of Meijimodernizers, their American mentors and the latest military technology.The ‘fanaticism’ of the Japanese warrior and inhuman indifference to death,so familiar in portrayals of the Second World War, were here transformedinto positive images, befitting an American hero.

A similar, if more sensational, view of the Orient, expressed with lethalblades and bloody mayhem recurred in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (1)(2002). In the climactic scene, the Aryan-looking heroine masters Japaneseswordplay, and wielding a noble samurai blade, dispatches human waveafter wave of evil, clone-like masked little Yakusa gangsters, identicallydressed in dark business suits, who are intent on killing her. The lattercontains elements of almost every Western aesthetic, racial, cultural,military and economic anxiety about Japan, confused and compounded bya profound cultural admiration and the possibility of common sentiments.

The Japanese have illustrated their cultural paradoxes with productions oftheir own. In 1989, a series of comics, The Silent Service began to be


published and was made into a film in 1995. It is a Japanese nationalempowerment fantasy, just as Superman was perhaps an American personalempowerment fantasy. Japan’s first nuclear submarine, The Seabat,developed with American help, is seized by its mutinous crew, who declareindependence, rename it Yamato,69 and stymie their American and Russianpursuers off New York. Acknowledging Japan’s paradoxical sensitivities, thevessel’s mission is to impose nuclear disarmament. This violent adventure ofa ship, embodying and glorifying the mystical and noble spirit of Japan andthe Empire’s most famous warship, was published in 32 volumes and sold7 million copies. Those who have dismissed it as merely a foolish child’s talehave not been following the plot of Japanese life closely enough.70

Westerners have often referred to ‘the Japanese Enigma’, in trying toexplain their own confusion over one and a half centuries. In The Enigmaof Japanese Power: People and Politics in a Stateless Nation,71 Karel vonWolferen maintained that the socio-political system of Japan crushesintellectual curiosity, creative thought and individualism. Critics of Japan,asserting the same Anglo-Saxon, Christian paradigm have attributed this to‘an absence of any absolutes or moral imperatives . . . and an ageless,amoral, manipulative and controlling culture – not to be emulated – suitedonly to this race in this place’,72 apparently agreeing with the Japanesepremise of their own uniqueness. The creation of race identities to explaincultural complexity has often proved unhelpful; it is unlikely to illuminatethe future debate, but will no doubt remain a part of it.

The lens of history

The Japanese Constitution begins, ‘We the Japanese people . . . ’, but it wasa constitution imposed by the American people after a war and total defeat.It was imposed by conquest under duress, and was in that sense not aJapanese constitution at all. There was also a growing feeling in the 1990sthat Japan had the right to be ‘normal’ and to be proud of its traditions andachievements. Sometimes this resentment was expressed in historical terms,angering neighbours who still bore a sense of grievance against Japanesemilitarism and nationalism. It seemed to them that expressions of nationalpride might indicate aggressive militarism lurking below a pacifist surface.These controversies mined rich, ironic themes of twentieth-century history.

The post-war debate about Japanese history epitomized the crisis ofnational identity – ‘we fail to pay proper respect to our predecessors’struggle’.73

Who are we? How can we be ourselves? In order to make these simplequestions meaningful, we must once more review the significance of thewar. In Japan’s long history, only during this one hundred-year periodwas it necessary to wage war to preserve our identity. In order to wagethis war, inevitably we were made increasingly aware of this identity.74

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After 1945, the pre-war nationalist General Ishihara Kanji coined thephrase ‘One hundred million people united in repentance’; but this hadanother meaning – shared responsibility for defeat. Ishihara maintainedthat the true tragedy of the ‘One Hundred Years War’ was that the ‘ “barbarians” could only be expelled by deliberate Westernization’.Ishihara maintained that Japan should resist the Cold War dichotomy ofideological friend or foe and, ‘Whenever the Americans or the Soviets pressfor Japan’s rearmament sometime in the future, we must never submit tothis request no matter how powerful the pressure.’75 Ishihara also saw thewar as being more about culture than national boundaries. To him, Japan’stragedy was that it ended up fighting those nations it sought to liberatefrom the West, and going to war before those people were confirmed asfriends rather than enemies.

Historical perceptions of Japan’s history have been categorized by ShojiJun’ichiro.76 Japanese textbooks published in 1951 were strongly anti-nationalist, but were soon branded left wing or sympathetic to the newCommunist threat. Attempts by Ienaga Saburo77 to prevent a more nation-alist approach in these books failed. In 1957, the Textbook AuthorizationCouncil criticized him for straying ‘from the goals of teaching Japanesehistory . . . [namely] to recognize the efforts of ancestors, to heighten one’sconsciousness of being Japanese, and to instil a rich love of the race’.78

In 1962, new Japanese textbooks portrayed the country’s wartime role ina more positive light, provoking a heated debate at home and abroad. In1964 the importance of establishing the Russo-Japanese War as a defensiveone was seen to have implications for the way in which Japan’s role in theSecond World War could be presented.

The Russo-Japanese War was a large war which Japan fought atthe risk of the ruin of the destiny of a nation. After World War II, thetendency which defines this war as a war of aggression, prevailed forsome time. However, recently the theories assuming it to be a defensivewar are becoming powerful.79

The Central Education Council’s The Expected Image of Society of 1966maintained that defeat in 1945 caused misunderstandings, as if Japan’s pastand Japanese ideal ways were mistaken entirely. Between 1978–9 therewere growing assertions that Japan had not surrendered unconditionally asGermany had done.

In 1984, Shimizu Hayao of Tokyo University maintained that thedemand for a revised view of history by the Japanese people reflected theirdesire to re-establish their sense of national identity. The Japanese historianHayashi Fusao saw the Second World War as the ‘100-Year East Asia War’,corresponding to the heyday of European colonialism and the centuryfollowing the end of the Tokugawa period. He saw the bombardment by theBritish at Kagoshima in 1863 as the opening shots of that war. He noted the


tragic, hopeless struggle against the White races that Japan was fated tofight: ‘What a reckless war we fought for one hundred years!’80 For him thiswas evidence of the dynamism of expansionist, powerful White races inAsia, just as Westerners saw the Japanese response as evidence of the sametraits in them. Hayashi saw the Japanese ‘invasion’ of mainland Asia as nomore morally reprehensible than the European invasion of North America.Hayashi maintained that although Japan appeared to accept foreigndoctrines without question, it did so because it was fundamentally immuneto those ideas – the Yamato spirit reigned supreme.

From 1997, the so-called Liberal School of History and the Society forthe Creation of New History Textbooks produced a series of patrioticversions of Japanese history. A textbook of 2000 claimed that before theSecond World War, ‘The people were awaiting the outbreak of war toliberate the Oriental races from 400 years of domination and bondage bythe Anglo-Saxons.’81 The Chinese Government responded that the bookcould damage Sino-Japanese relations.

The hero of Kobayashi Yoshinori’s A Theory of War of 1998 proclaimed,‘The day will come when this war is reappraised for what it truly was, themost beautiful, cruel and noble battle ever waged by mankind.’82 In 2001,Kobayashi went on to draft the controversial chapter in The New Historytextbook on the war in the Pacific, with the intent of making Japanesechildren aware of their own culture.

In April 2001 a group of Chinese veterans who had fought against theJapanese gathered in Harbin to denounce the militarism of Japanesetextbooks. Nevertheless, the New History of Japan was approved for use inSchools from April 2002 and as a result the South Korean ambassador waswithdrawn. China made formal protests and demanded that revisions bemade.83

The debate over history has done much to poison relationships, andhistory remains a vital force in contemporary international relations. Itsweight bears down on modern Japanese politicians. In September 1986, theJapanese Minister of Education resigned following his assertion that Koreahad willingly accepted colonization by Japan in 1910. Others in politicallife continued to assert that it was Europeans who had colonized Asia, yetit was Japan which had been blamed for militarism and aggression. InAugust 1982, Nakasone caused an uproar when he became the first post-war Japanese prime minister to visit the Yasukuni Shrine which veneratesthe spirits of 2,500,000 Japanese killed in wars since the mid-nineteenthcentury, including the fourteen Class-A war criminals commemorated therein 1978.

In April 2001, it was reported that the leader of Japan’s Liberal Party,Koizumi Junichiro would visit the Yasukuni Shrine. In July 2001, theChinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan protested about Koizumi’s visit tothe Shrine; but he went on to make further visits and Japanese courtsmade conflicting judgements on their constitutional legality.84 Such visits

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routinely caused an outcry, especially in China and South Korea, and theantagonism readily found populist expression.85 Public opinion polls inJapan in December 2004 showed strong support for Mr Koizumi’s nowtraditional visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, largely because few would be happyto see Japan bow to Chinese pressure. The cycle of tension became worse,coincidentally with friction over the Chinese violation of Japanese watersand the publication in December 2004 of Japan’s 5-year Defence Policywhich named China, along with North Korea, as ‘a country to be watched’.

In 2005, hackers disabled Mr Koizumi’s personal website;86 and theJapanese established an agency to defend Japanese institutions and corpo-rations against the flurry of cyber attacks, thought to come from China,which had begun in earnest in 2000.87 One Japanese official maintainedthat ‘Yasukuni is an issue that China is using politically to win concessionsfrom Japan . . . they don’t really want to resolve it.’88 Nevertheless, on 1 June2005, seven former Japanese Prime Ministers urged Mr Koizumi not tomake his annual visit to the Yasukuni Shrine.89

Public expression of nationalistic sentiment was common at the start ofthe new millennium. Buses toured Tokyo, painted with the Rising Sun andequipped with loudspeakers demanding the eviction of Russia fromJapanese territory, and that school children should sing the nationalanthem; but these were generally ignored. The national flag of a red disc ona white background, the Hinomaru, and the national anthem, theKimigayo, were only officially recognized on 9 August 1999. In 2003, theJapanese Government expressed concern about the apparent degenerationof national standards and rising crime amongst its youth, and it announcedits determination to reform the education system. Such measures includedraising the Japanese flag and singing the national anthem in schools.90 InMay 2005, the Japanese Government determined that from 2007 Hirohito’sbirthday would be named Showa Day.

Nationalist views about Japan’s history were not common in theentertainment industry until the 1990s. In 1998 the Japanese film, Pride,portrayed Japan as the liberator of India, and the Tokyo war crimes tri-bunal as a ‘frame-up’. The publication in 1999 of The Rape of Nanking byIris Chang provoked an outcry in the conservative media which called forit to be withdrawn. In May 2001 the film Merdeka, the Indonesian wordfor ‘independence’, opened in Tokyo, another indication of diminishingreticence about the Second World War. It portrayed the selfless decision by2,000 Japanese officers to remain in Indonesia after the surrender in 1945to assist the Indonesians to fight for their independence from the Dutch. Itchallenged the conventional view of the Japanese as brutal aggressors andperpetrators of atrocities.91 Memories may have been short or Japaneseefforts unappreciated, for on 15 January 1974, anti-Japanese riots hadbroken out in Jakarta when Prime Minister Tanaka visited Indonesia. WhenJapanese troops arrived in East Timor under UN auspices in 2002, theyfaced demonstrations from protesters referring to the 40,000 Timorese whodied in 1942–5.


The anomalies of self-defence

Some see the revival of nationalist ideas as the precursor to militaryexpansion; but until recently Japan was more often censured for its lack ofmilitary commitment. As early as 1953, Richard Nixon said that he thoughtJapan should rearm; but the idea found little support.

On 19 January 1960, the USA and Japan signed a new treaty in the EastRoom of the White House, where Japan’s first diplomatic mission to theUSA had been welcomed 100 years earlier. The USA committed itself todefending Japan, but to consult with the Japanese before sending forcesinto action. There was also apparently a secret agreement to allow the USAto bring nuclear weapons in and out of Japan. The problem was whetherthis would oblige Japan to assist the USA in any conflict with China overTaiwan, or some new conflict over Korea.92

These arrangements were, however, essentially measures to satisfyAmerican requirements rather than an expression of deeper Japanesemilitary engagement. Japan remained wedded to its policy of self-defenceand avoided foreign military commitments.93 Japan never joined South EastAsia Treaty Organization (SEATO), declining any military role in its neweconomic sphere. The feeling was largely reciprocal. When the USA andNorth Vietnam signed the deal that allowed American troops to withdrawfrom Vietnam, they did so in the presence of China and the USSR, butJapan was not invited to attend.

Tokyo’s first formal statement of its defence policy was made in 1976 andfocussed on deterrence. By the 1980s, the Japanese perceived Americanmilitary power to be waning in relative terms and there was a feeling thatJapan should not be so dependent upon US forces, that the two countriesshould have a more balanced relationship. In 1984, Prime MinisterNakasone explained that Japan represented the leadership of Asian cultureand that Japan was moving with America, the heir to European culture, tobring together two great cultures that would hereafter dominate theworld.94 Popular sentiment did not necessarily concur with this grandioseproposition. By the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, opinion polls showedthat Japanese and Americans regarded each other as the greatest threat.

Japan contributed $13 billion to the cost of the First Gulf War in 1991,but received considerable criticism for not committing troops to fight; andKuwait did not list Japan amongst those who had contributed to itsliberation. There were soon signs that Japan might reconsider its post-1945policy on defence; and the 1990s were in a sense the ‘decade in which Japanfinally took steps to becoming an ordinary country’.95 From 1995, theJapanese Self-Defence Forces (JSDF) began to reassess their capabilitiesagainst the background of rapidly changing global circumstances, and in1996 Japanese ships paid their first visits to Russia and South Korea.96

Japan sought a seat on the UN Security Council, but this proved elusive.Its economy relied on a global approach, and any attempt to be the local,Asian champion might run counter to this and not be welcomed by its

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smaller neighbours and China. Taking part in multinational militaryoperations in support of the UN was one way for Japan to play a larger rolein international affairs. In 1992, it made new rules enabling its troops todeploy on UN military missions, once a ceasefire existed, and permitting theuse of minimum force for self-protection.97

Nevertheless, the Japanese Constitution constrained the role of its forces,even in Japan, and was increasingly questioned. When an earthquake struckKobe in 1995, the JSDF was not given permission to enter the disaster areafor several days.

In 1995 security cooperation between Japan and the USA had beenstrengthened by Japan’s revision of its National Defence ProgrammeOutline. This aroused concern in China which saw that it might have animpact on its relations with Taiwan. In 1999, 57 per cent of those polled byYomiuri Shiimbun thought that Japan would come under military attack;and while the military support of the USA may have been comforting, manyJapanese wondered whether this dependency was wise given their doubtthat the USA would necessarily come to their aid.

Both the traditionalist mayor of Tokyo, Ishihara, and the more liberalgovernor of Nagano prefecture, Tanaka Yasuo, argued that Japan shouldfree itself from its overdependent relationship with the USA.98 Ishiharapledged to have American airbases in Tokyo turned over to joint use withJapanese forces, and Professor K. Saeki maintained that ‘There is a feelingJapan has to open more space between itself and the US.’99

In January 1999, the Justice Minister Nakamura Shozaburo declared thathis countrymen were ‘writhing in pain’ because Japan’s Constitutionprevented it from going to war or even defending itself. He also criticizedAmerican-style capitalism as ‘the kind of freedom that lets loose atombombs and missiles just when another country appears to gainadvantage’.100 In July 1999, the Japanese Diet voted to consider a reassessmentof the American-imposed Constitution which had not been amended for52 years.

On 31 August 1999, the North Koreans fired a three-stage missileover the Japanese archipelago and many were surprised by the strengthof the Japanese reaction. That year Japan passed legislation about howits own forces would coordinate operations with American forces. On11 September 2001, following Al Qaeda’s attacks on New York andWashington DC, the Japanese Government passed a law to help theUSA indirectly in Afghanistan; and that year Japan announced a 5-year$20.1 billion military modernization plan.101 In November 2001, fiveJapanese naval vessels sailed to the Indian Ocean to support US operationsin Afghanistan in Japan’s first overt wartime venture abroad since 1945.Japan seemed to become more assertive in other areas of foreign policy. InDecember 2001, the JSDF showed an unusual resolve to act decisively byattacking a North Korean spy ship, detected in Japanese waters, sinking itin China’s economic zone.


While some saw Japan’s continuing dependence on the USA for itssecurity as increasingly incongruous for a wealthy developed nation, othersfound the relationship less so as Japan’s own national power waned.

The majority of the Japanese public has begun to sense the ageing of itscountry into national maturity and the unavoidable decline in itsnational power. The public understands the need to judiciously utilizethe power held by the US, as the world’s most powerful state, inpreserving world order to ensure the protection of Japan’s nationalinterests.102

In 2003, the Japanese Government succeeded in extending a law whichenabled Japanese ships to operate in support of Coalition operations inAfghanistan. This seemed to some to be an indication of Japan’s adoptinga more normal policy on defence; by the end of 2003, Japan had sent 1,000men to Iraq to help the US-led Coalition in non-combat roles. Japan’smilitary operation in Iraq in 2003–4 was its first without a UN mandate.The deployment was agreed after Parliament passed a special law andcircumvented the constitution by designating southern Iraq a ‘non-combat’zone. This resulted in bizarre inconsistencies when that area was clearlyrevealed to be a combat zone. As the Secretary General of the ruling LDP,Abe Shinzo, pointed out, Japan had 550 heavily armed and well-trainedtroops in Iraq and none of them empowered to help Japanese hostages. Headvocated amending the constitution to permit such action.103

The kidnapping of Japanese hostages by the so-called Saraya al-Mujahideen on 8 April 2004, placed the Japanese Government in a diffi-cult position and had a surprising outcome. Despite an emotional publicoutpouring, mainly by family and friends, demanding that the Governmentgive in to the kidnappers’ demands, public opinion in Japan held firm andreinforced the Government’s resolve. This paid off and when the hostageswere eventually released, they were vilified by politicians and in the pressfor imperilling Japan’s national interests by their foolhardy actions inallowing themselves to have been taken prisoner in the first place.

Japan perceived a threat from international terrorism, and in 2003 itpassed legislation about how it would deal with an attack on its homeland.Most worryingly it faced a growing threat from an unstable North Korea,making it apparently less secure than it had been during the Cold War.104

There had been other missile scares in 1993, 1998 and 1999, but by 2003it was reported that up to two hundred North Korean missiles werepointing at Japan,105 and Japan had no adequate missile defence system.106

There was a growing call by members of the Japanese Diet to acquiremissile defence systems in response to this perceived threat.107 In February2005, North Korea announced that it possessed nuclear weapons andpulled out of disarmament talks, causing Japan to threaten trade sanctions,beginning on 1 March 2005, ‘that will bring North Korea to the negotiating

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table’.108 The North Koreans responded that they would consider suchtrade sanctions to be a declaration of war.

Japan’s defence budget for 2005 represented the sharpest increase since1997 and a restructuring initiative due for 2006 was intended to create jointoperational command organizations.109 All of this was done with linkagesto American forces in mind.

By 2005, growing military tension between mainland China and Taiwanand between China and Japan over maritime oil fields, compounded byapprehension about North Korea’s claim to possess nuclear weapons, ledJapan to adopt a more assertive approach in global affairs. On 13 April2005, it announced that it would allow Japanese companies to drill for oilin disputed areas of the East China Sea. It decided to stop its soft loans toChina by 2008 and was reported to have joined the USA in identifyingsecurity in the Taiwan Straits as ‘a common strategic objective’.110 AbeShinzo, of the LDP declared, ‘It would be wrong to send a signal to Chinathat the United States and Japan will tolerate China’s invasion ofTaiwan.’111 Japan would certainly not wish to see China dominate its sealanes from naval bases on Taiwan.

In April 2005, relations between China and Japan deteriorated over thefamiliar issues of Japanese history books,112 Japan’s growing support forTaiwan and China’s opposition to Japan’s gaining a seat on the UN SecurityCouncil. It seemed possible that violent popular protests might evendamage the close economic relations between the two countries. TheChinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing observed, ‘The Chinese Governmenthas never done anything for which it has to apologize to the Japanesepeople.’113

On 24 April 2005, the Japanese Government retaliated against the one-way stream of criticism from China by announcing that it wouldconduct an examination of Chinese textbooks to ensure that they containedno historical bias. The Communist Revolution, the ‘Great Leap Forward’and China’s record on human rights promised to provide interesting mate-rial for such analysis.114 After three weeks the Chinese Government restoredorder and brought the anti-Japanese demonstrations to an end. Perhaps itwas keen to protect the $35 billion of Japanese investment in China withits 2 million jobs, and to maintain Japanese markets for Chinese products.

By 2005, China was again being characterized by some in the USA as anideologically wayward state and potential future threat.115 The growingpower of China and the perceived threat from North Korea seemed to pushthe USA and Japan closer together.116 ‘Washington now sees Japan as a newUK, that is a core security partner’,117 an intriguing alignment when viewedacross the last hundred years of strategic history. Yet at the same time bothcountries also had increasingly close relations with China economically.The balance of this complex economic and military equation, how itwill develop and how it can be managed, lies at the heart of the strategicconcerns of the twenty-first century.


Despite a growing desire to be a ‘normal country’, Japan’s Constitutioncontained formidable obstacles to any such condition. Given the constitu-tion, Ishiba Shigeru, Japan’s Defence Agency Chief, suggested in 2003 thatif Japan came under missile attack from North Korea, the JSDF might haveto restrict its actions to clearing up the post-strike wreckage. When Japandecided in December 2003 to adopt comprehensive missile defence in theface of the threat from North Korea, there was little of the protest that mighthave been expected a few years earlier, especially from Japan’s neighbours.On 13 February 2003, Ishiba Shigeru threatened to make a pre-emptivestrike on North Korea if Japan judged that country to be preparing to makea missile attack. This threat to make a pre-emptive attack on its neighbourmarked a major step away from Japan’s post-war constitution whichrenounced the right to use force.118 In 2004, Kanzaki Takenori, leader of theruling coalition’s pacifist Buddhist Komeito Party maintained that ‘Peace isthe foundation of our party; but now we are entering a new era. In the past,Japan lived happily on its own, but we cannot live like that any longer.’119

On 3 December 2004, the Defence Minister Ono Yoshinori complainedthat ‘Article 51 of the UN Charter gives Japan the inherent right tocollective self-defence, and Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution means wecannot exercise it.’ He said that the Constitution could soon be revised,giving Japan greater licence to make offensive weapons, and he stressed hisconcern about China’s rising defence budget, noting that China’s ‘economyis booming but political relations are cold’.120 In November 2005, MoriYoshiro observed that ‘The Americans compiled the current constitution.We cannot possibly say the constitution was created by the people’s ownhands . . . the time has come for us to compile our own . . . .’121

By the late 1950s, Prime Ministers such as Yoshida Shigeru and KishiNobusuke had favoured Japan acquiring nuclear weapons, if it was for thelimited purpose of self-defence. China’s explosion of an atomic device in1964 made Japan more dependent upon American protection, but increasedcalls by some for Japan to develop its own nuclear weapons; and despiteAmerican pressure, Japan did not sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.It seemed likely that Japan would build a space capability which mighteventually be matched with a nuclear weapon, derived from its peacefulnuclear energy programme; in 1994, the Japanese Prime Ministerannounced that Japan had the capability to possess nuclear weapons buthad not made them. As the perceived threat from North Korea grew, therewas open discussion of the possibility of Japan striking first in the face ofan imminent missile attack, and of acquiring a nuclear capability.Nishimura Shingo, Vice-Minister for Defence, had to resign in 1999 aftersuggesting that Japan should consider making these weapons, but by 2003,he was discussing such matters on Japanese television. The Chief CabinetSecretary, Fukuda Yasuo also discussed the willingness to consider theproduction of nuclear weapons. No doubt the issue will persist if the matterof North Korea’s nuclear ambitions is not settled.

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Unfinished business – a settlement with Russia?

One hundred years after the Russo-Japanese War, Japan has other unsettledbusiness – the territorial dispute with Russia whose origins lay in the Warof 1904–5. Article Nine of the October 1956 Soviet–Japanese Declarationthat ended the state of war between the USSR and Japan stated that the twosouthernmost Kurile Islands would be transferred to Japan once a peacetreaty was concluded. Moscow has seemed reluctant to agree to such atreaty, given the territory it would concede to Japan. In July 2000, VladimirPutin said that he believed a treaty could be concluded if the problems thatwere at the basis of the peace treaty were to lose their priority. In otherwords, Putin wanted to detach the issue of territory from a peace treaty.The Japanese apparently wished to keep the two issues very muchentwined.

On 25 August 2004, Prime Minister Koizumi announced his intention toinspect the Kurile Islands from a distance, months before President Putin’sstate visit to Japan in 2005. The Japanese were clearly linking the issue ofownership of the islands to Japan’s ongoing investment in Russia’s oilindustry. A senior Japanese diplomat remarked that the economic relation-ship ‘could not go to the next level’ unless progress was made over thedisputed islands.122

Despite these fundamental difficulties, relations between Russia andJapan have remained cordial, with Russia agreeing in 2003 to supportJapan as a candidate for membership of the UN Security Council. Therewas also a growing economic relationship based on energy supplies, arelationship which complicated the relations of both with China.

The Japanese wished to diversify their sources of supply. They wereinvolved in oil projects on Sakhalin and assessed the possibility of buildinga pipeline to China or to Hokkaido. Japan was willing to help finance thispipeline from Angarsk to Nakhodka, taking 1 million barrels of oil per day,if it was built; but the matter was not a simple one. The Chinese challengedJapanese proposals for the pipeline from Angarsk, hoping instead to take itto Daqing. Russia seemed to delay its decision about the direction of thepipeline to gain maximum advantage from both potential customers, andby May 2005 it looked likely that a spur would be laid to China before themain line was built to the coast at Perevoznaya opposite Japan.123 Japanand China seem set to be rivals in their search for Asian raw materials, andthe routes of pipelines and the location of terminals reflect many of thedynamics in the disputes of earlier times over railway lines and warm-waterports, albeit today with scant prospect of military action.

Futures and choices

Japan set the agenda for Asian-Pacific affairs in the twentieth century andsalvaged prosperity from the wreckage of 1945; but Japan is unlikely to set


the agenda in the twenty-first century. It will, however, contribute to it,although the nature of its contribution remains to be determined and willbe beset with difficulties and historical impedimenta.

Japan’s economic difficulties at the turn of the millennium promptedPrime Minister Koizumi to declare that Japan had lost confidence in itself.In turn, the US Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, noted thatJapan’s economic problems could damage American interests, since ‘Japan’sinfluence gradually declines and its ability to assist declines with it’.124

Japan’s economic problems in the early years of the new millenniumchanged the balance of power in the Far East, tipping it away from Japanand emphasizing China’s dominant position among Asian countries.125 Thiswill have military implications. Okamoto Yukio, a Japanese foreign policyadviser, believed that ‘Japan will have to become a subject of China’ if theUSA does not play a strong military role in Asia.126

In 2004, Shi Yinhong, Professor of International Relations at RenminUniversity in Beijing maintained that China should accommodate Japan’schanging role in the world, ‘I understand Japanese peoples’ wariness abouttheir security . . . [and] their aspirations to become a normal internationalpower’; but he believed that Japan was seeking to be the wrong sort of power.

They should understand there is an historical transition of power.China is rising, India is rising and Japan cannot be a 19th Centurygreat-power . . . This is the world of superpowers. That means the USand a future China and a future India and a future united Europe. SoJapan should know that it can achieve normal national greatness. Butthere are limits.127

Japan’s only way of preserving its independence from China might be bybecoming more Western in its culture and associations.128

It may be, however, that Japan will have little desire to compete aggres-sively with a more powerful China in matters of political prestige, and thatit will content itself with the soothing pleasures of a prosperous and stable‘new Edo Period’. Perhaps the notion of being Number One will no longerseem so compelling. Japan’s New Year’s Eve television song show in 2003ended with a song by Japan’s favourite group, SMAP, which include thethought that

Small flowers, big flowers, none of them are alikeSo it’s OK not to be No.1Every one of them is the only one129

Strangely, despite its perception of itself as a peace-loving society, inwhich the JSDF have kept a low profile, Japanese society thrives on theproduction of violent Manga comics, and probably with less sense ofguilt than in Western societies which also find violence entertaining.

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The Japanese themselves remain enamoured of their samurai past, perhapsas a reaction to the modernity of which they have become the globalexemplars, with their fascination for technical innovation and gadgets.

Some have seen modern Japanese society as robustly self-confident. Forexample, the President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan in1999, Glen Fukushima, maintained that Japan retained a strong ‘sense ofnational mission that Japan can be successful economically. There is a senseof Japan being unique, of Japan being peculiar in a positive way.’130 Otherssee the fabric of Japanese society crumbling under the pressures of modernlife, resulting in an identity crisis, exemplified by youth delinquency andfamily breakdown. To some, Japan is still characterized by ‘over-confidence,fanaticism, a shrill sense of inferiority, and a sometimes obsessive pre-occupation with national status’.131

Is Japan in reality not so much an ‘Asian’ nation as a Western one whichhappens to be located in the Orient? Can Japan remain anti-nuclear and infavour of disarmament while dependent upon the USA and its nuclearweapons for its security?132 Will Japan prefer another ‘Anglo-Saxon’ allianceto a future closer, yet unbalanced, relationship with China? – probably. WillJapan become a more potent military ally as well as economic partner to theUSA? Or, will Japan cease to be the vital asset to the USA which it has beensince 1945, for China could become more important economically to theUSA than is Japan.

China and Japan share an ocean over which they see the US currentlyholding hegemony. The issue is whether such an Asian view will be morecompelling than any local rivalry between them – unlikely. Yet, China andJapan seem likely to replace the USA as each other’s most important tradingpartner. Will economic considerations force Japan to have to lean towardsChina, as many Japanese over the last hundred years have believed itshould – albeit now as a loyal deputy to its new champion China under aPax Sinica?133 Such Pan-Asianist dreams seem misplaced. Others believethat Japan’s relationship with the USA has always been entirely self-servingand that were the USA to confront China, it would find that it did soentirely alone.134

Could Japan suffer some kind of ‘Finlandization’ thanks to its proximityand possible dependence upon China? – perhaps. Funabashi Yoichi, aJapanese commentator noted, that ‘The nightmare for Japan is a deteriora-tion in relations between China and America, then we would be forced tochoose.’135

Japan adopted Western attributes in order to remain independent of theWest and saw its domination of China as part of that imperial formula; butit also saw the possibility that it might itself one day be dominated byChina. In the twenty-first century, that ‘surrender’ is a possibility. If Japanis to avoid forfeiting its freedom of action to China, which would probablyfind satisfaction in making clear Japan’s ‘tributary status’, it may have tofurther develop its Western characteristics, at the expense of its Asian ones.


This might entail establishing a closer association with a new Europe andRussia, if not the USA, as an alternative point of reference in a world thatseems increasingly dominated by Japan’s over-mighty neighbour. Thiswould constitute a shift in cultural affiliation from its historic Chineseheritage to one less than 200 years old. This might indeed fulfil the notionsof those in the late nineteenth century who believed falsely that Japan hadsomehow become Western; but they would have been right in identifyingthe first step along that path and the symbolism of the Anglo-JapaneseTreaty of 1902.

Japanese aversion to being absorbed in a Chinese Co-Prosperity Spheremight melt away as old hostilities between Asian nations came to be asoutdated as those between the once-warring nations of Europe. In theEuropean model, however, there is no single dominating great power, andthe Chinese are unlikely ever to accept a status in Asia similar to that of amere member in the European Union. National antagonisms in a regionwhich never had precedents of identity analogous to Rome, Christendom orCharlemagne would be harder to achieve.

On balance, it seems that in the near future Japan will increase itsmilitary capability and the constitutional freedom to use it, while at thesame time integrating its forces more closely with those of the USA. TheUSA will try to enhance its relationship with Japan for all the benefits itbrings to the American position in Asia,136 while trying not to upset Chinaunduly and disrupt the economic relationship which are so important to all.

Japan continues to present contradictions to the world. It remains awealthy state but a militarily weak one, despite the large sums actuallyspent on military capability. It is a capitalist country which seems suspiciousof markets, a country with democratic elections but whose political systemseems to operate in ways and with outcomes unfamiliar in mainstreamWestern experience. Some are inclined to see Japan as an island nation,poor in resources but with a homogenous people among whom unity ofopinion makes open debate unnecessary. This seems at times to perpetuatean appearance of old-fashioned nationalism in a state which also seems tohave thoroughly renounced nationalism and militarism.137 Some seenationalism as a demon lurking in modern Japan, and others feel thatJapanese opinions post-1945 are somehow exempt from normal analysisthanks to its unique historical experiences.138

No other nation seems so absorbed and depressed by considerations ofits identity, its intangibility, character or singularity, but these are equallysubjects of intense foreign interest.139 The Japanese remain confused aboutthe source of their own identity. Does it lie in their language, is it embodiedin their Emperor, or does it reside in some genetic singularity? Is it thegratification of fitting harmoniously into a vertical social hierarchy, ofpersonal place in a society where ‘placing’ is an ancient aesthetic?140 Is thatidentity substantial in itself, or is it some Zen-like space merely defined bythe boundaries of the identities of others?141

Nippon resurgat 175

Some Japanese feel that their anxieties stem from being disconnectedfrom their past, twice at American insistence, but also with their owncomplicity. Unlike the Chinese with whose history and civilization theyshare so much, they have become alienated from and forced to reject theirformer and irrecoverable identity; but they have to recognize that they havealso done this willingly, not only to retain their autonomy but also as ameans of dominating their neighbours. That past is not mere history; it hasbecome their own cultural identity. It is a hybrid, but then so are all others.Are the Japanese like ‘orphaned’ Asians brought up as Westerners, yearningfor a lost national life of their own heredity, yet perennially uncomfortablewhen reunited with other Asians? None of this makes for straightforwardforeign relations.


11 The next hundred yearsChinese futures

A new balance: made in China

In 1904, the British, French, Dutch, Portuguese, German, Russian, Chinese,Japanese and American empires were all represented in East Asia and thePacific; it was far from clear that of the non-Asian nations, 100 years later,only the USA would remain, let alone be the most powerful of them all. TheUSA is in effect the last of the great ‘European’ Empires, manifest not nec-essarily in terms of territorial occupation, but certainly in ‘trading posts’,military bases to defend its interests and the trappings of empire such asextraterritoriality. This ‘empire’ is also one of cultural pre-eminence and anempire of ideas; in the eyes of many Asians, it seems also in some way to bean Anglo-Saxon one.

Ideas of American imperial decline were popularized by Paul Kennedy asthe Cold War drew to a close;1 but by the late 1990s, it was much of Asiathat seemed to be in economic decline, and the USA remained in anunrivalled position of economic and political superiority, gaining powerin relation to Japan, Russia and Europe. Some Chinese believed thatthe USA used strategies ‘to contain, control, incorporate and suppressthose countries and regions that might become one of the multiple poles. Ithas controlled and incorporated Europe and Japan, and suppressed andcontained Russia and China’.2 Francis Sempa has maintained that ‘the USAis the geo-political successor to the British Empire’,3 that the USA isvirtually also an island, and just as Britain once determined the balance ofpower in Europe, so the USA today holds the Eurasian balance of power.He is optimistic ‘that perhaps the Twenty-first Century will be more of anAmerican Century than was the Twentieth’.4

That said, Kennedy may yet be proved right in his description ofAmerican overextension; but that will depend upon the outcome of theUSA’s military ventures and the health of its economy, whose debtdependence seemed worrying in the early years of the new millennium. AnAmerican pessimist, Chalmers Johnson, maintained that American mili-tarism, manifest in its ‘empire of bases’, will bring an end to globalizationand bankrupt the USA.5

For over 150 years, the root of American strategic interest in Asia hasbeen ‘The China-Trade’, entailing military reach to support its interests; butuntil the early twenty-first century that was always against the backgroundof a weak China. In future, the USA will have to find a formula forprotecting its interests when China is strong. Coming decades will probablysee the unprecedented coincidence of both China and Japan beingeconomically and politically powerful simultaneously. Japan has greaterdemographic and economic limitations which means that China, or perhapseven India, will more likely be the dominant Asian power to which the USAmust primarily relate its future interests.6

While Japan became Asia’s first modern state and peer of Western nationsat the end of the nineteenth century, the USA, today’s solitary superpower,now seems set to be challenged, at least locally, by Asia’s rising champion,China. Whether this will amount to enmity, rivalry, partnership or some-thing in between is likely to be the critical issue of the twenty-first century.If the end of the Cold War and American economic problems seemed thetwo most significant factors affecting the USA’s strategic position in Asia inthe early 1990s, ten years later these had been replaced by the rise of Chinaand the economic decline of Japan,7 although some American economicproblems again seemed vexing.

The Western-Japanese paradigm established in the late nineteenth centurynow seems set to be replaced by an analogous one, the West and China.The model contains both encouraging and uncomfortable features, but theoutcomes can be very different depending upon how the relationship is han-dled. Like Japan, China is an Asian power that was eventually coerced intotrading with the West, and adopted Western technology and techniquesbut retained its own powerful sense of a unique identity and a lingeringawareness of historic grievance.8 In 1900, A.T. Mahan warned that ‘Theincorporation of this vast mass of beings . . . into our civilization . . . is one ofthe greatest problems that humanity has yet to be solved.’9 The questionremains essentially the same over a century later. Can relations with Chinabe managed to ensure that it achieves success through peaceful meansalone; and that its consequent, possibly dominant power is not exercised tothe detriment of the West? In more objective, historical terms, is thataspiration even reasonable?

In any event the scale of the impact of China’s emergence is clear. In1993, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew observed that

The size of China’s displacement of the world balance is such that theworld must find a new balance in thirty to forty years. It’s not possibleto pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest playerin the history of man.10

In August 2001, the US Deputy Secretary for Defense, P.D. Wolfowitzforecast that China is, ‘almost certain to become a super power in the next


half-century, and maybe in the next quarter-century, and that’s pretty fastby historical standards’.11 According to the Chief Economist of Rio Tinto,‘What is taking place there is on a scale that has no real precedent.’12

Asian countries will increasingly have to take account of China ratherthan the USA. ‘China is such a large force, the only rational response is tofigure out how to work with it. It can’t be stopped.’13 The economicposition of the USA in Asia seems set to decline in relative terms and as aresult, ‘The policy leverage of the United States as the great market is sureto decline.’14 In time historians may view the brief rise and fall of the Westas today they muse over the fate of the Mongols and Maya, and thosehistorians would be Chinese.15

A new emissary from the greatest Western trading empire, HenryKissinger, visited Beijing in July 1971, following in the footsteps of LordMacartney 178 years earlier. President Nixon followed in February 1972,astonishing all, not least the Japanese and Russians. Part of the newunderstanding between the USA and China was that the USA wouldcontain Japan. Nixon observed that ‘We are now in the extraordinarysituation that, with the exception of the United Kingdom, the People’sRepublic of China might well be closest to us in its global perceptions.’16

During the 1980s, the USA regarded China more as a counterbalance toSoviet military power than as a potential rival, and it assisted Chinesemilitary modernization.17

With the ending of the Cold War, détente with a totalitarian ChineseGovernment looked somewhat anomalous; as the USA scanned the horizonlooking for a possible future threat to its unique international status, a resur-gent China seemed the obvious candidate.18 In a flurry of publications andconferences, China provided the spectre of a ‘peer competitor’.19 Opinionwas sharply divided on whether China was to be feared, or regarded asmilitarily benign and merely a long-term economic rival or partner.

The debate about the future of China is sharpest in the USA, but hardlyless important to the rest of the world, most notably to China’s principalneighbours, Russia and Japan. In March 2001, the US AWC held a confer-ence to assess the implications of ‘The Rise of China in Asia’.20 It notedthat, since the previous conference on the subject in 1996, the rise of Chinaas a great power in the new century now seemed less clearly defined, andits implications more complex. Nevertheless, Thomas Barnett maintainedthat the Pentagon long hankered after a major Chinese threat on which tobase its future plans.21

The USA has traditionally tried to avoid a continental commitment onmainland Asia and has generally not interfered in China. Equally, theChinese have no tradition in recent centuries of naval power. The dynamicsof contemporary Asian power-politics is thus historically familiar, with the‘maritime’ US–Japanese alliance facing the rising ‘continental’ power ofChina, which will have replaced Russia in that role in East Asia. China willprobably have to find ways of projecting its power at sea if it is to protect

The next hundred years 179

its interests in an interdependent global economy. Were China to succeed indeveloping a dominant naval force, it would emerge as both the maritimeand continental power, the hegemon, achieving what Russia, Japan, the USAand European Empires failed to achieve over 200 years, and what the USAhas fought three Asian wars in the last 60 years to prevent. If it achieved thatstatus, would the consequences be as dire as often imagined? That conclusionwill determine the nature of the response to the phenomenon.

The short march to prosperity and the frictions of ‘The China-Trade’

China has the world’s largest population, although it is likely to beovertaken by India;22 a growing military capacity and the world’s mostdynamic economy. It is this economic power that is the key to China’sfuture military power.23 Like Japan’s 100 years ago, this can only be builton the foundation of economic strength. ‘First we must uphold the centraltask of economic development . . . and lay a solid material foundation for usto meet the challenges brought about by the new changes in the worldmilitary arena.’24

China’s economic reforms began in 1978, and from 1980 to 2000 itsGDP grew fivefold. By 2004, China had the sixth largest economy in theworld and was set to overtake the UK by 2006. Although just 3 per cent ofthe world’s economy, it accounted for 10 per cent of its growth. IMFstatistics of 2004 indicated that in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP),China’s GDP would overtake that of the USA by 2020.25 However, to setthis in perspective, if American growth in GDP were to rise at 2 per centfrom 2004 and China’s at 4 per cent, it would take China a century to catchup with the USA’s output. A milestone in China’s emergence as a greatpower was passed in April 2005 when China became a net donor of foreignaid, having been a net recipient for decades.26

China also faces many future problems and constraints. Despite thewealth created so rapidly, economic growth, the expectations generated anddemographic changes will impose huge new financial pressures on thecountry. In August 2005, a Chinese Government report, published inChinese newspapers, claimed that the country faced a social meltdown by2010 if solutions were not found to the consequences of its rapid economicgrowth and the gap between rich and poor.27 China also faces manyenvironmental challenges from pollution and lack of access to clean waterand energy supplies.28 These will impose massive costs on an increasinglysensitive and wealthy society.29

In the year till July 2003, China’s trade surplus with the USA was$116 billion, while the USA’s deficit with Japan was just $69 billion.Overall in 2003, China’s surplus with the USA was $130 billion, leading tocalls for China to allow its currency to rise, breaking the peg with the dollar.30

By 2004, China and the European Union were each other’s largest trading


partners.31 The growth of China’s economy also increased its dependencyon those export markets, while at the same time creating a vast market forits neighbours, serving the rapidly expanding Chinese consumers’ appetite.China’s imports did much to bolster flagging Asian economies in 2003 andcontinued to grow thereafter.

In 2004, China consumed 40 per cent of the world’s concrete. That yearChina also consumed more than half the world’s pork, and some predictedthat China would require 300 million tons of grain from world markets by2030, greater than all available stocks available for export in 1999.32 TheUnited Nations Development Programme estimated that by 2020 Chinawill consume more coal in one year than the USA has burned since theIndustrial Revolution.33 The International Energy Agency predicted thatglobal demand for energy will increase by 60 per cent by 2030, and thattwo thirds of that will come from China and India,34 with major conse-quences for prices in competitive bidding on world markets.

Such consumption will lead to increasing competition with others whoare used to dominating the international markets. ‘On present policies therewill be a direct conflict between the advance of the world’s two mostpopulous countries and stable prosperity in the West.’35 When the Chinesesteelmaker, Baosteel, negotiated and accepted a 70 per cent rise in iron oreprices in early 2005, analysts noted this Chinese assertiveness, ‘for the firsttime the Asians have taken the lead in the negotiations . . . They were puttingdown a marker’.36

China’s economic needs had consequences for its foreign policy. Whilethe USA focussed on its operations in Iraq and maintaining good relationswith China to support its ‘War on Terror’, China was busy using its‘soft-power’ to build a new foreign policy in support of its long-term secu-rity objectives not only in Asia but also around the world, to bolster itseconomic security.

China’s need for strategic raw materials, especially oil, seemed likely tocause it to extend its sphere inland to the North-East Asian mainland.37

Like Japan in the 1930s and 1940s, China perceived a need to look bothways to secure access to raw materials, markets and domestic stability.After 1945, Japan managed to secure its place in the market place withoutdeploying military might, but largely because the market was ‘policed’ bythe USA which also guaranteed Japan’s own security. China cannot makesuch a pact. China might prefer to be merely a regional power, but therequirements of economic growth will dictate otherwise. In a global marketfor raw materials and its manufactured produce, China will necessarilydevelop global security interests, and energy supplies will be the mostcontentious commodities.

The imperative to secure future energy supplies led to massive Chineseinvestment overseas. By 2004, the China National Petroleum Corporation(CNPC) was estimated to have invested $40 billion in foreign oil develop-ment, and China seemed set to spend some of its cash on mining and power


companies in Australia and Canada. It was competing hard with anothernewcomer, the Indian Oil and Natural Gas Corporation in Burma,Vietnam, the Sudan, Russia and Angola. The Chinese also expanded theiroperations in Africa, in what was characterized as ‘the new scramble forAfrica’. China sought to secure energy supplies from Brazil as well, at whatsome regarded as three times the market price, a sign perhaps that theChinese anticipated future shortages.

The competition for resources may increase the risk of military conflictbetween China and its neighbours. In 2004, China overtook Japan as thesecond largest consumer of energy; and there was tension between the twonations over a Chinese gas project close to Japanese waters.38 A Japaneseofficial explained, ‘We are pursuing a policy of proportional escalation. Ifthey do something then we will do something until they understand ourdetermination.’39 Disputes over oil between Japan and China are more thanabout oil. They are laden with history and national pride and are indicative ofthe future ‘pecking order’ in Asia: who is the ‘first-chop nation’ – Number One.

Most of China’s new supplies would be strategically vulnerable to hostileinterception, and pipelines are perhaps even more vulnerable than sea lanes.Nevertheless, in 2003, Hu Jintao, Chairman of the Chinese CommunistParty, is reported to have directed that China secure energy supplies thatcould not be interdicted by the US Navy in the event of a war over Taiwan.At the same time, China will very likely build a navy capable of protectingits vital global interests, such as sea lanes, and play a more active part in thepolitics of the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. It seems likelythat dependence on vulnerable supplies of imported energy is also likelyto encourage both India and China to develop their nuclear powerprogrammes.

China sought to develop regional economic structures. On 4 November2002, it signed an agreement with the ASEAN to create a free-trade zonecovering 1.7 billion people, which China would inevitably dominate. Therewas talk of ASEAN members eventually forming a monetary union andmembers also agreed to exercise restraint in any future territorial disputes.This was seen by some commentators as not so much an attempt by Chinato control ASEAN as an attempt to woo them away from Japan. Reactingto these developments, Aoki Yutaka, a senior official at the JapaneseEmbassy in Phnom Penh was quoted as saying that ‘China is a frighteningfigure. ASEAN members fear that China may take away foreign investment.They see China as a major competitor rather than a partner.’40 The JapanesePrime Minister insisted that Japan was not ceding economic leadershipof the region to China, and announced Japan’s own plans for free trade inthe area.41

By 2003, there was a growing belief in the need to set up Asian securityframeworks, preferably by engaging China, South Korea and Japan withASEAN, termed ASEAN Plus Three (APT). Both China and Japan seemedcautious that APT might turn into a means for smaller countries to


constrain their interests and little came of it.42 On 29 November 2004,however, China signed an agreement with ASEAN at its annual meeting inLaos. This agreement was designed to continue the process of creating theworld’s largest free-trade area, potentially drawing its members closer toChina at the expense of their relations with the USA and Japan.43 TheASEAN Secretary General Ong Keng Yong explained that China wished tobe a superpower like the USA and, ‘we have to learn how to live with ourbig neighbour. I don’t think they are aggressive, they are just nearby’. Hesaw that ASEAN would ‘become less and less in the driving seat’ andperhaps become merely ‘the Navigator’.44 If this were the case, then Chinawould in a sense have taken over ASEAN, at the expense of Japan, andthereby have created its own ‘Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere’, which othershope will be benign. These arrangements certainly served many of China’sstrategic purposes, for the regional organizations which it joined wereeffectively barred from discussing issues such as Taiwan, the very topics onwhich members might have been expected to wish to form a collective view,but then their silence suggested that indeed they had – one which accom-modates China. No Asian organization seems likely to follow the Europeanmodel, which necessitates a sharing of sovereignty, for this remains anenduring anathema to China.

On 6 December 2004, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi saidthat the Summit of 2005 would lay the foundations for an East AsianCommunity (EAC). The EAC would be a free-trade area and entail asecurity pact, and most significantly the USA would not be a member. Theproblems for the EAC would probably be not between ASEAN members,who had already signed similar undertakings among themselves, but withthe additional three. Japan’s main interest in engaging with ASEAN lay inpreventing China from dominating it.45

China reinforced these collective developments with bilateral measures. Itsupported economic integration with investment in infrastructure, forexample a $16 billion rail network throughout the region. In 2004, theChinese agreed to contribute £140 million to pay for 230 km of track inCambodia, linking China with Singapore; and there were other grandioseschemes devised for Latin America. Railways thus retain the geo-strategicimportance they had in the region a hundred years ago, but withoutapparently generating the same military frictions.

China seemed more intent on building trade with its neighbours thanexacting tribute, although the effect in terms of power-relationships may bethe same.46 This appeared to be China exercising the sway of its soft-powerat a time when the USA’s willingness to apply its hard-power seemedincreasingly unattractive to some.47 ‘Chinese trade with Thailand, Laos,Cambodia and Burma is seen in Beijing as a modern form of relations thatonce existed between its empire and smaller kingdoms which paid ittribute.’48 Smaller nations sought to secure their economic future, becauseChina could be both a vital partner but also a threatening rival.


By 2004, joint ventures and foreign companies produced 27 per cent ofChina’s industrial output.49 It was estimated that 20,000 South Koreancompanies had relocated some of their manufacturing to China, takingadvantage of low production costs. South Korea sold more to Chinain 2003 than it did to the USA, and much of the modern industry of Fujianprovince was owned and equipped by Taiwanese. The South Koreaneconomy became dependent on exports to China and its companies on thecompetitiveness of their Chinese production facilities; but at the same timethey were beholden to the Chinese Government officials who mightapprove their ventures or not. It also seemed possible that South Koreantechnology might be transferred to China on a massive scale, ‘hollowingout’ South Korea’s domestic industry, and it planned to relocate some of itsmanufacturing base to North Korea instead.50

American business leaders noted the coming challenge from China. Theformer chief executive of General Electric, Jack Welch, remarked inSeptember 2001, ‘I think we are going to see in the next twenty years aChinese threat that’s going to dwarf what the Japanese threat looked likewhen I took over the company.’51 While the American economy lost over1 million jobs in the year to November 2003, the Chinese economy and itsexports boomed, and some saw a connection between the two, withfrequent calls for the Chinese to revalue the Renminbi against the USDollar. One New Zealand publisher warned that ‘China has the capacity,the willpower, the structure and the command economy to rip the heart outof manufacturing growth in Europe and America over the next twodecades.’52 In 2003, the US Commerce Secretary, Don Evans, denouncedChina as a closed market, and in November 2003 the USA imposed tariffson $500 million worth of Chinese textiles, supported by the traditionalconstituency of South Carolina.

By 2005, however, many Western countries clamouring for informalquotas on textiles and shoes were having to acknowledge that their positionwas compromised. Having allowed the Chinese to join a rules-based orga-nization, the WTO, how could they then disregard those rules on accountof their supposed harshness? Worse, if they did, how could they complainif the Chinese chose to ignore the rules on some subsequent occasion?

China’s ambitions grew beyond mere production and on to ownershipand control. In December 2004, the Chinese Government-owned computercompany, Lenovo, bought the PC business of IBM. This was just the mostconspicuous deal among many which saw Chinese enterprises buyingforeign companies, signalling their desire to become global players andbusiness leaders.53 Henning Kagermann of the German software companySAP warned that the greatest threat to his business came not fromMicrosoft but from Chinese companies.54 By 2005, China’s NationalOffshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) had bid unsuccessfully for theAmerican oil company Unocal and the Chinese company Haier had bid forMaytag, the American maker of domestic appliances.


China’s acquisition of Western corporate assets seemed to typify thedilemmas and confusion in Western thinking about an ebullient China. Tosome it may have seemed as if China was just following the Japanesepattern of the 1980s by investing in the West, but there were significantdifferences. Japan was a democratic nation and quasi-ally of the USA whileChina was not, but rather a rival of the USA for influence in Asia. Chinahad become a major competitor with the West for energy resources and theChinese ‘investors’ were state-owned corporations seeking strategicWestern assets as part of some expansionist policy, whereas Japaneseprivate corporations had merely had business objectives.55 The formerDirector of the CIA, James Woolsey, is reported to have said of the Chinese,‘Somebody needs to break their sword.’56

Others saw things differently, welcoming Chinese investment which gaveChina a greater stake in the success of the global economy. The thwartingof the Chinese bid for Unocal had led some to a similar conclusion: ‘Chinamight reasonably conclude from the episode that it cannot rely onglobal trade rules to secure its energy supplies and should look instead tomercantilist or even military means to do so.’57 Some Chinese, perhapsunconsciously, echoed the sentiments of another Asian nation 65 years earlier:‘To spread the “China Threat” and try to curb China’s progress and starve itsenergy needs is not in the interests of world stability and development.’58

International friction over ‘The China-Trade’ thus continued as it had forover 200 years; and the prophecies of C.H. Pearson and Brooks Adams of thelate nineteenth century about Chinese economic power seemed to have a newrelevance and urgency, magnified now by a globalism in which time and dis-tance have been reduced by the Internet and air travel. Many Americans feltthat the USA was losing out in trade and investment in China and the Pacificregion to European and Asian countries; and some American views on tradewith China sounded similar to complaints made against Japan a decade earlier.

At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Bangkokin October 2003, President Bush raised his concerns with China’s President,hoping that the Chinese would revalue their currency and reduce their tradesurplus with the USA. China had assumed the mantle of the prime tradeenemy of the USA, a position long held by the Japanese. The grounds forthis in American eyes were that China’s economy was not free and Chineseworkers were deprived of many human rights, making its competitionunfair. China’s trade surplus with the USA continued to mount, yet theWTO rules covered neither labour standards nor exchange rate policyabout which the USA complained.

There was increasing concern that the US Dollar’s status as a reservecurrency would be untenable if its deficits and consequent devaluationscontinued.59 In 2004, foreign holdings of US Dollars were estimated to be$11 trillion; and between 2002 and 2004, the Dollar fell by 35 per centagainst the Euro and 24 per cent against the Yen. A further fall on a simi-lar scale would in effect constitute the largest default in history. Meanwhile


the Renminbi was pegged to the Dollar and further calls for its revaluationwere only partially assuaged by a revaluation of 2.1 per cent in July 2005.From 1994 to 2001, however, its trade-weighted exchange rate had alreadyrisen by 30 per cent, appreciating with the US Dollar; and even if China didscrap exchange controls, the desire of the Chinese to save and invest inother currencies might actually have caused the Renminbi to fall.

In 2004, the OECD predicted that the USA’s current account deficitwould rise to 6.4 per cent of GDP by 2006, and others suggested 8 per centby 2008. Never before has the world’s reserve currency also belonged to itsbiggest debtor. Comparisons were drawn with the demise of Sterling as areserve currency. Sterling remained the world’s reserve currency for 50 yearsafter the USA’s GDP overtook Britain’s, but eventually gave up under theburden of huge war-debts, economic mismanagement and consequentdevaluations.

Yet criticisms that China was an ‘unfair trader’, as Japan had beendeemed to be, seemed wide of the mark.60 Besides, in 2004 China produced13 per cent of American imports, while in 1986 Japan had produced22 per cent.61 N.R. Lardy disagreed with the view that China was closed totrade; after all, in 2003 it had a trade deficit of $67.2 billion. Overall, Chineseimports grew by $55 billion in 2000,62 by $100 million in 2003,63 and itsneighbours became increasingly dependent on its consumption of theirproducts. By 2003 China had become the world’s third largest importer.

Japan imposed what were regarded as ‘unfair’ trade restrictions in itsyears of greatest export growth, appeared to shut out foreign investment,and was heavily criticized for this practice. The same could not be said ofChina which did not follow the pattern of Japanese mercantilism. Chinawelcomed massive foreign direct investment and the Chinese economy mayeven have suffered from excessive, and thus inefficient, investment.64 In2002, China attracted $53 billion of foreign investment, and in 2003 Chinaovertook the USA as the largest recipient of Foreign Direct Investment(FDI). Foreign investments in China acted both as a means of increasingChina’s economic power and of giving foreigners a capital stake in China’sboom; but they also constituted a ‘hostage’, which foreigners valued toohighly to risk losing by upsetting China. Mutual dependence was growingnot only through markets and investments but also through debt.

Chinese economic growth had benefits for the American economy.Companies such as Dell and General Motors relied on China for significantparts of their supply chain; and China remained the biggest potentialmarket for American products. Masses of cheap products from China werelargely responsible for reducing inflation in developed economies,65 and theAmerican Government was reliant upon Chinese surpluses to finance itsdebts. Equally, China’s economic growth was dependent upon its exports tothe USA; the financing of China’s current and future defence spending maydepend in part on maintaining the USA as its primary export market andsource of technology.


Americans understood that their power in international affairs wasnecessarily underwritten by economic strength. When its enemies weredefeated and its allies ‘busted’ by war in 1945, the USA was supreme.There were fears in the 1980s that the USA was busted, and that it would besupplicant and mendicant upon an economically powerful Japan. Japanesestrength may have been misjudged, but in many senses the weakness of theAmerican economy had not been corrected, despite its high rate of growthsustained by rising debt; and in the first decade of the new millennium, thetroubling relationship was with the USA’s creditor, China, more than Japan.

In 1980, the USA was the world’s largest net lender, with a positive netbalance of assets; but by 2004 its net investment was minus $3 trillion.66 In2004, the USA’s rate of borrowing was £540 billion per year, at 5.4 per centof GDP, compared to just 3.5 per cent of GDP at the time of the Wall Streetcrash of 1987.67 It was Chinese money that enabled the USA to maintain itstrade deficit, cut taxes and fight its wars. This created a strategic vulnera-bility, with the USA a ‘loan-junkie’ hooked on China’s ‘financial opium’, inhock to China, just as it had been to Japan in the 1980s and 1990s. China’scentral bank ‘has acquired the means to alter the course of the US economyin a way terrorists, or the still-feeble Chinese military would finddifficult’.68 The USA would be in serious trouble if it ever had to finance itsdebts by some other arrangement, as was seen on 26 November 2004, whenrumours that China might be cutting back holdings of US Dollars helped topush down the value of the Dollar.69 In March 2005, Warren Buffet warnedthat the American trade deficit and excessive consumption risked turningthe country into a nation of ‘sharecroppers’ dependent on foreignlandlords.70 In 2004, the US Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, forecast‘a day of serious reckoning’.71

There would be a severe danger to the world’s economy if Americanconsumers and Chinese producers were both to change their habits tooprecipitately. Those who gained most from the American propensity toimport, such as China and Japan, seemed reluctant to wreck the formula,and to be content to finance the USA’s debt, even if it meant the devaluationof their Dollar savings. Nevertheless, while such mutual symbioticentanglement could be a source of stability by encouraging mutualdependence, it might also perpetuate mutual bad habits, and be a potentialsource of weakness to both countries, depending upon which could beststand the political consequences of its disruption.72 For now, China mayneed American consumers for its products and the USA may need China’scash to shore up its debts; but at some stage China may not be so depen-dent upon those consumers, while those American debts may remain. Thattime might also coincide with a period of unprecedented Chinese economicand military power.73

That China had arrived as a major power in the world was acknowledgedin 2004, ironically when the overheating of its economy was cited as one offive major risks threatening the world economy.74 By 2004, many were


pessimistic about whether China could sustain its rate of growth: ‘Asia isfacing its worst prospects since 1998.’75 The consequences of a Chineserecession for the American economy, combined with other factors, such asAmerica’s national debt, could be severe, ‘Put oil, the Fed and China intothe equation – all deflationary forces – and the endgame starts to lookdownright treacherous.’76 In a more optimistic scenario, where China’seconomy powers ahead, China will have an increasing influence over thedeveloped world’s inflation, interest rates, wages, profits and house prices.

The fruits of power

Prior to 1904, others fought over China’s feeble carcass for its wealth,whereas today China’s wealth, or potential wealth, is a sign of its strengthwhich others have to respect if they are to share China’s treasures.

China had become the leading state in Asia by the late 1990s, and by2003, China’s currency was widely recognized as the de facto anchor of theAsian region.77 Relentless economic growth seemed likely to encourageChina to exercise its new-found power, following the historical pattern setby European nations, the USA and Japan. Others, especially the USA, facedthe problem of how to deal with this new phenomenon.

President Clinton’s trip to China in 1998 was seen by some as formalrecognition that ‘the economic and geopolitical leader of the region is nolonger Japan but China’;78 the USA became more dependent upon theChinese Renminbi than upon the Japanese Yen. Presidential candidateGeorge W. Bush termed China a ‘strategic competitor’, in contrastto President Clinton’s term ‘strategic partner’. Soon after taking office,however, the Bush administration had dropped its more challengingdesignation.79

The change was thanks in part to a new perception in the USA of China’svalue after the terrorist attacks on the USA on 11 September 2001.President Bush visited China on 18 October 2001 and it seemed that Chinaand the USA had created a new and better relationship, united againstterrorism and setting aside previous frictions. President Bush’s visit to Chinain February 2002, following its acceptance into the WTO the previousNovember, was seen by some as cementing what could be ‘the mostinfluential economic partnership of the new Century.’80 From being seen asa potential strategic competitor, after 11 September 2001 China becamein a sense, once more a strategic partner, as it had been in the 1930s, the1940s and under President Nixon. The US National Security Strategy ofSeptember 2002 stated that ‘Today the world’s great powers find [them-selves] on the same side – united by common dangers of terrorist violenceand chaos.’81 By 2005, however, the Pentagon seemed to be viewing Chinaonce more as a future peer competitor, as it had before President Bush’selection in 2000;82 but the State Department remained adamant that its policywas one of engagement with China, and that China was a ‘Co-operative


player and often a partner.’83 It seemed likely that President George W. Bushwas at heart as keen to engage with China as his father had been.

As the only superpower, the USA tends to favour the status quo andhopes to dissuade China from following the path of military competition,while preserving its own military superiority which is, awkwardly, in itselfan endorsement of the efficacy of military power. Engagement seemedindispensable. President Bush’s visit of 2001 was redolent of other historicvisits by Westerners seeking to make China part of the international tradingsystem, in this case the WTO. There was, however, a significant and ironicdifference. China was now attempting to gain access to global, but primar-ily Western markets, but on Chinese terms, possibly to be seen as ‘unequaltreaties’ of its own making. The West was not seeking to ‘open China fortrade’ per se, but rather insisting that an eager China should have to operateby the rules of the international system which the West had constructed andstill dominated. It was hoped that this would foster China’s status as apartner, rather than opponent, and lead to its Westernization.

Conversely, this is what many in China appear determined to avoid.China seeks the technical modernizations, trade and investments thatcontact with the West makes possible, but its Government at least appearsto reject the sort of society which produces them, seeing it as a culturalthreat. Many Chinese would prefer China to ‘reawaken’ as a self-confident,powerful nation of fundamentally different traditions, whose new wealthprotects rather than surrenders their identity. This approach is somewhatakin to the modernization of Japan in the late nineteenth century, whichwas accompanied by assertions of Japanese uniqueness, and ultimatelyresulted in a richer and more powerful Japan ready to fight the West. ThusChina could become a formidable rival to the West, but not necessarily ina military sense.

The time frame and seriousness of any potential military challenge is notclear. In 1996, Zhang Xiaobo and Song Qiang wrote an article, China CanSay No to America, echoing the idea of The Japan That Can Say No, anotion that seemed popular with many young people. Many Chinese alsobelieve that the USA will become the enemy of China, and Chinesestatements and behaviour have often encouraged this view in the West.Nevertheless, China may be in no hurry to take a conventional route tomilitary power, for Deng Xiaoping’s exhortation was to hide China’scapabilities and bide its time. Yet unease was aroused by views such asthose reported of Lieutenant General Mi Zhenyu, Vice-President of theBeijing Academy of Military Sciences, regarding the United States: ‘For arelatively long time it will be absolutely necessary that we quietly nurse oursense of vengeance’.84

Europe and the USA both have a vested interest in the political stabilityof East Asia, but only the USA has a practical role in guaranteeingit. There have been numerous incidents over recent decades to exciteopinion that China and the USA are bound to clash in the long term as


strategic rivals: the issues of Tibet and human rights; the alleged theft byChinese spies of nuclear secrets from Los Alamos in the 1990s; theAmerican bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999; the long-running confrontation over Taiwan; the detention of an American EP-3reconnaissance aircraft in China in April 2001 and American plans fornational missile defence. In an echo of Michael Crichton’s warning of 1992about the insidious threat from Japan in Rising Sun, on 16 February 2005CNN reported the widespread theft of American military technology byChinese espionage under the headline, ‘Red Star Rising’.

China’s attitude to its military security has certainly been transformedsince the 1980s. The demonstration of American military prowess in theFirst Gulf War of 1990–1 seemed to alarm the Chinese; and resulted in theirannouncement in 1997 of plans to modernize their forces, for ‘local warunder high-technology conditions’.85 Some commentators in the 1990sbelieved that China could become a great military power with neutronbombs, miniaturized nuclear weapons and submarine-launched ballisticmissiles. Particular concern was voiced in the US military community aboutChina’s apparent attempts to follow the debates on ‘The Revolution inMilitary Affairs’ and the technical opportunities the latter might offer tochallenge the USA on equal terms.86 Fear of China’s military potentialprovoked alarmist, futuristic fiction about war between China, itsneighbours and confrontation with the West, in much the same vein as theliterature of Jack London, Spanner, Bywater and Salisbury. The security ofoil supplies and surprise attacks on fleets at anchor remained popularthemes.87

From the late 1990s, China saw American hegemony as taking the formof a modern ‘gunboat policy’, but also manifesting itself in the manipula-tion of international regulations, rules and norms. However, confrontationwith the USA was not seen to be the solution, for it would only damageChinese interests and lead to its isolation. China lacked the allies and meansto challenge American power openly. China saw that for the time being, theUSA was in a dominant if complex position; but China was still likely toseek to balance it, and to wait for the tides of history to turn. Even if Chinadoes seek to balance the power of the USA, its own ability to act as ahegemon will be constrained by many complex relationships.

There were further moves by China to upgrade its defences after 1999.88

American campaigns in the Gulf and Balkans were assessed by the Chineseto make US intervention elsewhere more likely, and reinforced China’sconviction that it must master new defence information technologies andlong-range precision weapons. Yet the reforms after 1992, which wereessentially about ‘mechanization’, were not complete by 2002 when a newprogramme of ‘informationization’ was announced. The analyst of Chinesemilitary reform, You Ji, considered that ‘The “Double Construction” maymean falling between two stools.’89 Chinese views on warfare became moresophisticated and complex.


Warfare is no longer an exclusively Imperial garden where professionalsoldiers alone can mingle . . . it is precisely the diversity of the meansemployed that has enlarged the concept of warfare . . . warfare is theprocess of transcending the domains of soldiers, military units andmilitary affairs, and is increasingly becoming a matter for politicians,scientists and even bankers.90

Books such as Unrestricted Warfare by Colonels Qiao Liang and WangXiangsui, argued in favour of a ‘dirty war’, echoing Japan’s plans for deepattacks on Tsarist Russia prior to 1904. The book described twenty-fourtypes of attack, such as the infiltration of Western society; the sabotage ofits pillars, banks, financial markets and public services; and the use of drugtrafficking, terrorism and environmental degradation. ‘It takes non-militaryforms and military forms and creates a war on many fronts’.91 ColonelQiao Liang also saw the issue in terms of culture and civilization. He isreported to have said that ‘All strong countries make rules, while all risingones break them and exploit loopholes. “Barbarians” always rise by breakingthe rules of civilized and developed countries, which is what human historyis all about.’92 Equally, the ideas proposed in Unrestricted Warfare might beseen merely as ‘an important expression of China’s feelings of powerlessnesswhen confronted by US might’.93

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) doctrine stressed the principles of‘Actively Taking the Initiative’ and ‘Catching the Enemy Unprepared’ – theimportance of shock and surprise, achieved by pre-emption, which allow asmaller force to dominate an enemy.94 Chinese scenarios for war with theUSA were based on an assumption that American forces would have to beneutralized prior to any Chinese operations against Taiwan. The Chinesetherefore saw the need to strike hard and decisively without operationalwarning, having established a casus belli over time; but without alertingtheir enemy, leaving him unaware of the dimensions of the attack for aslong as possible95 – a familiar scenario over a hundred years of East Asianhistory.96

President Jiang Zemin was quoted in the South China Morning Post of15 December 1999 as saying that ‘The civilian and military leaderships arehopeful that by 2010 the mainland’s defence muscle will have developed tothe extent the US will not dare intervene in a China-related conflict, forexample, one arising in the Taiwan Strait.’ Hence, in the early years of thenew millennium, China focussed on procuring ballistic missiles, submarinesand precision anti-ship cruise missiles to prevent an American carrier taskforce from positioning itself in the Taiwan Strait, as it did during the crisisof 1996.97 China’s Defence White Paper of October 2000 identified theUSA as its principal threat. China warned the USA not to intervene shouldwar break out between the People’s Republic and Taiwan, noting that sucha conflict could include long-range strikes, which was presumably athreat to attack the West Coast of the USA with China’s long-range missiles.


This was expressed most graphically in 2005, albeit unofficially by GeneralZhu Chenghu: ‘If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guidedammunition on to the target zone on China’s territory, I think we will haveto respond with nuclear weapons . . . the Americans will have to be preparedthat hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.’98

When studying the factors in a future war with the USA, Chinese analystsmade observations on American vulnerabilities with resonances of 1941.For example, it was thought that American forces would be dependentupon a precarious extended line of logistics from the USA to the WesternPacific; and their ability to launch offensive operations would dependinitially upon their aircraft carriers.99 The Chinese deduced the need to keepthose carriers out of striking range of the Chinese mainland by threateningthem with air or torpedo attack;100 and the need to attack Americanforward bases from the air with cruise missiles.

Surprise would be achieved thanks to the degradation of Americancommunications and Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) byattacking American platforms in space.101 China was expected to procurenew space systems, airborne early-warning aircraft and long-rangeUnmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAVs). ‘The mastery of outer space will be arequisite for military victory, with outer space becoming the new commandingheights for combat.’102

The Chinese saw space as the ‘high ground’ of future battle, as offeringthe potential for observation, communications, electronic warfare, high-energylaser platforms to destroy other platforms, and navigation satellites toprovide precision targeting for missiles. Some argued that the only way toascertain China’s true objectives in space is to cooperate with it.103

However, the notion of a pre-emptive ‘Pearl Harbour’ in space offered theUSA a troubling analogy. ‘The PLA now has the technology to make micro-and nano-satellites that can be used as interceptors’, capable of shootingdown American satellites.104

In October 2003, China announced its preparations for its first mannedspace flight in December that year, which could give it military capabilities atsome later date to threaten American military satellites.105 The launching ofChina’s first astronaut aboard a Shenzhou106 military rocket on 15 October2003, and plans to set up a moonbase, signalled the scale of China’s strategicambitions and seemed to exemplify its ebullient self-confidence.

Not unreasonably, the Chinese chose US-like opponents as the top-gradeenemies for their wargames. They made an exhaustive study of OperationIraqi Freedom of 2003, just as they and the Russians had studied OperationDesert Storm. The study heightened Chinese awareness of the need forspecial forces, encouraged a recognition that airpower alone cannot prevailand highlighted the scope for guerrilla warfare, perhaps reinforcing olderChinese ideas about ‘People’s War’.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) Annual Report to Congress on29 May 2004 maintained that China’s military modernization programmehad eroded the challenges that inhibited the use of force against Taiwan.107


‘At this new century, nowhere is the danger for Americans as great as in theTaiwan Strait, where the potential for a war with China, a nuclear-armedgreat power, could erupt out of miscalculation, misunderstanding oraccident.’108 A Pentagon official, Kurt Campbell, warned that ‘I wouldprobably place China–Taiwan at the top of the list . . . for a strategicsurprise . . . above North Korea.’109 Matters became even more tense inMarch 2005, when China passed a law making it legal to use force shouldTaiwan secede; such a possibility seemed more credible when in mid-August2005 China held exercises with Russian forces to demonstrate their inter-vention capability. On the other hand, no party to the problem appeared tohave an interest in initiating a military clash.

In 2005, China’s defence budget was due to grow by more than 12 per cent,excluding equipment procurement, and it was predicted that spendingwould increase three to four times by 2025. There appeared to be acontinuing move in Chinese doctrine towards surprise, deception and shockeffects in the opening phases of any campaign; China was reported to beplacing greater emphasis on stealthy aircraft, cruise missiles, helicopters anddefence against precision strikes and electronic warfare. In December 2005the new Japanese Foreign Minister Aso Taro asserted that increasedChinese defence spending was making China ‘a considerable threat’.110

The Chinese have worked hard to analyse and develop concepts ofInformation Warfare for the PLA, with definitions and approaches ratherdifferent to those in the West.111 Some have speculated on the possibility ofwhat might amount to a new ‘Port Arthur/Pearl Harbour’ of theInformation Age, a Chinese digital blitzkrieg – a cyber ‘torpedo attack’ intothe ‘hard drive’ of the ‘USS America’. The PLA has considered creating anew service, the ‘Net Force’, and how to apply its thirty-six stratagems ofwar to Information War, with a ‘peoples’ army’ of information warriorsarmed with IT weapons.112 In keeping with this, violations of cyberspaceare regarded by the Chinese as being as important as violations of nationalsovereignty.

In the near future China will be but a regional power, with freedom ofaction in its own sphere. China apparently wishes to achieve ‘parity’ inpolitical, economic and military strength with other great powers, andbelieves that it will achieve the status of a ‘medium-sized’ great powerby 2050 at a minimum, becoming the pre-eminent power in Asia.A.T. Mahan’s greatest fear was that a land power might conquer a coastalregion and also become a great maritime power. He saw that potentialpower, at some distant future date, to be China; twenty-first-century Chinacould indeed fulfil Mahan’s vision.

To achieve Asian dominance, China would have to build a ‘blue-water’navy, and it has been argued that the USA should strengthen Japan to meetthis potential challenge.113 By 2002, China seemed, for the time being, tohave set aside plans to build and deploy aircraft carriers; but parts of theChinese Air Force and Navy had modern equipment, supplied mostly fromRussia.114


Whatever its actual military capabilities, China has at times struck anapparently aggressive stance.115 From a Chinese point of view, NorthAmerica, Europe and Japan have seemed to coalesce into a grand alliance,underpinned by common values and foreign policy outlook, as well asshared interests. Many Chinese have felt that American policy in particularhas been to, ‘divide China territorially, subvert politically, contain strategi-cally and frustrate economically’.116 Its leaders have asserted that the USAseeks to maintain a dominant geo-strategic position and President JiangZemin is reported to have argued that ‘Western hostile forces have not fora moment abandoned their plot to Westernize and divide our country.’117

The strength of US–Japanese relations and an increased Americanpresence in the western Pacific have been seen as manifestations of suchattempts to contain Chinese interests. The Chinese have probably seenAmerican involvement in India and Central Asia as strategic encirclement,albeit of a ‘soft’ variety, maintaining that the United States has led the wayto ‘to build up a new world order guided by Western values’.118 Thisperception of being culturally surrounded by those who would constrainwhat are regarded as legitimate aspirations has echoes of Japan in the1930s. Some Chinese commentators have referred to an American sense ofcultural superiority, and even ‘potential racial exclusionism’, which seesChina as a threatening, non-Western power.119 Such resentments against theWest, but especially the USA, help to explain the apparent rapprochementof convenience between President Putin’s Russia and China, which began asearly as the summer of 2000.

In 1996, Lieutenant General Xiong Guangkai is reported to haveexplained the value of China’s nuclear weapons in its strategic relationswith the USA: ‘In the 1950s, you threatened China with nuclear strikesthree times. You could do that because we couldn’t hit back. Now we can.So you’re not going to threaten us again because, in the end, you care a lotmore about Los Angeles than you do about Taipei.’120 The People’sLiberation Army Daily, the official military newspaper, noted that ‘Chinais not Iraq, nor Yugoslavia. She is a country with certain strategic attackcapabilities. It would not be wise to fight a country like China.’121 Suchcapabilities help to explain the USA’s interest in missile defence.

China’s growing assertiveness in international affairs became apparent in2003 when it tried to calm the nuclear missile crisis with North Korea.122 Itwas now seen to be pivotal in dealing with the ‘axis of evil’. The formerDirector of the CIA, James Woolsey, saw China as having the decisive rolein the peaceful resolution of the North Korean nuclear crisis by removingthe regime of Kim Jong II, ‘We see no alternative but for China to use itssubstantial economic leverage, derived from North Korea’s dependence onit for fuel and food . . . .’123

China might well wish to retain North Korea as a buffer between itselfand South Korea, but nonetheless prefer it not to possess nuclear weapons,if only to restrain the Japanese from developing a counter. More crucially,


China would probably seek to dispose of any North Korean nuclearweapons prior to what may be seen as its inevitable unification with theSouth. A unified nuclear-armed Korea would significantly increase thechances of Japan developing nuclear weapons in reply.

More than a decade earlier, Henry Kissinger had hoped to play off theChinese against the Japanese. He believed that the Japanese would eventu-ally get nuclear weapons and that it was no bad thing for the Chinese to beconcerned about such a development.124 In a similar way, in 2003, the USAmay even have encouraged discussion of a nuclear deterrent in Japan toencourage the Chinese to restrain the North Korean nuclear programme.

Progress was slow, but on 20 September 2005, it appeared that some hadindeed been made in reaching a solution, and China claimed most of thecredit for what seemed like a breakthrough, although many were extremelysceptical about this outcome. This agreement was even greeted by some asa triumph for China to be compared with that of the USA in brokering theTreaty of Portsmouth in 1905, with China establishing itself as the greatarbiter in the disputes of other powers in the region.

Hopes that problems over North Korea would reveal common interestsbetween the USA and China seemed misplaced. In 2005, China announcedan increase in Defence spending of 12.6 per cent, which the Japanesemaintained underestimated actual spending by up to 50 per cent.125 Atthe same time, China seemed determined to build a blue-water navy. Oneattaché in Beijing noted that this could be compared to the Soviet Union’srace to become an ocean-going navy to rival the US in the 1970s. Chinaupgraded its surface fleet and submarines and introduced numerous newmissiles. The benchmark for the reforms and reorganization of the Chinesearmed forces seemed to be to build a force that could prevail in a conflictin the Taiwan Strait and deter American intervention, ultimately presentingTaipei with no option but to capitulate.

The CIA’s 2005 report on global threats placed less emphasis onSino-American cooperation, and it noted that China was making deter-mined efforts to counter what it saw as US efforts to contain or encircleChina. American concerns about China were summarized by the US DeputySecretary of State Robert Zoellick in September 2005. He noted that theUSA had watched China integrate itself into the international system overthree decades, but that the time had now come for China to become ‘aresponsible stakeholder in the international system’. China could not ‘takethe US market for granted’. The idea that economic growth and national-ism ‘could sustain the Communist Party in its power monopoly was . . . riskyand mistaken’. China’s efforts to ‘lock up world energy supplies was notsensible’. China was guilty of the ‘rampant theft’ of intellectual propertyand involvement with ‘troublesome states’. All of these concerns would leadthe USA and others to ‘hedge relations with China’.126 Yet the USA’s seemeda twin-track approach, for when President Bush visited China in November2005 the emphasis was on engagement and common interests.


Demography: people power again

Despite being regarded as ‘politically incorrect’ for decades, manytraditional areas of debate have resurfaced in the discourse on globalstrategy. Ethno-cultural geopolitics, and their relation to trade and theconsumption of raw materials are once more familiar themes. Pearson,Stoddard and Malthus would have clearly recognized the dynamics of thedebate, although some of today’s participants might be discomforted to bein such company.127

Strategic shifts of power were once commonly described in terms ofdynamic expanding races and cultures set against the dying and contractingones, with the demographic force and resource requirements of the formerhaving profound political consequences. Today, what is essentially the sameanalysis is generally expressed merely in terms of demography and culture.The modern Malthusians are prone to describe the strategic consequencesof diminishing populations as much as they are of expanding ones. Thenotion of an ‘Old’ and a ‘New Europe’, of a decaying culture and societycontrasting with a reinvigorated and dynamic one, was popularized in theUSA by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2002–3.

The debate also has Darwinian tones when applied to demography. Somepostulate that modern Western society, but maybe all modern societies,have created an environment in which the ‘fittest’ have fewest children.128

T.G. Dyer ended his Theodore Roosevelt and his Idea of Race of 1980:‘Theodore Roosevelt died making the extraordinarily inaccurate prophecyof race suicide.’129 Twenty years on, the case is not yet regarded as closedby many influential commentators such as Pat Buchanan and P. Longmanor even the sober The Economist.130 Longman’s views on the strategic perilsfaced by the USA as a consequence of its demographic collapse, The EmptyCradle, mirror those of Theodore Roosevelt, 100 years ago, albeitRoosevelt’s urging American women to do their duty and mother largenumbers of children ‘so that the race shall increase not decrease’,131 wasexpressed in terms that would not be used today.

Pat Buchanan concluded that

Europeans do not plan to continue as a great vital race. What then arewe defending? Christianity? That is dead in Europe. WesternCivilization? But, by their decision not to have children Europeans havealready accepted a Twenty-Second Century end to their civilization.132

In 2004, the American Walter Russell Mead asked, ‘Does Europe havethe biological and cultural will to live?’133 Daniel Gouré maintained thatthe economic, numeric and psychological consequences of demographicdecline in Europe and Japan will limit their future military capabilities.134

The French Institute for International Affairs predicted that the economicconsequences of Europe’s relative economic decline would be the EU’s ‘slow


but inexorable exit from history’.135 ‘The political and economicrenaissance of Europe that was predicted . . . is likely to be still-born.’136 ForRussia the demographic outlook is even more bleak, with all its ramificationsfor territorial security in its Far East.

Pat Buchanan maintained that the West’s self-indulgent practices such ascontraception and abortion, combined with materialism had led to collapsingbirth rates.137 Now that all the Western empires are gone, Western man,relieved of his duties to civilize and Christianize mankind, ‘revelling in luxuryin our age of self-indulgence, seems to have lost his will to live . . .’.138 Ahundred years ago, Kitchener and Colonel Maude would also have recognizedthis vision of the West’s ‘wild debauch’ and its menacing consequences.

The transfer of power from the West to the East is gathering pace withprofound consequences. ‘This time, the populous states of Asia are theaspirants seeking to play a greater role.’139 This analysis has been familiarfor over a hundred years, but causes some to feel no less threatened forthat and to display the sort of cultural panic characteristic of 1905. Thedemographic demise of Europe and Japan are widely discussed.140 The risingpowers of China and India141 are seen to combine demographic strengthand fundamentally different ‘Asian’ cultures with growing economic power,unleashing their masses from poverty by means of the technology andeconomic models of the West. Europe, by contrast, is seen by many in theUSA, but especially in Asia, to be in long-term decline, with a complacent,state-subsidized society.

It is also asserted that ‘the fact that Europe’s population is shrinking andageing will inevitably also affect the aspirations of some Europeans tocreate a superpower to rival the USA.’142 The UN predicted that the EU’spopulation will have fallen from 482 m to 454 m by 2040. A EuropeanCommissioner, Fritz Bolkenstein, created a stir in September 2004 when hecalled demography ‘the mother of politics’. He predicted that the youth anddynamism of the USA would enable it to remain the world’s only super-power, alongside a rising China, with Europe succumbing to the rising tideof Islam should Turkey be granted membership of the European Union.143

Bernard Lewis predicted that by the end of the twenty-first century at thelatest, Europe would be ‘part of the Arabic west, the Maghreb’.144 Thenovelist Umberto Eco maintained that unless Europe found the energy tobecome a third power between the USA and the Far East, it would remaindivided, economically stagnant and strategically irrelevant.145

On the other hand, some Americans saw Europe as a future colossus.146

T.R. Reid of The Washington Post contemplated Europe as ‘a new super-power and the end of American supremacy’.147 Another American, JeremyRifkin believed that Europe had the edge in new ideas, and that ‘while theAmerican spirit is tiring and languishing in the past, a new European Dreamis being born. It is a dream far better suited to the next stage of the humanjourney.’ Rifkin noted, however, Europe’s demographic decline and thatwithout massive immigration ‘Europe is likely to wither and die’.148


Demographic power is also seen to be linked to the USA’s future strategicpower. Some have seen the USA as a demographic dynamo: ‘The long-termlogic of demography seems likely to entrench American power and to widenexisting transatlantic rifts.’149 Others fear that its ageing population will bea brake on its economic power and strategic capacities, relative to areas ofthe world with growing birth rates, or at least on the USA’s ability to dealwith global problems that arise in part from those birth rates.150 In 2004,the cost of funding what the US Government had promised in future socialbenefits alone exceeded GDP by 500 per cent. Longman maintained that

In another twenty years, the USA will be no more able to afford the roleof world policeman than Europe or Japan can today. Nor will China beable to assume the job, since it will soon start to suffer from the kindof hyper-ageing that Japan is already experiencing.151

The Russian, Anatoly Utkin, maintained that the West was dying out andthat the power of the USA would fade. ‘The USA will simply not be physi-cally able to create a version of the “MacArthur regency” over the hugeArab world. Russia will need to find a position for itself in a world of shift-ing power.’152

Fears of cultural dilution were also expressed for the West as a whole‘Multiculturalism is really a suicide cult conceived by the Western elites notto celebrate all cultures but to deny their own . . . at a time when the bene-fits of the Britannic inheritance are more and more apparent everywhereelse.’153

China has often been portrayed as a demographic titan and it is thisdemographic strength that has so often terrified its neighbours, especiallyRussia, and continues to do so.154 Yet China too faces serious demographicchallenges, some created by the one-child policy which was designed to alle-viate them.155 By 2030, thanks to this policy’,156 its workforce will start tofall; but China will still have a massive population and its people will beincreasingly prosperous by their own historical standards. China may bethe first major country to grow old before it becomes rich. Historically,nations’ economies have not grown when their populations contract; butChina may break this pattern, albeit with many attendant problems.157

Alternative futures

Free market capitalism and democracy are sometimes regarded as theepitome of what it is to be Western; it is thought that as China adopts theseideas, it will somehow become less traditionally Chinese. This is true to anextent, but ignores the grip of European, as opposed to Western ideas onthe Chinese state over the last 50 years. Communism had been theWest’s most influential ideological export to China, but by the end of thetwentieth century, it was being displaced in the market by a variant of


another product, Capitalism, which raised more people from poverty in ashorter time than any other economic phenomenon in history. It seemedunlikely that this freer market had really exploited the Chinese people morethan had their Communist Government over many decades.

Chinese Communism of the new millennium was very different to that ofChairman Mao. A paradox lies at the heart of the Chinese Government’spolicy, for after the dramas on Tiananmen Square, China’s leaders made adeal to allow greater commercial and social freedoms, provided the powerof the Party was not challenged. Capitalists and former ‘class-enemies’ werenow allowed to become members of the Communist Party. By 2005,disparity in the distribution of wealth in Communist China was greaterthan in Capitalist Taiwan. A quarter of the names on the 2004EuromoneyChina’s list of its hundred richest people were Communists.158

As one Shanghai student noted, ‘Before I joined the Communist Party, weneeded to learn Marxism, but most commonly I looked at this book.’ Hewas referring to Principles of Economics by N. Gregory Mankiw, chiefeconomics adviser to President Bush.159 Reconciling these phenomena mayyet be problematic.

China constitutes a puzzle. Is it a Communist or Capitalist state, orneither? Does it practise market socialism or state corporatism? CouldChina be neither a socialist planned economy, nor a free market economyoperating in a democracy? Could it combine censorship and a controlledmedia with a transparent political system which was dynamic, entrepre-neurial and innovative? Could an economic and political crisis be avoidedby finding a third way between these poles and melding Chinese traditionsand innovations with those of the West? It is often asked how the West willhandle the rise of China, but how will China handle the West?

China probably believes that the USA wishes to maintain its dominantposition in the Eurasian balance of power and to prevent the long-termresurgence of Russia. It has apparently assessed the USA as wishing tomaintain its unique position of power by strengthening defence ties withJapan, expanding NATO’s roles outside Western Europe and increasinglyacting unilaterally, or in ad hoc coalitions around the world. For example,the USA made efforts to improve its relations with India to balance thegrowing power of China.

Predictions are risky and prophecies of hegemonic rise and decline havebeen notoriously unreliable whether applied to the USA, China, India orJapan.160 However, there are clear differences of opinion in the Westbetween those who see China as some kind of threat and those who feelthat it could become a partner.

Some see China to be less like the West than Japan, and as a far moreformidable threat. China has been compared to Nazi Germany, the last ofthe great dictatorships whose overthrow is unfinished business. They haveregarded engagement as appeasement on a grand scale and would like toconfront the Chinese Government to free the Chinese people from what


they see as tyranny. They maintain that it is foolish to imagine that bytrading with China it can be democratized. Others seek change in a morebenign if insidious way. Like missionaries of old, they want to change andconvert the Chinese to Western ways.

Zbigniew Brzezinski observed that ‘China is big, it’s large on the map, it’sYellow, so there is an under-the-surface racist element, and it fits very nicelyan obsessive state of mind. I imagine it will last a couple of years, becauseChina is big enough to sustain this obsession.’161 Many argue that the USAshould not ‘lose China again’ as it did during the Communist Revolution,the Korean War and the Vietnam War; but rather that it should seize theopportunity to lock China into the international system. Henry Kissingercriticized those who saw China as an inevitable rival, characterizing thisview as a ‘nostalgia for confrontation’. He claimed that ‘We have no greatconflicting interests. China will become a great power and have greaterinfluence. We have to get used to this.’162 The former US Defense SecretaryJames Schlesinger maintained that ‘China is not going to be a world powerin the existing period and possibly never. They recognize it and the lastthing they want is to tangle with the United States.’163

The USA, abjuring a traditional empire in Asia of territorial occupation,has needed a proxy to be an Asian power and to propagate its own values.It has continued to project those values onto those proxies even when thelatter had other motives for seeking American support. The Japanese weredescribed by some as ethnically White, Western, civilized and essentiallyChristian when they emerged as a ‘modern’ state in the late nineteenthcentury. Equally, many in the 1930s saw Nationalist China as latentlyWestern, liberal and the great hope for Christianity and democracy in Asia,perhaps genuinely, but also because it suited their political wishes to seeChina thus. It was a necessary requirement if American support for itsproxy was to be justified.164 T.V Soong and Madame Chiang Kai-shekassured American audiences that their regime had picked up the torch ofdemocracy from the American founding fathers. Unfortunately, ChiangKai-shek’s regime was essentially a fascist one. As he himself declared inSocial-Darwinian terms, ‘Fascism is a stimulant for a declining society . . .Can fascism save China? We answer, Yes.’165 After the Communist triumph,Japan took over the role of the proxy upon which the USA could project itsown values. Is twenty-first-century China really adopting Western values;has the West any reasonable right to expect it to; and are Western hopes inthis vein merely familiar serial delusions?

The essence of US policy since 1971 has been one of strategic engage-ment, seeking to draw China into a series of economic, political andinstitutional arrangements, leading to internal change and a more cooperativeinternational relationship, the means by which the long-term security issuesmay be resolved – management without appeasement. Today many arguethat the assumption of the trappings of Western economic organization andproduction in China will entail its adoption of Western values, the ideals of


democracy, human rights and international benevolence. If they are wrong,others argue, then the West faces a daunting strategic challenge.

Over 100 years ago, it baffled Mahan and others how China might everbe reformed: ‘Under what impulse, under the genius of what race, or ofwhat institutions is the movement to arise and to progress’.166 Surprisingly,it may yet be the Chinese Communist Party that accomplishes that task, butno doubt Mahan and others would question whether this is suitably imbuedwith Western liberal values. Some such as B. Gilley believe that China willbe.167 That said, if the Chinese model of development is going to prosper itwill have to incorporate ‘Chinese characteristics’.168

In a booming China, few seem inclined to complain about lack ofpersonal freedom. In 2001, President Jiang Zemin warned that ‘ShouldChina apply the parliamentary democracy of the Western world, the onlyresult would be that 1.2 billion Chinese people would not have enough foodto eat’.169 Gilley maintained that the laws of social science apply in Chinaas they do elsewhere, and that China will indeed become a functioningdemocracy. The opening of the economy has released the people from thrallto the Party and the ‘opening up’ of China is virtually inevitable.170 For him,China was already developing precisely along the lines that those favouringengagement with China had hoped, with a stake in a liberal, rule-basedinternational system. The optimists believe that there are deep forces atwork, linking economic progress with democratic developments.171 Dr ZhuXueqin, Dean of Shanghai University’s Peace and Development Institutionmaintained that ‘It is almost impossible for a country to sustain a situationof being Westernized, or modernized in the economy, but Sovietizedpolitically. So political reform is perhaps inevitable.’172

Some see fear of the rise of China as a ‘phantom menace’.173 They believethat an overestimation of Chinese economic strength has led to anexaggeration of the consequent changes in global trade and the military threatto the USA that would result from it. China has become highly dependentupon foreign investment and technology and could not afford to threatenthese while its economy is taking off, with all the inevitable and dramaticsocial change. China is like many other emerging nations, dependent onothers, with serious deficiencies in its infrastructure and social welfaresystem, and huge expectations from a rising tide of aspirant consumers. Itmay not be able to unlock its full economic potential unless it does institutepolitical reform. Its potential to threaten the global balance of power istherefore limited.

Burstein and de Keijzer took an optimistic view that, despite troublesalong the way, China is likely to become the largest economy in the 2030sand will emerge over the next hundred years as a vibrant economy andpowerful in every other sense – politically, militarily, culturally and techno-logically.174 There will be two superpowers, the USA and China who will attimes be rivals, but both will find ways to cooperate and coexist peacefully.The Sino-American relationship could be one of productive cooperation.


The USA may have been engaged in an economic Cold War with Japan, butthis relationship need not be replicated with China. Besides, China will havetoo many problems to menace the USA or the West in general. It willhave enough trouble feeding its people and building its infrastructure to beconcerned with confronting the USA.

Other Western optimists once more see China as the great hope for‘civilization’ and Christianity,175 rather as missionaries persuaded them-selves of Japan at the end of the nineteenth century, and some Americanpoliticians believed of China in the 1930s. China is again portrayed as agreat Christian nation of the future, an ally of the USA and Israel againstthe rise of Islam. Christians are said to have won over important membersof the Communist Party who see Christianity as the cause of the rise of theWest and its continuing power. David Aikman maintains that China may intime adopt an Augustinian ‘imperial’ view of the world, characterized by ‘aprofound sense of restraint, order and justice in the wielding of statepower . . . both Britain and the United States have possessed this at theheights of their imperial power and influence, and the US still possessesit’.176 He thinks it possible that China might take over some of the benevo-lent tasks in the world currently undertaken by the USA over the last50 years, suppressing piracy in the China Sea rather as the British RoyalNavy suppressed slavery around the world in the nineteenth century. IfChina became a world power, it might give Christianity the sort of globalboost that it received from the Roman Empire – the Dragon tamed by theLamb.177 Such political assertions about the Christianizing of both Japanand China, have perhaps been driven by religious convictions, rather thanreal politik. Such projections of Western values onto those whose adoptionof them would be appealing, have so far proved delusional, and seem likelyto remain so for the foreseeable future.

Nevertheless, the Chinese themselves have certainly been eager to rejectnotions of China becoming a threat to the West. In November 2003 Chinalaunched a campaign to promote the ideas of its ‘peaceful rise’, and to assertthat China is not an aggressive nation.178 This is but an element in thedebate over whether China’s history reveals it to be essentially an aspiranthegemon, or a nation which has always been essentially defensive inoutlook, with the Great Wall of China remaining the paradigm into the newmillennium. Yet China’s aggressive military actions in pursuit of what it seesto be a defensive strategy are not seen that way by those whom Chinahas attacked. China thus sees itself as a status quo, defensive power, whileits neighbours may justifiably see it otherwise.179

Chinese policy may also be one of peaceful engagement, containingelements of Ito Hirobumi’s nineteenth-century expression ‘peacetime war’,the means by which it may eventually steer its own more independent pathin international affairs. China certainly seems likely to develop thosecapabilities that reduce the constraints on its freedom of action, capabilitieswhich would affect the calculations of its neighbours. However,


Kenneth Lieberthal maintained that China was likely to avoid directconfrontation with the USA as this would damage its economic growth, andbecause the difference in the military power of the two countries was sogreat. Far from declining, and despite China’s preference for a multi-polarworld, he argued that China has been forced to recognize that the USA isfor now even stronger than it was at the end of the Cold War.180

There may be dangers if China’s power increases without it becomingmore peaceful and democratic;181 and some dismiss ‘the wishful thinkingthat economic and institutional engagement will automatically bring abouta democratic and peaceful China’.182 A richer, stronger China may becomemore democratic as society grows more prosperous, educated and vociferous;yet it would also become more capable, perhaps belligerent, and probablymore interested in following its own agenda than that of those it regardedas hegemonists.183 L.F. Kaplan maintained that ‘The idea that capitalismalone will make China a democracy is a libertarian fantasy backed by theUS Government.’ He noted that 100 years ago in Germany and in Japan,capitalist development was an ally, not an enemy, of authoritarianism. In‘revolutions from above’, capitalist transformations weakened liberalism,and China’s brand of economic reform hinders political reform. Kaplanasked what ultimately made Germany and Japan democracies in 1945, andcautioned that it was not Capitalism.184 Some critics of engagement believethat the exercise of military power and pressure on China to democratizeshould be fundamental to American strategy.

Some detected in peaceful rise a veiled threat, with China’s rise being agiven, but its manner being as yet perhaps undetermined. In June 2004, theAmerican Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said that China waschallenging the status quo ‘aggressively’.185 Perhaps it was for this reasonthat by 2005 the catch phrase of the moment had become ‘HarmoniousWorld’ along with words such as ‘stakeholder’.

Some Americans see an eventual clash between the USA and China asinevitable, unless the latter’s political culture is fundamentally changed, justas some in the 1920s and 1930s saw a clash with Imperial Japan asinevitable. John Derbyshire maintained that the Chinese state ideology isbased on concepts of racial superiority, nationalism, historical grievanceand the restoration of ancient glories. It is ‘a fascist dictatorship . . . Early20th Century Japan was not bent on world conquest, only a Greater EastAsia Co-prosperity Sphere – precisely what China wishes to construct inCentral Asia and the West Pacific’.186

China represents a major threat to the national security of the USA in thecoming century, according to Bill Gertz. Gertz maintained that China waspositioning itself commercially and militarily along key naval choke pointsbetween the Indian Ocean (Burma), the South China Sea (Hong Kong), theStraits of Malacca (the Spratley Islands), the Central Pacific (Tarawa), theCaribbean (Cuba and the Bahamas) and the Panama Canal.187 He describeda possible future war between China and the USA over Taiwan, involving


the Panama Canal, a scenario strangely analogous to Hector Bywater’s forwar with Japan in the 1930s.188

Some discounted the possibility of any true meeting of minds betweenChina and the USA. The former was an autocratic state, whose rulers’ legit-imacy stemmed from Mao, and whose highest priority seemed to be main-taining stability based on their own power, while the latter was aconstitutional democracy rooted in the European Enlightenment. ‘There isno way the United States can please Beijing. The craving for respect couldnot be fulfilled by a thousand concessions . . . the PRC’s anger is absolute,beyond analysis or disregard.’189

In 2004, Cecelia Malmstrom, a Swedish MEP, arguing for the continu-ance of the EU’s embargo on arms sales to China, maintained that China ‘isstill the world’s biggest dictatorship’.190 The British historian AndrewRoberts saw history siding with Beijing’s totalitarian rulers, and China’semergence as a great power in the early twenty-first century as a SecondBoxer Rising, fought on the battlefield of trade.

When the imperial baton passed from Britain to the US at least thesucceeding power spoke our language, shared our values and had twicebeen our battle-tested ally. By contrast, China is one of the most viciousstates in existence . . . the present hegemony of the English-speakingstates cannot last forever, but it will be tragic when – not if – Westerncivilization is overtaken in power, wealth and prestige by ChineseCommuno-militarism.191

John Tkacik maintained that China had ‘been taken over by a group ofnationalist militarists’, intent not on implementing Communist ideology buton increasing ‘the comprehensive strength of the nation’.192 Professor PeterMorici of Maryland University described China as ‘well-armed, authoritar-ian . . . bent on subverting global institutions that support democracy andfree market values . . . a fascist menace with global reach’.193

China’s variant of authoritarian nationalism has also been portrayed asthe modern heir to the hundred-year tradition of Social-Darwinianthinking, with an extremism influenced by the Communism whose ideologyit has supplanted – the ethno-nationalism of Sun Yat-sen and his Japanesementors, in place of the thoughts of Chairman Mao.194

Pessimists believe that China cannot succeed in becoming a superpowerbecause the Communist Party will not allow China to democratize; itseconomy will falter and its society break apart.195 It is not clear whether arising China would be more or less dangerous than a declining China. Somemaintain that China lacks the institutions to create a stable moderneconomy in the foreseeable future.196 China could fall apart, amidst rapidand unequal regional growth as attempts to restructure the economy and toreduce the size of the loss-making state sector fail.197 The current regime


could be replaced by a nationalist one, and the new China might be less richand capable but more dangerous.

Gordon Chang believes that China is unlikely to cope with the competitionrequired by the WTO; its banks will be crushed by debt, unemployment willgrow and China will not be able to maintain a consistent high growthrate. As a result of these woes, it will have problems meeting the rapidlyexpanding expectations of its people whose resentment at their plight andParty corruption will boil over. If China had 30 years to transform itself, itmight emerge as a successful nation, but Chang believes it does not havethis luxury, given that its problems will become overwhelming in 5 to10 years.198 The China Century Monument in Beijing tells the story ofthe Chinese people on 262 bronze tablets. The last of these is blank, thefuture being unknown. Chang maintains that it will record that the ChineseCommunist Party failed the people.199

Even if China were to become wealthy and militarily benign, it wouldcertainly be expected to have a larger say in the conduct of the internationalsystem in which it could be the largest entity on many counts. How couldthe West object to that, except on selfish, undemocratic grounds? Even ifChina’s economic development created markets for Western products,China and India would be competitors for raw materials and their demandwould raise prices.

Higher energy prices will squeeze profit margins . . . have a negativeeffect on consumer prices . . . they may help erode Western wealth . . .softening up stock markets, as growth increasingly centres on otherparts of the world. The awakening of China and India suggests that theWest will have to get used to a world where it is no longer the monopolybuyer of the world’s scarce resources.200

The dramatic rise in oil prices in 2004–5, caused in part by increaseddemand in China, at a time of uncertainty over global supplies, seemed toconfirm this. Equally, while European nations may no longer have apresence in East Asia, the sharing of ‘The China-Trade’ may still be a sourceof friction between these former imperial powers and the USA.‘Transatlantic relations will be increasingly determined by the level oftransatlantic agreement or disagreement on how to adapt to the rise ofChinese power.’201

The path to possible military confrontation between the USA and Chinais reminiscent of some of that which emerged between the USA and Japanin the 50 years before the attack on Pearl Harbour. The AmericanGovernment has asserted its desire to ‘build and maintain our defencesbeyond challenge’ and to ‘dissuade future military competition’. It alsowarns that ‘in pursuing advanced military capabilities that can threaten itsneighbours in the Asia-Pacific region, China is following an outdated path


that, in the end, will hamper its own pursuit of national greatness’. Somehave argued that this amounts to the US saying ‘Do as we say, not as wedo.’202 It was this same contradiction that made a clash between Japan andthe empires of the West almost inevitable in the first half of the twentiethcentury. The Japanese could not see the justice in others having the right tobuild empires, when that right was denied to them by Russia in 1904 andby the USA in 1941.

In a sense, the USA now has a ‘virtual’ Monroe Doctrine, appliedglobally – the right to protect, by pre-emptive action if necessary, any threatto its interests; but ideally the right to deter by the threat of pre-emption.The UN has also sanctioned the right of the international community tointervene in the internal affairs of sovereign nations in the name of humanrights. Yet China is admonished for building a military capability that mightthreaten its neighbours, when the USA clearly demonstrates the utility ofthat concept by building its own unrivalled military power. Some ofWestern mindset find this comforting; but the Chinese see no reason whythey should not pursue a similar strategic logic to that of the USA.

According to American Empire Steps Up to Fourth Expansion,203 Chinaintends to follow the US model to become the unmatched global super-power. It sees four phases in the USA’s imperial history: ContinentalDomination, Overseas Domination, Contention for Global Hegemony(1949–91) and a Move to World Domination (1991�). It regards thecurrent manifestation of the American empire as not so much one of territory,but rather the relentless export of cultural, political, economic and militaryinfluences. It attributes American success to four enabling strengths:political stability, scientific and technological innovation, economicdevelopment and expansionism. It is this model that the Chinese apparentlyseek to emulate, applying soft-power rather than military power wherepossible.

In the medium- to long-term, Tasker Bliss’s warning of 1904 thatthe greatest strategic challenge to the USA would come when its MonroeDoctrine ran up against someone else’s may take on a new relevance. Themost likely deterrent to a potential arms race is probably the historicalappreciation of the devastation wrought by such a dynamic, even ifhostilities never came to pass. Nevertheless, the potential for a clash of rivalcultures seems clear. The balance of power in Asia will surely shift, and if itis to be successful, the USA will have to adapt to this new environment,testing the Darwinian theories which over a century ago provided thetheoretical underpinning of so much of international affairs.

One hundred years later, much of Mahan’s geopolitical arguments, withtheir ‘currency’, such as Teutonism, sound dated, yet his analysis is remark-ably similar to that purveyed today. An open China is likely to becomewealthy and, if sufficiently imbued with values shared with the West, couldbecome its partner, bringing wider benefits to all mankind; but it will alsonecessarily remain true to its own cultural identity and not merely become


a clone of the West. The West would have to expect to share its global swaywith this newly powerful China. If, however, China became powerful whilemaintaining an ideology antipathetic to the West, then it might become athreat to it. How to manage this problem remains as difficult andcontentious today as it was when laid out by Mahan 100 years ago. Chinais now the big player in the Asian drama. The richer and more powerfulthat China grows, the less amenable it may become, with the power tothwart the wishes of the ‘Western Empire’. ‘The West’s military dominancehas held for so long that it is taken for granted, the unnoticed backdrop tointernational affairs . . . but a world of new military powers is appearingright before our eyes.’204

There is often a natural assumption of American power in North-EastAsia, even though the USA is not an Asian nation, which implies some kindof imperial mandate. Thomas Wilborn, writing in 1996 maintained that‘The major powers of Northeast Asia – those nations which can demand tobe involved in all significant regional decisions – are China, Japan and theUnited States.’205 He excluded Russia from this group until its political,economic and military capabilities were restored.

On the other hand, Chalmers Johnson argued that there was no need forAmerican forces to be based around Asia when there was no threat to theUSA from these countries. The USA’s original Peace Treaty with Japan in1951 stipulated that the occupation of Japan by Allied troops would notexceed 90 days. Some such as William Pfaff ask what, as the only non-Asiaactor in the East-Asian theatre, the USA’s objectives in East Asia might be.

Since 1945 and the defeat of Japan, the United States has been in theabnormal position of effectively dominating Japan . . . This militarydeployment has only remotely to do with the security of the UnitedStates. Neither China nor Japan has now or ever had an interest inconquering the United States . . .What does the United States want, sinceit is the non-Asian actor in this situation? Being the foreign power, itmust in the long-term leave the region to them. . .What the United Statescannot reasonably want is to exercise permanent power in the Far East,against China’s power and eventually that of Japan, which sooner orlater will shake off its subordination to the United States.206

In the late nineteenth century, the USA regarded bases in Hawaii and thePhilippines as essential in bridging the great space of the Pacific, but theyalso brought strategic liabilities. Were the USA to find the means to projectits air power effectively from the continental USA, which is indeed what itintends, then Asian bases would be less important; but the statement of acommitment which these bases represent should not be underestimated.‘Empires’ based on the mandate of air power have long been attractive tomilitary visionaries but are unlikely to realize their dreams. On the otherhand, this stratagem may be the only one deemed acceptable.


Any change in the current balance of power, in which the USA is a crucialelement, is likely to lead to instability in the Pacific region. In the shortterm, there is the danger of worsening relations between China and Taiwan,complicated by instability in North Korea and the consequent possibility ofJapan developing nuclear weapons. Given the multitude of disputes andpotential frictions in East Asia, the best means of maintaining stabilitywould be for the USA to maintain its presence until there is clear reason tobelieve that the economic development of China will lead to political andsocial transformation. The problems of the region would very likely beexacerbated by any strategic withdrawal, say to a military line throughGuam.

China’s long-term objective is very likely the withdrawal of Americanforces from Asia back across the Pacific, thereby isolating Japan andmaking it amenable to its will. The USA’s interest, if it can afford it, is likelyto be to afford smaller nations the option of independence from the ‘MiddleKingdom’ and the alternative of membership of its own ‘Empire of Ideas’,but the costs of defending this disparate global empire are uncertain, butcertainly large. The outcome of operations in Iraq and their costs and anyeffect of these on the will of the American people will affect the issue.

Just as Japan and China recognized that economic power is the founda-tion of global power, and just as the USA has benefited from over 50 yearsof economic dominance, so its strategic diminution is more likely to be theresult of some economic setback, rather than military defeat. Economicretreat, or even relative economic decline, let alone a broader loss of confi-dence or some new neo-isolationist inclination, would certainly change theUSA’s position in East Asia.

The USA is the last European or Western empire remaining in the EastAsia-Pacific region, but an empire in the sense that it applies telling military,political, economic and cultural power over a wide area where it has littlesovereign territory per se and where it is widely perceived by others to beimperial, even if it does not share this view of itself. If the USA does intendto maintain its dominant position in the Asia-Pacific region indefinitely, itwill indeed be fulfilling the role of the last ‘European Empire’ in Asia,despite the portents of 1905. That presence, enduring or not, may yet be thecrucial element required finally to open China for sustainable trade. TheAmerican presence has ensured that, in the hundred years since the Russo-Japanese War, Asia has not had its own native regional hegemon. The even-tual withdrawal of the USA would complete the motion started in 1904,with Asia producing its own champion. How this dynamic develops is likelyto be the critical strategic drama of the twenty-first century.

China’s development as a world power should not be seen merely interms of its relationship to the West and the USA in particular. There aregreat implications for its immediate neighbours, but these might alsocomplicate China’s relations with the West. As China’s economy grows, itmay wish to secure its sources of raw materials and markets and thus sea


lanes, for its own ‘Co-Prosperity Sphere’; it may feel tempted to act as ‘TheMiddle Kingdom’. China seems increasingly likely to seek to become amaritime power, creating further tension in the region. Steven Metz haspredicted that the Asia-Pacific region ‘has the most complex regionalsecurity environment on earth . . . and will be the laboratory for the revolutionin military affairs in the coming decades’.207

On the other hand, despite the seizure of Tibet, its war with Vietnam andthe dispute with Taiwan, China has shown little apparent appetite forforeign adventures for it now has no blue-water capability and is onlya regional power. Few nations in the region today seem to view China as amilitary threat. China sees its claims over Tibet and disputed islands asbeing far more reasonable than the USA’s acquisition of Texas and Hawaii,and its behaviour over Cuba and the Philippines in the nineteenth century.Its assumed status as ‘The Middle Kingdom’ is seen by the Chinese as moreacceptable than was the USA’s Manifest Destiny. In 2003, China completeda major upgrading of its border defences; but it has sought to resolvelong-standing border disputes with a generosity that has surprised someused to China’s traditional unrelenting line on ‘unequal treaties’.208 On11 April 2005, China and India agreed to settle their outstanding borderdispute, clearing the way for a new relationship between the world’s twomost populous nations.209

China has often been very constructive in helping neighbours such asThailand and Indonesia; and in November 2002 it cancelled Cambodia’sdebt of £130 million. Confrontation with Taiwan seems the only, albeitserious, exception and possible military flashpoint with the USA. China’seconomic power places its smaller neighbours in a dilemma. They see littlelong-term advantage in the growth of Chinese economic power, since Chinaseems likely to outperform them all in every aspect of economic endeavour.Yet, there is apparently little option but ever-closer cooperation, withsignificant mutual economic gain; but will that gain outweigh thedisadvantages of the growing overall imbalance in their relationship?

The collapse of the USSR increased Sino-Japanese rivalry. The Japanesesought greater security from the USA, and the Chinese hoped that thisrelationship would contain Japan and reduce the likelihood of its rearmingon a major scale.210 Tomohisa Sakanaka, a commentator on security issuesnoted that ‘If you ask them (the Chinese) which they prefer – an autonomous(Japanese) defence posture or the Japan–US alliance – the answer is clear.’211

Yet China seems to remain concerned by the close American relationshipwith Japan, and apparently fears that an American missile defence systemwould embolden the Japanese to develop a more aggressive militaryposition. On the other hand, good relations with China has to be a highpriority for Japan for security and economic reasons, and it could, likeothers, become a vassal in some new Chinese Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Although cynics might doubt the likelihood of a long-term Sino-Russiancommunity of interests, after the Cold War, Russia sought a friendly


relationship with China. This was in part because of its desire to be a majorplayer in the Asia-Pacific region, because of its relative economic weakness,its demographic vulnerability in the Far East, their shared concern aboutIslamic extremism in southern Asia and the importance of China as amarket for Russian armaments, gas and oil.

In July 2000 President V. Putin of Russia said that bilateral relations wentbeyond ‘strategic partnership’, which the Chinese press termed ‘mutualcoordination’. In July 2001, the Russians and Chinese signed a ‘Treaty ofGood Neighbourly Friendship and Cooperation’. In 2005, China andRussia agreed to hold military exercises, giving the Chinese the opportunityto assess their ability against a first-class force. China might even have seenthe strengthening of ties with Russia as offering a counterbalance to whatappeared to be growing military cooperation between the USA andJapan.212 While not wanting to set up some obvious pole of opposition tothe USA, Russia’s friendly relationship with China was presumably thoughtto help to offset American power without causing the USA undue concern.Perhaps the USA calculated that Sino-Russian relations would always beflawed and limited.

The questions remained: is Russia really an Asian nation or a Europeanstate, fascinated by its own Asian territories and historical cultural roots? Isit better to seek alliances with the West against some more generic Asianmenace across its long and thinly populated borders? Like the West, shouldit seek peaceful economic engagement with China? Can it afford to arm afuture hypothetical threat? These same themes pervade the debate in Russiatoday as they did before the Russo-Japanese War.

Whatever the character of its relations with Asian nations, it seems thatRussia will see itself as essentially European and Western with criticalinterests in Asia, just as it did in 1904. Equally, Russia would see little meritin being but a small player in the Western camp and might well seek toremind the world of its greater aspirations by taking an independent line.Nevertheless, rather as Bismarck forecast that the decisive strategic factorof the twentieth century would be that the Americans spoke English, so thedecisive factor of the twenty-first century may be that the Russians seethemselves culturally and ethnically as Europeans rather than as Asians.


12 ConclusionCentennial themes

The Russo-Japanese War was seen to be extraordinary from a military pointof view, but also to be a seminal cultural event. The themes that led to warin 1904 and were then accentuated by it have remained familiar; somewhich came to seem archaic, and even unfashionable in the discourse onwarfare and international relations, have found a fresh relevance in thetwenty-first century, even though some may find it too uncomfortable torecognize the heritage of these ideas.

Race, culture, war and competition

The superior position of the Europeans and Americans in the affairs of theworld in the nineteenth century had seemed explicable in terms of race andDarwinian competition, but these powers had increasingly to note theapparently anomalous presence of Japan in their calculations. In a ‘closedworld’ where there were no more frontiers to expand, except at the expenseof others, the future seemed to be one of continuous conflict to secure livingspace for growing populations and raw materials, conflict which themore dynamic races would win. Those who failed to measure up in thisevolutionary process were regarded as nature’s necessary victims, andwarfare seemed a beneficial agency on the road of human progress. Therewere fears, however, that ‘lower’ more numerous peoples might neverthelessenjoy some advantages in certain conditions; the ‘higher’ Western raceswere urged to breed, gird themselves and to expand to fulfil the destiny thatnature intended for them.

When Japan apparently proved more ‘vital’ than the Russians in 1904–5,there was alarm and cultural panic at the complacency and decadence of theWest. Fears of Western demographic demise – the rocking of empty cradles –and ‘race suicide’ were widespread. In Nazi Germany and Japan,demography, living space and fears for national survival were powerfulfactors leading to war, just as they were in the imperial spirit of theEuropean empires and the USA. They also played a major role in the eugenicsmovement across the developed world.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Darwinian perspectives areagain in fashion. ‘The failure of Marxism has prompted an opening ofminds, and Darwinism is back with a vengeance’.1 Fears of Westerndemographic demise, and the cultural collapse and political consequencesthat would result from it, are once more widespread. So too is concern overaccess to raw materials, especially energy supplies, both their source and thesecurity of the routes along which they travel. The decline of Westernpopulations is seen to be the likely cause of the possible erosion of Westernvalues in the face of more vital nations and people, especially those of Asia.As so often in history, Westerners fret about the consequences of a powerfulAsian nation, China, which does not subscribe to the precepts of their ownmoral universe. The West asserts the fundamentals of its own beliefs andtheir universal applicability, but is unable to offer convincing argumentsand objective historical perspectives as to why others should have to complywith them. The fear that they will not has spanned the centuries.

‘The China-Trade’

The enduring motive for the presence of non-Asian nations and empires inEast Asia has been trade, but especially access to the greatest and most valu-able element of it, ‘The China-Trade’. ‘The Middle Kingdom’ had alwayshad its regional trading relationships, but these only became internationallycontentious when more distant states and multinational corporationswanted relationships on their own terms. Trade between China and itsimmediate neighbours attained a military dimension once the most power-ful, Japan, began to behave like European empires and the USA; this contestwas conducted over a politically enfeebled Chinese state.

Japan had been opened to trade by force with the intention of making ita part of the USA’s Pacific trading domain, rivalling the trading empires ofthe Europeans, and as an expression of broader American commercialinterests in the region, specifically in China. The Japanese openedthemselves to the ways of the ‘barbarians’ in order to avoid subjugation bythem, but also perhaps even to subdue the ‘barbarians’ in due course. Japannow wanted its share of The China-Trade, without which it perceived itwould lack the means to achieve its international and domestic objectives,and from 1895 China was to varying degrees a part of Japan’s Co-ProsperitySphere.

This set Japan at odds with the commercial and political interests of theEuropean Empires and the emerging one of the USA, but the Second WorldWar appeared to knock Japan out of the competition for China’s riches.Communism made China a strong state, and although it reduced whatChina had to offer economically, Japan became a closer trading partnerof China than did the USA.

By the end of the twentieth century, China was not only a strong state butone focussed on creating the wealth that would make it powerful as well as


independent, rather as industry and commerce had made Japan a force tobe reckoned with in the late nineteenth century, and again after 1945.

This economic power gave China unprecedented international influence,but also made it more dependent on international relationships, with closerties to its sources of supply and markets. In a sense, China agreed that itwould operate in a global Co-Prosperity Sphere, and the nations of theworld scrambled for their slice of the trade from an ever more powerfulChina which will increasingly determine, rather than merely accept, theterms of that trade. Neighbours could not ignore their massive partner, anymore than could the USA which became ‘hooked’ on Chinese credit, as ithad earlier been reliant on Japanese loans. China became the USA’s neweconomic frontier, keeping America’s ‘shop open for business’; but at thesame time, China’s workshops became dependent upon the Americanmarket, at least for the time being.

The importance of The China-Trade remained at the heart of internationalaffairs, but now in the context of a strong China, a state with ill-defined,long-term objectives. It was not clear whether China’s unprecedented wealthand power would benignly underpin the existing foundations of the globaleconomic system, or whether competition for raw materials, markets andpolitical influence would at some point cast China once more as ‘The MiddleKingdom’. If that were to happen, some wondered what form the necessary‘tribute’ might take, and whether China’s power would be exercised througheconomic strength alone, or whether it would take on some military aspect.Yet wealth also created potential vulnerabilities, and China’s internationaleconomy would be as vulnerable to interdiction by hostile action as any other.With an awakened, aspirant and energetic population, China seemed asdependent on the need for continuing high economic growth as others wereon its cheap products and credit. A new dynamic had emerged, but one stillrooted in the allure of ‘The China-Trade’.

The Asian century at last?

One hundred years ago, the American Secretary of State John Hay believedthat ‘The storm center of the world has shifted . . . to China. Whoever under-stands that mighty Empire . . . has a key to world politics for the next fivecenturies.’2 Even when China was a politically weak nation endowed withgreat human resources and wealth, many noted the consequences shouldChina ever become politically organized. They speculated on the effect thiswould have on the terms of trade, on the competitive consequences for theirown domestic manufacturers, on the strategic implications of Chinesemilitary power, on the future of their own empires in Asia and whether thispower would even reach out to touch their own continents. It was fearedthat China, with economic and military power derived from Westernscientific and industrial expertise, but lacking the moral and cultural valuesof the West, would be a new and horrifying threat, unmatched since the

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Mongol invasions of earlier times, threatening Western civilization.3 Otherswere less anxious, believing that the ‘civilizing’ effects of Christianity,wealth, democracy and progress would inevitably counter any such menace.

China may have been a constant factor in world affairs, and the culturalreference point in East Asia for millennia, but it was Japan, not China, thatwas Asia’s champion in the twentieth century. In the event, it was not to beAsia’s century, for any such hopes fell with Japan’s in 1945; instead, it wasto be an American Century. In the latter half of the twentieth century,Communist China seemed a possible threat, but its economic incompetenceprecluded any such reality, and its primary offences were inflicted on itsown people rather than other nations.

Some fear that in the twenty-first century, an economically and militarilypowerful, totalitarian China might develop into a threat once again, as astate which has no fundamental stake in or understanding of Westernvalues. The rise of Japan and its role in the Second World War has seemeda negative model that China might emulate. China is seen by some to beheir to exactly the ethno-nationalism and Social-Darwinian attitudes thatunderwrote many of the misfortunes of the twentieth century, andthese may yet be visited upon the twenty-first century. This negative view isonce more countered by that which sees a post-war, prosperous anddemocratic Japan as a more positive model for China. The optimists believethat there might be another great shift in China’s national position, thatwealth, democracy and even Christianity will prevent the aggressiveexploitation of China’s position of advantage, making it like ‘us’, or at leastsome benign new variant of the constant that is ever China. This vision seesthe greatness of China manifest in its cultural sway and achievements ratherthan in some archaic view of a nation’s weight in the balance of power.

The twenty-first century could indeed be the Asian Century at last, led byChina; although this notion has its own history of prophecy, of doom andof promise. China may be the first civilization to rise, fall and rise again; theworld built by the Europeans, and then dominated by the USA, may becoming to an end. Perhaps a new episode is beginning where the values andways of others will predominate.

East and West, the Orient and the Occident, modernity and tradition

The very identity and meaning of cultures is a rich source of intellectualconfusion, and the terms remain inadequate. Differences are sometimesexpressed as a contrast between the old and the new, modernity andtradition, materialism and spirituality, East and West, the Orient and theOccident, Asian-Confucianism and Christendom, White and Yellow,authoritarianism and democracy and as identity and uniqueness versusinterdependence and cooperation. Attempts are made to affix these notionsto national identities, thereby in some way validating, or at least asserting,


the merits of one state in opposition to another. Yet tradition, culture,religion, ideology and economic development defy such easy nationalassociations. Some saw Communism and Fascism as inherently Europeanand even atheist, while many of those persuasions felt themselves to be bothmore ‘spiritual’ and ‘Oriental’; the anti-modernism of the Orient has oftenbeen derived from the Occident.4

The West has meant Christendom, but it has also become synonymouswith high individual consumption and personal freedoms. At timesCommunists have believed that they represented the most advanced stageof the evolution of Western civilization. During the Cold War, the ‘ThirdWorld’, with few other cards to play, fell back on the assumption of its ownmoral superiority.5 The irony is that the ‘Tiger economies’ of Asia haverepresented a materialism of heroic proportions, scarcely paralleled inthe West, and shown little of the new ‘spirituality’ of the religious revival inthe USA, where by 2004 morality and ‘values’ seemed to be a major factorin the outcome of the American Presidential election. Asian nations mayassert their unique values, but they also seek to outdo the West in its ownalleged materialism, with high rates of growth, investment and ever-tallerbuildings.

The West has been said to be in decline for as long as it has also been saidto be triumphant, and the debate about the cultural rivalry of the West and‘the rest’ remains controversial.6 It is but an episode in the age-old story ofhow established powers manage the rise of others who resent the status quo,by challenging or assimilating them. The West’s triumph was heralded ratherprematurely by Francis Fukuyama7 in The End of History of 1992.8 It wasalso explained in a series of works by Victor Davis Hanson, primarily hisWhy the West Has Won of 2001; and the demise of the West was announcedin 2002 by Pat Buchanan’s The Death of the West.9 If the West is to declineit will most likely do so in relation to Asia, but to China in particular.

Many in the West thought that nineteenth-century Japan wasWesternizing because of the merits of Western society. Some Japanese agreedand saw themselves to be the most ‘progressive’ Asian nation with the taskof modernizing not only themselves, but Asia as well. This would enableAsia to play its rightful place in world affairs. Other Japanese believed thatthey were adopting Western skills and knowledge to avoid surrendering theirnational independence and unique spiritual culture, modernizing to protecttradition. In practice, the process of interaction with the West changedJapanese attitudes and society profoundly, although many denied it.

Today it is still debated whether particular Asian values exist, and if theydo, whether the Western skills that have given these values a voice in theworld have simultaneously corrupted or overthrown them. Is their affirma-tion merely a necessary political and psychological ploy to make theirdemise acceptable and maintain Asian self-respect? In the twenty-firstcentury, the situation may be reversed. Will modernization in theWest come to mean adopting the material standards and perhaps newly

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attractive values of the new East, especially China? Will the West acceptthese new influences to preserve its identity in the face of the competitivepower of China; or will China fail to produce the ‘big ideas’ about politicallife, society, culture and ethics to match its economic vibrancy, assumingeven that endures? Will China repeat the Japanese experience and fail tooffer its global Co-Prosperity Sphere any attractive model, and insteadalienate it?10

Western Imperialism, apparently the model for successful modern nationsin the nineteenth century, did not prove to be transferable to Japan in the firsthalf of the twentieth century, because global affairs had taken on thecharacter of a zero-sum game. Japan might have a temporary alliance withBritain and periods of cordial relations with the USA or Germany; but therewas no room for Japan to build an empire among peers if territory, sourcesof raw materials and markets could only be acquired at the expense of thosewho already possessed them. The Western, post-war model was adoptedsuccessfully, too successfully for some, by Japan in the second half of thetwentieth century. Is this model, rooted in consumption and individual fulfil-ment, the current Western but especially American formula for a successfulmodern nation, transferable more widely in Asia, to India, but particularly toChina which seems about to test the feasibility of such a project?

What would be the consequences of all Chinese and Indians consumingas much as and in the manner of all Americans and Europeans?11 Thecompetition for raw materials and for markets, along with theconsequences for the domestic economies of others and the environment ofall, may leave no room for major newcomers and competitors in whatmight in effect be another form of neo-imperial zero-sum game. This modelis one rooted in culture and trade, underwritten by military power, one inwhich the West holds a modern form of imperial dominion, and might notaccommodate newcomers challenging for real power in it.

The current Western model has been purveyed as one which is universallyapplicable, the very embodiment of the idea of mankind’s progress, but thatproposition may be fallacious without serious modification. Maybe wayscan be found to give another two or three billion people the spending powerand rates of consumption to match the West; but if they cannot, then theenduring elements of culture and trade will have played the samedetermining role in Asian strategy in the twenty-first century that they didin the twentieth century, with volatile consequences.

What would be the moral implications of that model being only selectivelyapplicable, and how might any disappointment at a false prospectus bemanaged? The question cuts both ways. Perhaps growing, ebullient Asiansocieties will be the winners in this new zero-sum game and a complacentWest the loser. Perhaps the Orient will take the lead in some new unequalrelationship in what would become their model. Would such a realignmentof power and the accompanying perception of cultural success be explainedin neo-Darwinian terms as many sought to do 100 years ago?


China and Japan: a shared identity?

At the end of the nineteenth century, Japan sought to establish arelationship with China and Korea based on their economic and politicalsubordination. This was expanded into a Co-Prosperity Sphere whichcollapsed in 1945; but Japan went on to build a virtual Co-ProsperitySphere under American protection, although some saw this to be but asubset of a greater American economic condominium. The leadership ofAsia is now passing to China; as Putnam Weale noted in 1910, ‘If a newChina really arises, Japan must be relegated to the relative position sheoccupied before the war of 1894–5.’12 Japan sees no prospect of preventingthis, and yet subordination to China, though long expected in muchJapanese thought over the last 150 years, is deeply unattractive, for it mightentail bullying and humiliation if not aggression, out of revenge forcenturies of perceived outrages.

Far from seeing itself as the saviour of Asia, will Japan now retreat fromits Asian identity? Will it feel that it can only preserve its independence fromChina by building on its existing global economic networks, and becomeneither Eastern nor Western, but the unique state and people that it hasalways been inclined to believe itself to be?13 Would such an inclination tobe independent and different reinforce Japan’s other identity of ‘worldcitizen’, and merely continue the process initiated by Commodore Perry?Such a process need neither entail Japan being a vassal to the USA in thetwenty-first century, nor Japan keeping its American-authored constitution;but without an American military presence, can its security be preserved?Its independence of China would certainly seem diminished without it.Japan needs the USA and a new relationship with it, but will the USA wishor be able to remain committed to the region and for how long? How willthis inclination to a closer military relationship with the USA squarewith ever-greater economic entanglement with China?

Russian identities

The defeat of Russia by Japan in 1905 was most commonly portrayed as avictory of the East over the West. Yet some saw Japan as a Western nationin Asia, behaving like a European or American empire. When it foughtRussia in 1904–5, it fought a nation which many thought represented amore Asian identity than did Japan. Japan’s victory was somehow thereforealso the defeat of decadent Asia by a youthful and Westernized Japan, avictory for the ideas and modernity of the West, even if many, especially theRussians, did not see it that way, pace their own assumed Asian identity.

Equally, Japan’s defeat in 1945 was seen by the Anglo-Saxons as atriumph for the West over an alien Asian nation, but also over a dictatorshipout-of-keeping with their Western cultural values, even though Fascism, likeCommunism was also a European ideology. Anglo-Saxon values had

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become Western values, and so the defeat of the USSR in the Cold War wasalso seen as a victory of Western ideas over those of their opposite,epitomized by Communism, which now seemed to be championed by Asianpowers, rather than the states from which it had originated. The USSR was,however, not obviously Asian with its ethnic domination by Russians, anda political and a demographic centre closer to Europe than to say, China.

The Russians still have to resolve their self-identity as Europeans or non-Europeans. If Europeans, they will uniquely be Europeans with large Asianterritories acquired in times of empire. That thought itself brings fears ofthe need to protect what they see as theirs, but also the apocalyptic thoughtof how Russia might someday lose what is not a physical part of the Europewhich is its cultural home. The European inclination is likely to prevail, butonly after many protestations and manifestations to the contrary, echoingthe debates and confusions of the late nineteenth century.

A civilizing mission?

Today’s clash of civilizations is often portrayed in terms of culture, andrights versus denial of rights, whereas in the past it was often portrayed interms of race, a factor which many are reluctant to acknowledge today lestit infect the debate and undermine support for their cause by invidious his-torical comparisons. In the past, the so-called benighted were given the ben-efits of Western civilization by imperialists whether they liked it or not.Today they are said to be ‘liberated’ and are offered, or have imposed uponthem, Human Rights, a rebranding of a package of venerable Western val-ues which once more provide the West with its own home-grown moralmandate for global action.

It has become an essential tenet of the proposition of Human Rights thatthey are not a Western construct, but enjoy a universality whose preceptsare common to all major cultures. This is in itself culturally patronizing,a ‘colonizing’ of the intellectual traditions of others. All cultures havemaintained a rich mix of often contradictory values, but only the West has for-mulated a concept of Human Rights and led a plan of action to promote themwhile at the same time asserting that those who follow or must obey are bothamong the sources of those ideas and in the vanguard of supporting them.

This avoids the perils of accusations of neocolonialism or cultural imperial-ism, for these rights are thus not the impositions of Western civilization, whichmight seem condescending, but merely deserts to enjoy what was already theentitlement of the recipients. That said, these Human Rights seem curiouslycongruent with the Anglo-Saxon variant of Western values, and while theyaccommodate diversity and multiculturalism, these are placed strictly withinthe confines of what is acceptable to Western sensibilities – what theVictorians would have termed ‘civilized and Christian’ behaviour.

Human Rights have their own moral imperatives and a universalism forwhich the West recognizes no frontiers. Those frontiers of morality are


being pushed out ever further in the drive to fulfil some new Western ‘soft’notion of Manifest Destiny, asserting values to be defended by some newvirtual ‘Monroe Doctrine’ which will tolerate no interference in this newempire of ideas. These frontiers are to be policed physically, rather as theabolition of slavery was enforced unilaterally by the forces of the BritishEmpire from the mid-nineteenth century. All may be well, but as TaskerBliss noted in 1904, a Manifest Destiny and Monroe Doctrine can lead totrouble when they come up against somebody else’s versions of the same. Infuture those may be China’s. By similar analogy, the USA’s virtual MonroeDoctrine of universal Western values may already have met the MonroeDoctrine of some revived notion of the Moslem Caliphate.

The new civilizing mission, endorsed since 1998 by the United Nations,sets the rights of the individual above those of the governments of sovereignstates who may be denying them their rights. Mahan would no doubt haveapproved; especially as this moral and legal validation is now seen to extendto the right of nations to intervene unilaterally, and even sometimes pre-emptively, in support of this higher good.

Military intervention has created unusual ideological companions as theold polarities of the Cold War prove inappropriate to the new dynamic. Incaricature: the old left who detest the assumption that ‘West is Best’denounce military intervention, seeing it as incorrigible, serial misbehaviourby those who cannot let go of old imperial habits. They are joined in theirpolicy conclusions by members of the old right, of nationalist or isolationistinstincts, who believe that it is not worth the bones of their grenadiers orthe gold of their treasuries to save those who are incapable of rulingthemselves, people who will at heart resent any help they are given.

At odds with this odd couple are the new interventionists. They alsocome from the old left, but are now transformed into ‘Fabian Imperialists’.14

David Livingstone took ‘Christianity and Civilization’ to Africa, both ofwhich have become somewhat ‘politically incorrect’ ideas, followed by thesoldier and the Union Jack. These fundamentally Judeo-Christian notionshave been repackaged for a new age, and rebranded as Human Rights,supported by the word of international law if not the word of scripture,enforced by blue helmets not pith helmets and under the UN not the UnionFlag. These interventionists know that ‘up-river in the heart of darkness’unspeakable things are being done, and that it is their moral duty to put astop to it, by force if necessary – for their militaries are also branded as ‘AForce for Good’, in what President George W. Bush has called ‘The forwardstrategy of freedom’.15

Their allies come from the old imperial right, ‘Kipling’s Men’, who arenot surprised that other folk make a mess of their own affairs and believethat it falls to them to sort out the resultant horrors, confident in theircomparative advantage built up from centuries of global military experience.16

A. Bonnett has argued that ‘For the majority of Western triumphalists, allthat needs to happen is that the world “opens up,” begins to see things

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“our way” and acts accordingly.’17 This is not merely ‘opening up’ in the senseof nineteenth-century Japan or the ‘open door policy’ towards China, it isthe notion that the empire of ideas must expand. It is about the open doorof the WTO, the open door of a free global press, corporate accountability,a global accounting standard, intellectual property rights and internationallaw. That said, the US is not necessarily amenable to all of these global ideasand the constraints on its actions any more than it was supportive of theLeague of Nations which it championed but did not join.

The idea that it is natural and normal for dynamic rising societies andeconomies to adopt the formulae of the old world, as if these werecompulsory and necessary, is not obvious to them. New great powers suchas India and China will surely create new norms of behaviour for theirsocieties, constitutions and international relations.18 They may for nowaccept the rules of the old powers, and the received norms of internationalrelations; but it would be an historical anomaly if, once the power ofindependence was theirs, the two oldest surviving civilizations of the worldfailed to influence and shape the future norms of thought and behaviour ofothers in relative decline.19

At the beginning of the early-twenty-first century, Americans andEuropeans argued about the meaning, implications and obligations of theirWestern civilization; in another ironic turn, many Americans resented whatthey saw as a European tendency to isolationism and reluctance to take onstrategic challenges, traits for which the USA had itself been criticized in the1930s. It was now the Americans who were the more likely to embark uponand seek moral justification for military action to further these culturalobjectives, warning against the appeasement of tyranny. Many people ofthe old European imperial powers opposed American interventions such asthat in Iraq in 2003, having long lost their appetites for military expeditionsto change regimes, resenting and perhaps humbled by the imperial confi-dence of the USA which saw such action to be necessary rather thananachronistic.

Meanwhile, Europe itself was fortunate to be a strategic ‘quiet sector’after centuries of mayhem; almost as if the European Union needed timequietly to digest both its old and its new members and in time emerge as anew political entity, rather as the newly independent colonies of the USAhad in the century before its eventual ‘leap across the Pacific’ out of‘Monroe’s chrysalis’. Equally, many, especially in the English-speakingworld, saw the European project as flawed in both theory and practice,with little prospect of ever constituting an entity to rival the power of theUSA, or a future Middle Kingdom.

The American empire and the ‘Whiteman’s burden’

It is much debated whether in historical terms the USA is an empire, orwhether it merely behaves like one at times.20 Manifest Destiny turned the


Far East into the American Far West, and the USA was both a Pacific andan Atlantic power.

The USA has one of the largest territories acquired by the colonial andimperial transactions of its non-indigenous people. The westwardexpansion of the American frontier has a fonder and more romantic placein its ‘national story’ than does any other nation’s imperial experience andit is a non-negotiable maxim and mantra of its ‘patriotic history’. The USAis the product of the world’s most successful imperial enterprise. At thesame time the USA has a national identity which must deny that self-evidentphenomenon. As Donald Rumsfeld is reported to have said, ‘We don’t doempires.’21 Vice President Dick Cheney maintained in January 2004 that‘If we were a true empire, we would currently preside over a much greaterpiece of the earth’s surface than we do. That’s not the way we operate.’22

President Bush maintained in his State of The Union Address that ‘We haveno ambitions of empire . . . ’.23 Others were not so coy. David Frum admittedto preferring ‘the more forthright if also more controversial term AmericanEmpire . . . sort of like the way some gays embrace the “queer” label’.24

In the late nineteenth century the USA acquired an overseas territorialempire which its frontier traditions cherished and much of its other heritagereviled. The intellectual and political debates raged, creating necessaryparadoxes in American politics and in the minds of the American people asthey pursued their national self-interest, and what they hoped was also amissionary project that would bring Western values of democracy, individualfreedoms and free markets to those denied them, although such aspirationswere often not realized in the face of real politik.

Paul Krugman even maintained that American foreign policy could bedistinguished from that of all previous great powers by being informed by‘a high moral purpose’,25 an element in the notion of American exception-alism. President J.F. Kennedy believed that the USA would be militarilysuccessful in Indo-China whereas the French had failed because Americanmotives were superior ‘They were fighting for a colony, for an ignoblecause. We’re fighting for freedom, to free them from the Communists, fromChina, for their independence.’26

The idea that the West is an agent of progress, embarked on a civilizingmission and fighting for ‘good’ against ‘evil’, has been attractive to manyand remains especially strong in the USA, even though the language used inthe discourse may have changed somewhat. From an American point ofview, the evil to be challenged has included at different times NativeAmericans, the British Empire, the Japanese Empire, Nazi Germany, theSoviet Empire, Chinese Communism, ‘The Axis of Evil’ and global terror-ism. In a more secular Britain, a titanic struggle between good and evil stillseems more incongruous in policy formulation than it does in the USA,where the paradoxes which are necessary to maintain an empire, or atleast the interests of a benevolent superpower, are perhaps more readilyaccommodated.

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The British received little thanks for their ‘civilizing mission’ from thosewho benefited from the legacy of their empire. It has become axiomatic thatit must be condemned. It seems equally unlikely that those who benefitfrom the fruits of the American Empire, President Bush’s ‘democraticdominoes’, will feel inclined to acknowledge their debt to the USA.

The American imperial debate is in effect a continuation of that aboutisolationism or engagement, and unease at the paradoxes endemic inimperial democracies, whose existence is often salved by denial.27 ‘It is pasttime . . . for Americans to consider why we have created an empire – a wordfrom which we shy away – and what the consequences of our imperialstance may be for the rest of the world and for ourselves.’28 Those withempires are seldom reliable judges of their own status29 and ‘Americanpower has given the USA a global responsibility it cannot shake off.’30

Most Europeans have long lost the will, and certainly the means, topropagate the virtues of the West with all the paradoxes and anomalies thatproject entails, weighed down with a moral relativity and sense of historicguilt less common in the USA where the USA is usually cast as a victim ofEuropean imperialism not a perpetrator of it. It is for that reason, matchedwith the means, that the USA, ‘the indispensable nation’, will continue asthe last of the European empires – but for how long?

Many have predicted doom for the American empire, brought down by‘internal economic contradictions, imperial overstretch and an inability toreform. . .The blowback from the second half of the Twentieth Century hasonly just begun.’31 Many Chinese commentators have convinced themselvesthat the American empire is doomed, that this ‘Fifth Empire’ will go the wayof the ‘Fourth Empire’, the USSR.32 Matthew Parris has judged the USA tobe ‘over-stretched, losing economic momentum, losing world leadership,and losing the philosophical plot. America is running into the sand.’33

If warfare becomes too self-destructive for developed states to indulge inagainst each other, rivalry between them might take other forms which ItoHirobumi would recognize, and such a challenge to the USA might comenot only from China but also from an expanding European Union.

Whether an empire or not, whatever its ethos and for however long itsstrength remains, it seems clear that the focus of the USA will increasinglybe on Asia, a focus first sharpened by Commodore Perry.

Geo-strategy and Geopolitics

In 1942, Life ran an article entitled, ‘Geopolitics: The Lurid Career of aScientific System which a Briton invented, the Germans Used, and theAmericans Need to Study’.34 Nevertheless, Geostrategy and Geopoliticswere long out of vogue, as was Strategic-demography. These topics hadoften been matters of disrepute and self-censorship in academic strategiccircles, fearful of association with the likes of Mackinder and Haushofer.They hovered on the frontiers of respectability for 50 years, but at the


beginning of the twenty-first century were fast returning to fashion for ideasabout the contest for raw materials,35 access to routes and other aspects ofbroader Geography had come to look highly relevant.

Nevertheless, some such as Christopher Fettweis also maintained that theideas themselves were passé, and that the ideas of Mackinder and his hege-mon heartland36 were irrelevant to the new technological conditions, andthat the USA should not accept their premise, which may ‘cripple the waywe run our foreign policy’.37 Instead the USA should play a more active rolein shaping the future of that ‘heartland’.

According to Barry Posen, it is the technological superiority of the USAthat gives it control of the global ‘commons’, the oceans, the air and space,an idea championed by Mahan a century ago.38 This gives it power exceptin the so-called contested zones where military power yields little dividend.

The relevance of Geopolitics as a factor in strategic discourse seemsunassailable, if unpalatable to some for its tainted history. Whether the USAdoes indeed have the ability to project its power effectively from ‘the rim’into ‘the heartland’, through military technology and its soft power, willdetermine whether the last European empire remains a functioning one inEast and South-West Asia. Whether it cannot sustain the effort because themilitary tools lack utility and do not have their way, or the cost is too high,remains to be seen. If the USA fails, then perhaps Mackinder’s old analysis,from a different circumstance in history, may yet remain relevant.

Besides, a return to an older strategic view of the world seems likely, anddisquiet at such intellectual constructions does not make their enduringlogic any the less powerful. The significance of geography in politics seemsobvious enough, for example, in the dispute between the Israelis and thePalestinians, over control of Kashmir, over the oil supplies of the MiddleEast, the South China Sea and the waters between China and Japan.39

As Colin Gray has asserted,

By the 2020s and then beyond, the defining threats of the century mostlikely will stem from a dangerous combination of the return of activegreat power geopolitical rivalry, and accelerating global environmentalcrisis. Those theorists who would have us believe that in the informationage geography does not matter, will be shown to have been compre-hensively in error . . . Land, indeed access to material resources, will beat a premium, as it has been throughout history.40

In similar vein, Paul Bracken has described the Eurasian ‘chessboard’ asa shrinking one. Parts otherwise unrelated are now linked, pawns take onthe range of knights and bishops, and old techniques of power relying onbases, arms control and ‘managing China’ have less utility, ‘They cannot bethe foundations for future American presence in Asia.’41

The earlier notion of a closed world, an international zero-sum game hasbeen updated and is now expressed in environmental and ecological terms.

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This focuses on the world’s finite resources and the belief that its peoplemust find a way, not only of sharing them fairly to prevent the deprivationthat is said to amount to violence against the disadvantaged, but also toreduce consumption to save the very planet, or at least mankind, fromcatastrophe. Mackinder described the World Island; but to today’senvironmentalist, the entire world has become an ‘Easter Island’, consumingnon-renewable resources with disaster looming. The ‘Easter Island Effect’ ofviolence and social destruction resulting from unbalanced demography andthe scarcity of resources has become orthodox thinking about the future ofmankind, although the moral imperative is now seen to be to alleviate the‘Malthusian’ consequences, rather than to accept them as the Darwinianagency by which the progress of mankind is secured. The debate on the roleof Evolution in international relations was revived by Dominic Johnson wholinked the advantageous evolutionary trait of overconfidence to excessiveoptimism amongst political leaders, which in itself made war more likely.42

This was not to say that such a trait in itself, and its belligerent outcome,were beneficial in the modern world, merely notable factors in its affairs.

Demography

In the 1920s and 1930s, Japan’s demographic and economic growthencouraged emigration and demands for access to strategic materials andmarkets, destabilizing the international scene. In the early twenty-firstcentury, the demographic expansion of other regions of the world, mainlythe Middle East and Africa, is not a direct consequence of economicgrowth; but it seems equally destabilizing, with the risk of war, unacceptablemigration, competition for resources such as water and the appallingmedical consequences of AIDS and other diseases. Some demographers urge,‘Include demographic data . . . in security and threat assessments.’43

In the past, large populations were often regarded as valuable ‘cannonfodder’, but today parents in the developed world appear less sanguineabout risking the lives of their fewer children in war. At the same time, theyfeel threatened by the scale of possible migration into their countries and bythe apparently low value placed on human life by the societies whichproduce suicide bombers. Equally, large numbers of ‘surplus’ young menare seen to be as much a threat to their own developing societies, throughcivil war and disorder, as they ever were to their neighbours. The coloniesof nineteenth-century empires conveniently soaked up these demographicsurpluses, allowing Europeans to populate new continents at the expense ofothers, but not today; those seeking economic opportunities in the devel-oped world are often unwelcome there.

The lessons of military lessons and the paradox of surprise

The Russo-Japanese War showed how hard it is to learn the appropriatelessons from even the recent past, when so many strategic, tactical,


technological and conceptual factors are in flux. One shake of the militarykaleidoscope and a very different pattern can emerge. The shocking, butperhaps not surprising revelation is that even though so much wasapparently obvious and well-understood about the events of 1904–5, denialand dysfunction prevailed. In the face of readily available evidence, themilitaries of 1914 denied the power of technology in defence, fostered ‘thecult of the offensive’ and hoped that these would obviate some calculusbased on materiel. Yet, they were no more culpable than those Germansand Japanese of 1941 who persuaded themselves of the same in theplanning for operations against the USSR and against the USA in East Asiaand the Pacific. Attempts to prevail in a short and decisive war have meantthat strategic surprise has also been a pervasive theme of the twentiethcentury. Yet, paradoxically, that surprise has frequently been expected butinadequately accounted for. Equally, militaries have been surprised whentheir opponents have learned lessons while they themselves have beenunable or chosen not to.

It has seemed to be a prevalent centennial delusion to believe thatcountries will be able to fight the war they wish to fight, given that the alter-natives are deemed unacceptable. Perversely, this makes the war they wishto fight the more acceptable because their purpose-designed force seems solikely to succeed in it. This thought governs the structure, doctrine andequipment of their armies. When war comes, it is not necessarily the onethat was expected. The kaleidoscope turns and the tiles create unwelcomepatterns. In the West, the wish has often been based on the need to win ashort, decisive war using high technology.

It would perhaps have surprised those who fought in its early battles toknow that over 50 years later the Korean War goes on, having ‘morphed’through many phases and that it may yet have a nuclear phase. The IsraeliDefence Force (IDF) remodelled itself to win the June War of 1967 and theYom Kippur War of 1973 ever more effectively in the years that followed,believing that it had been victorious in some rather profound and enduringsense. It seemed not to realize that these were but vivid episodes of highintensity in a complex campaign lasting more than 60 years, and the IDFwas consequently ill-configured or ill-suited to succeed against theIntifadas, which may with hindsight turn out to be the more decisive phasesof the long campaign.

The American experience in Vietnam was expected to differ from that ofthe French, but in essence did not, and the Vietnamese war of nationalindependence ended with the repelling of the Chinese invasion of 1979,having begun well before 1945.

After the Cold War, there was a determination that the US military wouldachieve the USA’s strategic objectives with smaller, high-tech forces, eschew-ing the more likely prolonged, manpower-intensive counter-insurgency,stability and nation-building operations. This repeated the disappointment.

So early in the new century it may be foolish to characterize thedecades to follow in terms of the first, but the essential point remains valid.

Conclusion 225

Those who focussed on ‘high-technology forces as a substitute formanpower and force numbers have been proved terribly wrong. They failedto see that most enemies in the twenty-first century would be asymmetricforces such as terrorists and insurgents . . . ’ requiring ‘human-centric forces’.44

And yet, if a wealthy and militarized China were to become a serious threatto American interests, this assessment might also come to seem quaint.

Meanwhile, 100 years after Tsushima, some other dynamics lookedfamiliar. In East Asia, giant battleships were no longer the currency ofinternational rivalry, but national and economic pride was expressedthrough the competition to attract inward investment and symbolically inthe construction of ever-taller prestige buildings in national capitals. On theother hand, there was an arms race of another kind, as nuclear weaponsproliferated and nations such as North Korea built longer-range missiles tocarry them, while other nations considered acquiring the systems to destroythem on the ground or in flight. This new arms race had political fallout asthe Japanese pondered the merits of possessing nuclear weapons and anti-missile systems, stirring old animosities on the continental mainland.

The Korean War is not over, Japan is likely to be a more effective militarypower in 2020 than it was in 2000, the frontiers of China are not agreedand China may well become more than a regional military power.Possibilities for achieving strategic surprise abound, even though theywould not themselves be surprising. Russia cannot be omitted from anymilitary calculus in East Asia. It has yet to sign a treaty with Japan to settleits disputes of 1945, but the reality of 1905, and its mineral wealth willunderwrite its future political influence, however that may be directed. TheUSA must also be reckoned with, for its presence in Asia, far from being ahistorical provocation, may remain the ingredient that stabilizes thisvolatile region, at least for long enough for it to find its own Asian equilib-rium, probably under the sway of ‘The Middle Kingdom’.

The ripples of 1904 were felt in 1914, a wave followed in 1941, but theAsian Tsunami may be for the twenty-first century. If we are approaching thebirth of the Asian Century, then it has been 100 years in gestation after manymisleading ‘contractions’. The Russo-Japanese War was not so much a‘Military Revolution’, although it heralded one, as the start of a ‘Revolutionin Strategic Affairs’, whose implications are clearly pressing nearly a centurylater, but have yet to be fully revealed. The balance of power in East Asia isshifting, and whether this is manifested in mere economic partnership orcompetition, a new Cold War or conflict, the dynamics of this phenomenonreflect the essential components of the crisis of 1904–5: the rivalry between‘continental’ and ‘maritime’ powers, the clash of ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’cultural values and people, the pursuit of ‘The China-Trade’ and an Asianpower challenging for elusive hegemony in that region.

Those who pass judgement today on the flawed attempts of belligerentsand contemporary students of the Russo-Japanese War to understand thesignificance of what had happened should exercise cautious humility, for it


falls to them to make equally important assessments about the significanceof major advances in military technology and the strategic implications fortheir own time of ‘Asia rising’: whether it is on the march, or whether theWest has merely succeeded, at last, in opening up Asia for trade asMacartney, Raffles and Perry wanted. Are we approaching the culminationof a military, economic or cultural process, or the beginning of a newdestructive cycle?

Conclusion 227

Notes

1 Portents

1 Theodore Roosevelt studied Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race,and corresponded with him on the connection between cranial typology andcultural behaviour. Dyer (1980), p.17.

2 Henning (2000), p.12.3 Ibid., pp.15–16.4 Darwin (2004).5 Adolf Hitler read Ratzel’s theories in Landsberg prison in 1924. He was supplied

with Ratzel’s work by Professor Karl Haushofer who had observed Japanese mil-itary exercises in 1908 and formed strong opinions about the vitality of races.Haushofer, whose works were widely read in Japan, emphasized that Germanywas ill-placed to fulfil the potential of its people, given its confined geography,and his conclusions found expression in Mein Kampf, Hitler (1971), and morelethally in the territorial expansion of Germany and Japan in the 1930s.

6 Mackinder styled himself a geographer and his work lacked the obvious Social-Darwinian perspective of many of his contemporaries; but he studiedAnimal Morphology at Oxford under the leading Darwinian scholar of the day,Henry Moseley.

7 Adolf Hitler maintained that ‘Our movement must seek to abolish the presentdisastrous proportion between our population and the area of our national ter-ritory . . . in striving for this it must bear in mind the fact that we are membersof the highest species of humanity on this earth.’ Hitler (1971), p.526.

8 Clarke (1995), p.73. This notion resurfaced in the 1990s in a novel form in theextremist Islamic approach to the West. In his ‘Declaration of War against theAmericans’ in 1996, following the bombing of hotels in Aden, and the USA’sprecipitate withdrawal from Somalia, Osama bin Laden is reported to havesaid, ‘You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew. The extent of yourimpotence and weakness became very clear.’ Steyn (2004).

9 Luce (1891), p.672. Edward Luttwak has made the case for war as sometimesthe best means of achieving a lasting settlement of conflict. See Luttwak (1999).

10 Luce (1891), p.675.11 He also believed that Christianity had often had to be furthered by military

force and that the USA should not leave Britain to pursue such noble endeavoursalone. Luce (1891), pp.675 and 680.

12 Quoted in Stephanson (1996), p.54.13 Chamberlain (1877), p.788.14 Ibid. Over 100 years later, some question whether the Anglo-Saxonizing of this

half of Mexico, lost to the USA in 1848, might not undergo a degree of reversal.

15 Clarke (1995), p.81.16 Chamberlain (1877), pp.788–9.17 Quoted in Strong (1891), p.2.18 Stephanson (1996), p.80.19 Strong (1891), p.3.20 Ibid., p.1.21 Ibid., p.3.22 Dower (1986), p.151. Miller (1982), p.251. In January 2001, President Clinton

awarded Roosevelt the Medal of Honor, posthumously, for his role in thecampaign in Cuba in 1898. Roosevelt never took San Juan Hill, which wascaptured by the 24th Infantry Regiment, an all Black unit. Rather, his own unitwas on Kettle Hill and came up to San Juan Hill subsequently.

23 Roosevelt also subscribed to the view of Gustave LeBon that each race had a‘soul’ and character of its own. Dyer (1980), p.11.

24 Roosevelt (1995), p.63.25 Ibid., p.62.26 Roosevelt (1995), p.62. ‘I have even scanter patience with those who make a

pretence of humanitarianism to hide and cover their timidity and who cantabout “liberty” and “the consent of the governed”.’ Roosevelt (1995), p.188.

27 Lopez and Patterson (1904), pp.3–4.28 Quoted in Vlahos (1980), p.38.29 Grenville (1970), pp.165–6.30 Mahan (2003), p.14.31 Dyer (1980), Chapter VII. He also blamed ‘excessive urban growth’, ‘love of

luxury’ and ‘the turning of sport into a craze by the upper classes’, ‘love of ease’and ‘shrinking from risk’. Dyer (1980), p.149 and p.163.

32 Longman (2004a).33 Dyer (1980), p.163.34 Mahan (2003), p.18.35 Ibid.36 This forecast now seems more relevant as a question for the twenty-first century.37 Miller (1982), p.122.38 Mahan (2003), p.110.39 Ibid., p.104.40 Ibid.41 Ibid., p.18.42 Ibid., p.115. Mahan saw the USA as an essentially European state and culture,

using the term ‘European’ to include the USA.43 Bonnett (2004b), p.16.44 Ibid., Chapter 1.45 Nietzsche’s view is analysed in Coker (1998), p.1046 Kidd (1902), p.458.47 Wolseley (1897), p.562. He extolled the martial qualities being instilled by the

newly established Boys Brigades, pp.567 and 570. Ruskin observed that ‘Allgreat nations . . . were born in war and expired in peace.’ Wolseley (1897),p.561.

48 Wolseley (1897), especially p.577.49 A.T. Mahan praised the self-discipline required of a naval officer, uncomplaining,

noble self-abnegation.50 Mahan (2003), p.105.51 Ibid., p.108.52 Ibid., p.109.53 Ibid., p.130.

Notes to pp. 11–16 229

54 In 1891, the Russian Tsarevich visited Vladivostok to hammer in the first boltof the Trans-Siberian railway. Two of the accompanying warships were calledManchuria and Korea. These names were unlikely to reassure the Japanese,since both Manchuria and Korea were their economic colonies at the time.Connaughton (1990), p.2.

55 Thorne (1985), p.31. The Japanese certainly resented their political case beinginfluenced by racial considerations. Shortly before the Russo-Japanese War, aGerman visitor to Japan was told, ‘What is really wrong with us is that we haveYellow skins. If our skins were as white as yours, the whole world wouldrejoice at our calling a halt to Russia’s inexorable aggression.’ Quoted inLincoln (1986), p.236.

56 Iriye (1997), p.13.57 Quoted in Stoddard (1920), Chapter VI.58 The USA’s modern trade deficit with China can be more easily managed by the

Chinese purchase of American Government bonds, or so it is hoped. The Britishsolution of the day to this trade imbalance was to export opium to China.

59 Hanes and Sanello (2003), p.30.60 Wolseley (1897), pp.575–6.61 Schimmelpenninck van Oye (2001), p.83.62 Pearson (1894), pp.68 and 85.63 Ibid., p.49.64 Pearson (1894), pp.133–7. Pearson cautioned Western nations against economic

protectionism that would weaken the West in competition against China, andhe speculated on the future threat of a resurgent Islam, pp.137–41.

65 Kidd (1902), p.449.66 This vision was noted by Lenin in 1917, in Lenin (2004), p.103. It is a vision

that today appeals to many who see investment in China and a stake in its pro-ductivity as vital to securing the future living standards of Western consumersand an essential part of any pension-fund portfolio.

67 Mahan (2003), p.99.68 Ibid., pp.99 and 109.69 This argument perhaps finds a modern equivalent in Buzan and Segal’s idea of

China becoming ‘Westernistic’. Buzan and Segal (1997). Equally, Mahan’s per-spectives on the roles of empires in promoting religions and value systems isshared in modern times with David Aikman, who has seen China as the possiblenew champion of global Christianity, just as Rome once was. Aikman (2003).

70 Mahan (2003), p.100.71 Ibid.72 Ibid., p.138.73 Ibid., p.106.74 Ibid., p.98.75 Quoted by F.P. Sempa in the Introduction to Mahan (2003), p.10.76 Mahan (2003), p.88.77 Quoted in Iriye (1967), p.62.78 Quoted in LaFeber (1998), p.27.79 Ibid., p.28.80 Ibid., p.5.81 Quoted in Vlahos (1980), p.11.82 Quoted in Thompson (2001), p.45.83 Mahan (2003), p.144.84 E. Upton, The Armies of Asia and Europe, quoted in Carlson (1998), p.7.85 Henning (2000), p.106.86 On 21 January 1993, President Clinton made the USA’s formal apology for

the illegal overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii through Public Law 103–50.

230 Notes to pp. 16–21

In September 2005, Senator Daniel Akaka tabled a bill that would giveself-governance to native Hawaiians. This carried the possibility of ‘differentlaws for different races’ and even, as the Senator observed, independence fornative Hawaiians. ‘Sun, Surf and Secession?’, The Economist, 3 September2005, p.48.

87 Letter from President Grover Cleveland to the US Senate, 18 December 1893.88 Lopez and Patterson (1904), pp.1–2.89 Zimmermann (2002), p.150.90 Ibid., p.150.91 Ibid., p.292. In the 1870s, Senator Carl Schurz opposed the USA’s acquisition

of ‘tropical’ territories and populations on the grounds that such people wereincapable of republicanism. Others feared that the ‘Whiteman’s burden’entailed domestic risks, for the ‘lesser races’ of these territories would have tobe given constitutional rights and representation in Congress, with seriousimplications for the position of Blacks in some Southern States, still disadvantageddespite the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.

92 It was not clear to the many Japanese who visited the islands before 1898, suchas Togo Heihachiro, that they should necessarily belong to the USA rather thanto Japan.

93 Quoted in Stephanson (1996), p.84.94 Zimmermann (2002), p.446.95 Ibid., p.342.96 Miller (1982), p.27. The British imperialist, Sir Alfred Lyall maintained that

there had been ‘no instance in history of a nation being educated by anothernation into self-government and independence; every nation has fought its[own] way up’. Porter (2005), p.33.

97 Quoted in Chimes, p.4.98 Roosevelt (1995), p.188. ‘It is infinitely better for the whole world

that . . . England should have taken India . . . The same reasoning applies to ourdealings with the Philippines.’ Roosevelt (1995), p.182.

99 Roosevelt had played a crucial role in shaping the war with Spain. One after-noon Navy Secretary, John D. Long, kept a doctor’s appointment and left hisAssistant, Roosevelt, in charge of his Department. Roosevelt put the US Navyon a war-footing and sent Admiral Dewey to Hong Kong with instructionsto take Manila in the event of war. Long felt unable to countermand thesemeasures.

100 Cooperation at that time sometimes took unusual forms. American ships underAdmiral Kautz joined the British Royal Navy in shelling Samoan villages. TheCaptain of HMS Porpoise explained the mission, ‘We are out here in thisbeastly God-forsaken country and we had to have some fun to keep alive.’During this recreational firing, a shell from the USS Philadelphia narrowlymissed the American consul’s house but killed a US Marine. Miller (1982),p.164.

101 In the 1960s the Philippines Ambassador Carlos Romulo asked that theAmerican Government recognize that the ‘Philippines Insurrection’ beacknowledged to have been the Philippine–American War, in other words thatthe USA had not been the legitimate government in the Philippines at the time,but rather had been an invader. The request was denied. Dyer (1980), p.266.

102 Between 4 February 1899 and 4 July 1902, over 250,000 Filipinos died duringthe ‘pacification’ of the Philippines. Bradley (2003), pp.68–71.

103 Strangely, the order issued by General Jacob Smith on 25 October 1905 thatall natives over 10 years of age in the area of Basey and Balangiga be killed was‘to avenge our late comrades in North China, the murdered men of the NinthUS Infantry’. Miller (1982), pp.89 and 220.


104 Arthur MacArthur maintained that captured guerrillas would be treated ascriminals and murderers, not soldiers; and he banished the journalist G.T. Ricefor exposing corruption amongst American forces in Manila. Miller (1982),p.165. MacArthur’s ideals were underpinned by a conviction of Aryan superi-ority on which he lectured the committee investigating misdeeds. Hardlinersurged tougher methods against insurgents, such as those used by the BritishEmpire against the Boers in South Africa.

105 Miller (1982), p.240.106 Ienaga (1978), p.5.107 Quoted in LaFeber (1998), p.20.108 Quoted in Prestowitz (1988), p.21.109 Bonnett (2004a). His priority was to maintain Japan’s political independence,

rather than to maintain some spiritual identity. Ian Buruma sees a clear linefrom the illiberal ethnic-nationalism of Japan in the late nineteenth century,through the Leninist nationalism of Mao to the modern authoritarian Chinesestate, intent on avoiding the weakness that typified the Chinese state overcenturies. Buruma (2005).

110 Quoted in Bradley (2003), p.9.111 Michael Auslin has argued that these treaties were not as unequal as is often

purported. Auslin (2004).112 The Japanese received American military and legal advice and cited international

law to reject Chinese complaints about the invasion. The Chinese replied thatinternational law was a recent Western invention and that they preferred truth.LaFeber (1998), p.44.

113 Smith (1998), p.266.114 In 1872, the American President, Ulysses Grant, met the Emperor Meiji and

advised great caution in accepting popular democracy and institutions such asan elected legislature, measures which could not be readily reversed.

115 Quoted in Henning (2000), p.135.116 Henning (2000), p.160.117 In July 1905, the US Secretary of War, Howard Taft, recommended that the

Japanese should secure their military occupation of Korea and control itsforeign policy. The Taft–Katsura agreement, as a quid pro quo, recognizedAmerican rule in the Philippines. This deal was kept secret for 20 years.

118 The secret Black Dragon Society played a similar important role in preparingfor Japan’s war with Russia 9 years later, its war in China in the 1930s andagainst the British prior to 1941.

119 Quoted in LaFeber (1998), p.78.120 The North China Herald, quoted in Paine (2002), p.15.121 Alexis Krausse, quoted in Paine (2002), p.18.122 Paine (2002), p.3123 Ibid., p.17.124 Putnam Weale (1910), p.115. The Kaiser regarded the Treaty with Japan as a

racial betrayal.125 Paine (2002), p.229.126 Terrill (2003), p.283.127 The so-called triple intervention of 1895, by Russia, Germany and France saw

these nations make significant gains in Manchuria, at the expense of a Chinaweakened by Japan. The Japanese resentment at this encroachment resulted ina campaign known as Ga-Shin-Sho-Tan, ‘Submit to any hardship to achieverevenge’. Koda (2005), p.4.

128 Quoted in Paine (2002), p.367.129 Stoddard (1920), p.26.130 Iriye (1997), pp.18–19 and Bonnett (2004b), p.84.


131 Quoted by Yu Bin in Pumphrey (2002), p.113.132 V.S. Solovev, Prince Ukhtomskii’s friend, writing in 1890, quoted in

Schimmelpenninck van Oye (2001), p.56.133 Przhevalskii’s advocacy of war in China was removed from the reprint of his

work by the Soviets in 1946. In 1952, the USSR produced a romantic film,Przhevalskii, about the explorer’s progressive role in furthering Russian culturein Asia, what Joseph Conrad termed ‘militant geography’. It lauded his human-itarian actions in promoting friendship between the Russian and Chinese people.The Chinese Government protested at this portrayal of a man whom theyregarded as a ruthless Tsarist military spy and agent of imperialism.

134 Ukhtomskii, writing in 1900, quoted in Schimmelpenninck van Oye (2001),p.44.

135 Schimmelpenninck van Oye (2001), pp.57–8.136 The Tsarevich travelled to Japan and China by ship, returning overland across

Siberia. While in Japan on 29 April 1891, Nicholas received a sword cut to theforehead from a disaffected Japanese nationalist constable, but took the blowin good heart and without diplomatic offence.

137 Ukhtomskii (1896).138 Przhevalskii, quoted in Schimmelpenninck van Oye (2001), p.24.139 Schimmelpenninck van Oye (2001), p.35.140 Ibid., p.30.141 Ibid., p.34.142 Ibid., p.34.143 Ibid., p.37. The leading advocate of Przhevalskii’s ideas was Peter Badmaev who

in 1893, funded with two million Roubles from Count Witte, even persuadedTsar Alexander III to support a fantastic plan to seize Mongolia and Tibet.Badmaev was a fashionable St Petersburg ‘quack’ who used Tibetan herbalremedies to cure ‘disturbances of the female physiology’. Schimmelpenninckvan Oye (2001), p.199.

144 The Mongols have not been shy to make humourous reference to others’ folkmemories of Mongolian terror. The Mongolian contingent serving withCoalition forces in Iraq in 2005 apparently sported black T-shirts depictingpiles of white skulls with the caption in Arabic saying, ‘We’re Back’.

145 Count S. Witte, quoted in Schimmelpenninck van Oye (2001), p.75.146 Count Witte, who felt that he was the target of such criticisms, claimed that he

and his railway were no more responsible for the Russo-Japanese War than hewould be if he had invited his friends to The Aquarium night club inSt Petersburg and they had become drunk and subsequently started a fight in abrothel.

147 Schimmelpenninck van Oye (2001), p.90.148 Quoted in Schimmelpenninck van Oye (2001), pp.101–2. Part of Russia’s fear

of annexing Asian territory was that it would bring large numbers of racialinferiors into its empire, rather as the USA declined to annex the populoussouthern part of Mexico after its defeat in 1848. Others feared the demo-graphic consequences of the USA’s leap across the Pacific for similar reasons.

149 Paine (2002).150 Novoe Vremia, 8 April 1895, quoted in Schimmelpenninck van Oye (2001),

p.126.151 Warner (2002), p.113.152 Vereschagin died when the flagship of Russia’s Pacific Fleet, Petropavlovsk,

was sunk by a mine off Port Arthur in March 1904.153 Mahan (2003), p.19.154 Ibid., p.68.155 de Bloch (1899).


156 de Bloch (1899), p.xi.157 Bloch (1993), p.23.158 A study of the relevance of Bloch’s vision to the circumstances of the 1990s is

given in Bellamy (1992), pp.50–6.159 Hendrick (1998), p.30. The first patent application for an armoured fighting

vehicle was presented on 3 April 1855. Clarke (1995), p.16.160 Hallion (2003), p.296.161 Ibid., p.298.162 Henderson (1905), p.375.163 Foch (1918), p.341.

2 The experience of 1904–5

1 As so often, it was the press that led the introduction of new informationtechnology. The Times of London used wireless to report from the theatre.

2 Following the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese negotiated with the Russians,suggesting the division of Korea between the two countries along the 38thParallel, the line later agreed between the USA and Russia for their zones ofoccupation in 1945, and subsequently the approximate border between Northand South Korea.

3 Japan had gained Port Arthur from China as a result of the war, but had beenforced to return it under direct military pressure from European powers. TheJapanese decided to spend their £5 million reparation from China on a newnavy, built mainly in Britain. The Japanese Navy’s plan called for 104 new shipsto be built between 1896 and 1905. Koda (2005), p.4. The Japanese newspaperKokumin, declared that, ‘It was but yesterday that we were robbers because wewere weak. Today we are stronger and can fight the robbers. Tomorrow theywill learn to leave us alone in peace.’ Connaughton (1990), p.4.

4 Before the outbreak of war, Japan planned to sabotage the railway. Japaneseagents sought fifty saboteurs from the Japanese community in Beijing. Allvolunteered, and some of those rejected committed suicide out of shame.Warner (2002), p.172.

5 Robert Whitehead’s revolutionary torpedo was first demonstrated in 1866.Whitehead’s secret plans were probably stolen during a dinner party in 1883attended by the director of the German firm Schwarzkopf, which soon pro-duced versions of his design. Lowry and Wellham (2000), p.37. The Japanesehad previously commenced hostilities without a declaration of war. On 25 July1894, they sank the Chinese troop ship Kowshing, but issued their declarationonly on 1 August.

6 Ironically, attack by long-range torpedoes, rather than close engagement bytorpedo boats, seems originally to have been the idea of the Russian, StepanMakarov, in 1900. Evans and Peattie (1997), p.92.

7 Nogi committed ceremonial suicide as the Emperor’s hearse left the Imperialpalace on 13 September 1912.

8 One fifth of Japan’s male population had already been called up, and there wasconcern at the declining standards of new recruits.

9 ‘Infantry Combat in the Russo-Japanese War . . . ’ (1906), p.1275.10 Ibid., p.1175.11 Hamilton (1907), vol.II, pp.110–11.12 Quoted in Hamby (2004), p.334. An analysis of Japanese military planning in

Clausewitzian terms, comparing it to the American Weinberger Doctrine of the1990s is given in Hamby (2004). In Hamby’s view the Japanese achieved whatwere later formulated as Casper Weinberger’s conditions that ‘If we do decide


to commit forces to combat overseas, we should have clearly defined militaryand strategic objectives. And we should know precisely how our forces canaccomplish those clearly defined objectives.’ Hamby (2004), p.334.

13 Quoted in Hamby (2004), p.335.14 Ibid.15 On 19 December 1903, the British Secretary of State for War, H.O. Arnold-Foster

met with the Army Board to discuss the likelihood of war between Russia andJapan and how to ‘foment internal troubles’ in Russia. See Neilson (1989), p.63.

16 In 1918, Akashi Motojiro became the seventh Governor-General ofJapanese-occupied Formosa. He was buried in Taipei at his own request. In 1999the relocation of his remains created public protests. Koda (2005), Footnote 9.

17 Akashi was appointed roving military attaché around Europe at the instigationof the Black Dragon Society, the ultra-nationalist secret society which, in 1903,had taken upon itself the task of executing covert operations in preparation forwar with Russia. See Deacon (1990), pp.42–51.

18 Quoted in Warner (1974), p.451.19 Lenin (1905), pp.2–7.20 Zilliacus’s son became a Labour Member of Parliament for Gateshead. Deacon

(1990), p.55.21 Akashi stayed at the Charing Cross Hotel in London while building up his

store of weapons and explosives in a bookshop cellar for shipment to Russia.Warner (1974), p.452.

22 Deacon (1990), p.57.23 Suzuki (1994), pp.83–137.24 Ibid., pp. 87–97.

3 1905 – the future of war: a 10-year perspective

1 Hamley (1922).2 Knox (1913), p.22.3 Altham (1914).4 Haking (1913), p.344.5 Von Bernhardi (1912), vol.1, pp.6–11.6 Wen I-to describing the malaise of China during its war against Japan in the

1930s and 1940s, declared, ‘We have been civilized too long . . . we shall haveto release the animal nature in us . . . let us see whether there still exists in ourblood the motive power of the ancient beasts; if not, then we had better admitthat as a people we are spiritual eunuchs, and give up trying to survive in thisworld’. Spence (1982), p.279.

7 Huntington’s analysis of ‘The Clash of Civilizations’ was generally compatiblewith this view of competing value systems. Huntington (1993), pp.48–9. Hehypothesized that in future, wars between different civilizations, essentially iden-tified by religious tradition, would be frequent, sustained and violent. These werelikely to be between the West and its competitors. The significant question iswhether a multi-cultural world can accommodate peaceful competition. It hasbeen argued that a ‘clash of cultures’ is a false analysis. Buzan and Segal argue thatAsian states or cultures cannot compete with Western nations without borrowingmany of the latter’s characteristics, and that all successful societies will in futurebe more culturally homogenized, following a ‘Westernistic’ pattern. See Buzan andSegal (1997). Edward Said’s Orientalism, Said (1979), maintained that the Westheld derogatory stereotypical views of the East. Equally, Eastern views of theWest, ‘Occidentalism’, which have been no less unhelpfully confusing, have beenanalysed in Buruma and Margalit (2004).


8 McCullagh (2004), p.110.9 Lenin (1905), p.2.

10 Wilson and Wells (1999), p.14.11 McCullagh (2004), pp.386 and 392.12 Putnam Weale (1910), p.179.13 Ibid., p.113.14 Ibid., p.126.15 Hamilton (1907), pp.11–12.16 McCullagh (2004), pp.362–3 and 387.17 Ibid., p.366.18 McDonald (1992).19 See Jones, ‘Easts and Wests Befuddled: Russian Intelligentsia Responses to the

Russo-Japanese War’, in Wilson and Wells (1999), pp.134–59.20 Quoted in Schimmelpenninck van Oye (2001), p.4.21 His most outspoken work was Panmongolizm in 1894. Solovev described

Japan as ‘A real threat to Russia and to the whole Christian world’. Quoted inWilson and Wells (1999), p.3. Solovev noted its seductive appeal,‘Panmongolism! The word is savage but it sounds caressing as if it were full ofthe omen of God’s great plan.’ Solovev, p.185.

22 Ironically the Russian Army had much of Asia about it: ‘One of the mostcomposite forces that ever met together in Asia . . . Mishchenko’s force seemedto contain within it all the elements of a Yellow Peril, combined with a fainthint of a Moslem Peril’. McCullagh (2004), p.164.

23 Quoted in Lincoln (1994), p.263.24 Ibid., p.267.25 Bonnett (2004b), p.49.26 Thorne (1986).27 Quoted in Schimmelpenninck van Oye (2001), pp.10 and 43.28 Quoted in Bonnett (2004b), p.46.29 Maguire (1909), p.5.30 Lea (2001).31 Manchester (1983), p.80.32 Lea (2001), p.173. In an unpublished article for The New York Times in

August 1908, the Kaiser warned that ‘within a year or two the Americanswould certainly have to fight the Japanese’. Tuchman (2004), p.28. The articlewas suppressed on the advice of Theodore Roosevelt who later noted ofthe Kaiser, ‘I really like and in a way admire him, but I do wish he would nothave brainstorms’ p.29.

33 Lea (2001), p.160.34 McCullagh (2004), p.353.35 Metraux (2000), p.97.36 Ibid., p.3.37 Quoted in Henning (2000), p.145.38 Dyer (1980), p.136.39 Henning (2000), p.160.40 Quoted in Stoddard (1920), Chapter VI.41 M. Townsend (1911), pp.xvii–xix.42 Quoted in Tsuzuki (1961), p.255.43 Stoddard (1920), p.27.44 Quoted in Schimmelpenninck van Oye (2001), p.102.45 Warner (2002), p.546.46 Ibid., p.177.47 Quoted in Kristof and Wudunn (1995), p.442.48 Ibid., p.444.


49 Stoddard (1920), pp.51–2.50 Putnam Weale (1910), p.149.51 Putnam Weale (1918), Chapter VI, p.2.52 Quoted in Clarke (1995), pp.269–70.53 Stoddard (1920), p.49.54 Douglas (1912), pp. 473–4.55 Stoddard (1920), p.23.56 ‘Tokutomi Soho and Imperial Japan’s Destiny’ (2002).57 Thorne (1972), p.26. Yet, disillusion amongst Asian nationalists had set in as

early as 1907, when Japan agreed to deport Vietnamese activists from Japan.58 President Wilson welcomed the Russian Revolution, describing it as ‘wonder-

ful and heartening’, making Russia ‘A fit partner for a League of Honour’.Tuchman (2004), p.170.

59 Gifu Nichi Nichi-Shimbun, 21 April 1905. Quoted in Lone (1998), p.14. Thedegenerate hobby of collecting erotic postcards was especially frowned upon.

60 Lone (2005), p.27.61 de Negrier (1905), p.1428.62 Quoted in Kesler (1998).63 Lea (2001), p.23.64 de Negrier (1905), p.1428.65 Ibid., p.1429.66 Ibid., p.1431.67 The allegedly ‘scientific’ results were reprinted 1928 and again in 1944. They

are highly politically incorrect – suffice to say that the Dutch should have causefor self-confidence. See Dower (1986), pp.217–18. Evolutionary factors werealso considered in the West during the Second World War. One academic viewheld that the evolution of the Japanese brain had been retarded by 2,000 yearsand it was suggested that the Japanese be encouraged to intermarry with otherraces after the war. See Dower (1986), p.108.

68 Japanese contempt for the West was reinforced by the experience of Japaneseofficers in Siberia, supporting the White Admiral Kolchak against theBolsheviks, who witnessed the collapse of a European society.

69 Kita resented the ingratitude of China which had been protected by theJapanese victory over Russia in 1905 and ‘not only has failed to repay us butinstead despises us’. Kita Ikki in Morris (1963), p.20.

70 Balck (1911), p.194.71 Bannerman (1910), p.709. Major General W.G. Knox noted that ‘The habits

of individual liberty in England cannot, unless provoked, accept the heavy yokeof organization. Those habits, fostered by self-indulgence, are gradually butsurely leading to a demand for free bread and cinematographs.’ He con-demned, ‘waste products of prosperity . . . costly and luxurious life and its crav-ing for newspaper advertisement . . . unwholesome gorging in fashionablerestaurants . . . the mania of the masses for football matches . . . beer and bettingslips’. Knox (1913), pp.53–4.

72 Knox (1913), p.711.73 Kirton (1905), p.282. Similar observations unnerved Americans in the Second

World War. Japanese casualties were ‘curiously active in spite of their wounds,men shot through the head, neck, body, arms and legs being observed walkingaround or hopping around, as the case might be, cheerful and lively andindifferent to their wounds’. Quoted in Toland (1988), p.282.

74 Jack London covered the Russo-Japanese War as a journalist, and was eventuallyattached to the headquarters of the Japanese First Army. He left frustratedhaving achieved little.

75 Kingman (1979), p.115.


76 Sinclair (1977), p.89.77 Belfort Bax (1904), p.7.78 Miller Maguire maintained that at least two thirds of spectators at football

matches ‘must be degenerates’. Maguire (1909), p.11.79 De Negrier (1905), p.1431.80 Bannerman (1910), p.713. By the Second World War the word Bushido had

been given a very different value. The American film Know Your Enemy: Japandescribed Bushido as an ‘art of double-dealing and treachery’, Thorne (1985),p.125.

81 Bannerman (1910), p.714.82 Ibid., p.719.83 Travers (1979), p.283. Modern ideas about how thoughts might be transmitted

between brains without wires are outlined in Zimmer (2004). Sony’s plans fora device which can transmit data directly into the brain are described inHorsnell (2005).

84 The failure to learn lessons from the Russo-Japanese War is described in Bailey(2006).

85 Hamilton (1907), vol.II, Preface, p.v.86 Quoted in Connaughton (1988), p.275.87 This failing was repeated in the 1920s and 1930s, when armies again selected

those lessons of the First World War which suited their own intellectual con-structions. In Germany, manoeuvre and élan were emphasized, in a new ‘Cultof the Offensive’, seemingly designed to obviate the unacceptable possibility ofa war of the style and duration of the First World War ever recurring. Thiswishful thinking was disastrously triumphant in France in 1940. After the FirstWorld War, the USSR alone learned the unfashionable and distasteful lessonsof the Western Front and acted upon them.

88 Sankey (1907), pp.4–6.89 Marble (1996), pp.89–106.90 Rogers (1913), p.283.91 Towle (1971), p.65.92 The Russo-Japanese War, Reports from British Officers (1908), pp.209–10.93 Knox (1913), p.41.94 Bailey (2004), Chapter 16.

4 Grand strategy: racial angst and diplomatic odyssey

1 Mahan (2003), p.14.2 Maguire (1909), p.12.3 Some such as Ogawa Heikichi took part in violent street protests at the per-

ceived betrayal of Japan’s victory by the Treaty of Portsmouth.4 McCullagh (2004), p.392.5 Iriye (1997), p.33.6 Neilson (1989), p.76.7 Early in 1905, Roosevelt had secretly promised the Koreans that he would

insist that Japan grant them independence. At Portsmouth, he broke his wordand agreed to Japan’s keeping Korea and southern Manchuria, if it would forgoRussian reparations.

8 Asian Indians arriving from Canada were termed the ‘Tide of the Turbans’ andtheir immigration was halted when Congress, with an ‘elastic’ appreciation ofgeography, declared India to be part of the Pacific zone of excluded Asian coun-tries. Between 1906 and 1908, 4,740 Asian Indians arrived in Canada. Basdeo(2003), p.5.


9 Iriye (1967), p.105 and Puska (1998).10 Warner (1974), p.548.11 Hoyt (2001), pp.38–40.12 T.R. Roosevelt letter to Senator Knox. Papers of T.R. Roosevelt, Manuscript

Division, Library of Congress, pp.120–6.13 Basdeo (2003), p.2.14 Ibid., p.3.15 Ibid., p.4.16 Ibid., p.10.17 Quoted in Kesler (1998).18 Beale (1905), p.4. Octavius Beale argued that Australia’s inexhaustible supply

of coal and the quality of Sydney Harbour seemed to make the latter the naturalhome for the British fleet in the Far East.

19 Beale (1905), pp.5–6.20 Quoted in Lone (1998), p.7.21 Quoted in Kuhlmann (1992), p.16.22 Ibid., p.21.23 Ibid., p.25.24 Ibid., p.21.25 T.R. Roosevelt letter to Senator Knox. Papers of T.R. Roosevelt, Manuscript

Division, Library of Congress, pp.120–6.26 Friedman and Lebard (1991).27 Kiyoshi Kawakami writing in 1910. Quoted in Friedman and Lebard (1991),

p.44.28 Linn (1997), p.85.29 Ibid., p.87.30 Storry (1979), p.95.31 The British were, however, chagrined that the Australian Government invited

the fleet to visit Sydney, intimating a new awareness of future American powerin the Pacific.

32 See Story’s introduction to Lea (2001).33 Schom (2004), p.177.34 Quoted in LaFeber (1998), p.80.35 Tuchman (2004), p.30.36 Britain had also supplied arms in May 1913 to secure supplies of Mexican oil.37 Thorne (1978), p.9.38 Quoted in LaFeber (1998), p.106.39 Tuchman (2004), pp.129–30.40 The League of Nations Commission rejected the Japanese request that a

declaration of racial equality be written into the League’s covenant. Eleven outof sixteen nations voted in favour of racial equality, but this was rejected byPresident Wilson, the Chairman, because it was not unanimous. Storry (1979),p.111 and Macmillan (2003), Chapter 23.

41 Stoddard (1920), p.288.42 The USA’s naturalization Act of 1790 provided that any ‘alien being a free

white person may be admitted to become a citizen’. In 1870 the FourteenthAmendment to the Constitution had extended this right to aliens of Africanbirth and descent.

43 Oyama v. California, 332 U.S. 633 n.4 (1948), quoted in Smith (2003). In1896, in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, Justice Harlan noted the anomaly ofChinese people sharing rights to mix with Whites while Black Americans couldnot. In 1927, in the case of Gong Lum v. Rice it was recognized that ‘TheMongolian or Yellow race could not insist on being classed with the Whites . . . ’.

44 Quoted in Thorne (1972), p.23.


45 Burdick (1976).46 In 1914, the Japanese Black Dragon Society called for the destabilization of

China prior to its military occupation by Japan, thus solving ‘The ChinaQuestion’, while Europe was distracted by its war. This would ostensibly leavesovereignty with China, but create a defensive alliance with Japan, in whichJapan would determine the two countries’ foreign and security policies.

47 The Japanese regarded convoy protection as meriting little attention in theformulation of subsequent doctrine, and apparently learned little from theexperience. It would have stood them in good stead 25 years later. Evans andPeattie (1997), p.169. The Japanese Navy provided other assistance to Britain.In 1915 the British had to enlist the help of Japanese sailors to suppress amutiny by Indian troops in Singapore.

48 From 1914, the Germans hoped to bring Japan and Mexico into the waragainst the USA, distracting the USA from thoughts of joining the Allies, or atleast delaying any intervention in Europe before Germany had won the war onthe Western Front. In return, Germany would offer Mexico its lost territoriesof Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. The Japanese enjoyed being wooed byGermany, since this encouraged greater appreciation from their allies.

49 The British intercepted the Zimmermann Telegram which announced Germany’sintent to resume unrestricted submarine warfare on 1 February 1917, by whenGermany believed it would be in a position to win the Battle of the Atlantic. TheZimmermann Telegram also revealed Germany’s intent to attack the USA fromthe south with Mexican and it was hoped Japanese support. See Tuchman (2004).Ironically in 1941, the USA in effect declared unrestricted warfare against Germansubmarines in the Atlantic, long before Hitler declared war on the USA.

50 Lowe (2000).51 Coker (1998), p.143.52 Quoted in Vlahos (1980), p.39.53 Watt (1984), p.32.54 Quoted in Vlahos (1980), p.40.55 Ibid., p.45.56 Vlahos (1980), p.41.57 Quoted in Vlahos (1980), p.41.58 Stoddard (1920), Chapter VII.59 Quoted in Coker (1998), p.144.60 Chiozza Money (1925), p.83.61 Ibid., p.159.62 Ibid., p.160.63 Curle (1926), p.74.64 Ibid., pp.294–5.65 Ibid., p.62.66 Ibid., p.104.67 Between 1914 and 1917 Japan’s exports quadrupled.68 Wilson agreed in return for Japan dropping its demands to be treated as a

racial equal. Falk (1937), p.443.69 LaFeber (1998), p.126.70 Quoted in Vlahos (1980), p.127.71 LaFeber (1998), p.145.72 Quoted in Thorne (1972), p.44.73 Hashimoto in Morris (1963), p.64.74 Ibid., p.65.75 Bix (2000), p.200.76 Quoted in Bradley (2003), p.52.77 Ienaga (1978), pp.11–12.


78 See Storry (1979), p.121 and Moser (1999), p.26.79 Quoted in Grant and Tamayama (1999), p.22. Admiral Chatfield knew the

Japanese well. He was to lose £20 playing cards with Yamamoto in 1934 duringthe London Naval Conference. Agawa (1979), p.41.

80 Sato (1921), p.173.81 Sato (1921), p.82. The notion of a unique Japanese identity and spirit was

popular but intangible. In 1906, Natsume Soseki had taken a cynical view, ‘TheJapanese spirit is a spirit. There is no one in Japan who hasn’t had it on the tipof his tongue, but there is no one who has actually seen it . . . It is perhaps thatlong-nosed braggadocio, the goblin.’ Quoted in Introduction to Dale (1986).

82 Curle (1926), p.128.83 Ibid., pp.124–5.84 Kennedy (2002), p.151.85 Russell Braddon recalled his release from Japanese captivity in 1945. Passing a

Japanese officer he asked in elation and spite, ‘This war last one hundredyears?’ ‘Ninety-six years to go’, came the reply. Braddon (1983), p.129.

86 The young Midshipman Nimitz had attended the Tsushima victory party at theImperial Palace in Tokyo in 1905 and had enjoyed a conversation with AdmiralTogo who addressed him in English. Schom (2004), p.166.

87 Quoted in Vlahos (1980), p.83.88 National character and racial considerations played an important part in the

intelligence assessments of all the major powers. In the USA this category wastermed ‘psychologic’ or merely ‘racial characteristics’. The French termed itmentalité. Ferris (2005), p.115.

89 In 1926–7, Japan’s trade with China exceeded that of Britain’s. In 1931,Japan’s trade with China was three times that of Britain’s.

90 Thorne (1978), p.27.91 Quoted in Butow (1961), p.46.92 Ishihara Koichiro (1934). Ishihara favoured a Japanese rapprochement with

Germany and the USSR, and the racial unification of Asia.93 Stoddard (1920).94 Thompson (2001), p.71.95 In 1941, the RED element of this plan became the basis for naval operations

against Germany rather than Great Britain. Quoting this as an analogy, somenote that planning operations against a nation does not make it an enemy.Today, for example, planning military contingencies against China, would notin itself make China an enemy, any more than China’s planning against theUSA would mean that the USA will be its enemy. An observation in Wortzel(1998), Note 14, p.26.

96 Quoted in Vlahos (1980), p.50.97 Quoted in Thorne (1978), p.31. In 1945, the US Government was prepared to

destroy the major cities of Japan including Kyoto, the ancient imperial capital.Stimson had spent his second honeymoon in Kyoto, and warned against theconsequences of destroying so important a cultural site. Kyoto was spared.

98 Linn (1997), p.82.99 Thorne (1978), pp.20 and 27.

100 Emeny (1936), p.168.101 Ibid., p.174.102 Ienaga (1978), p.68.103 Schom (2004), p.26.104 Ienaga (1978), p.69.105 Ibid., p.138.106 A view apparently shared by the German President, Johannes Rau, in his

pronouncements of September 2003.


107 Moser (1999), p.109.108 Griswold (1938).109 Equally, supplies to the Nationalists came from surprising sources. During

1941, the Kuomintang Army received twice as many war supplies through theJapanese lines as it received from the Burma Road. In return, the KuomintangArmy supplied the Japanese with tungsten and food it received from the RedCross. L.E. Eastman cited in Thorne (1986), p.20.

110 Schom (2004), p.62.111 Ibid., p.109.112 Friedman and Lebard (1991), p.68.113 Thorne (1978), p.143.114 Ibid., p.3.115 This document, along with sixty others, fell into the hands of the Japanese on

4 December 1940, following the capture of the British steamer Automedon bythe German raider Atlantis off the Nicobar Islands on 11 November 1940.Iriye (1999), pp.128–9.

116 Meacham (2004), p.49.117 Ibid., p.51.118 Ibid., p.79.119 Thorne (1978), p.43.120 Ibid., p.82.121 On 10 April 1941 the USS Niblack tried to sink a U-boat off Iceland. On

4 September 1941, the U-652 attacked the USS Greer. Following that attack,Churchill noted, ‘Now we shan’t be long.’ Meacham (2004), p.127. On31 October 1941, the U-552 sank the USS Reuben James, the first Americanwarship sunk in the Second World War.

122 Weinberg (2003), p.31.123 Gannon (2002), pp.85–6.124 Mahan (2003), p.15.125 Thorne (1978).126 Kennedy (2002).127 Thompson (2001), p.67.128 It is not clear whether Winston Churchill instigated these sanctions on oil

supplies in his conversations with Roosevelt on the night of 24–5 July 1941.129 Thompson (2001), pp.91–2.130 Ibid., pp.96–7.131 Thorne (1978), p.73.132 Ibid., pp.7, 43, 80 and 82.133 Meacham (2004), p.128.134 Ibid., p.130.135 Hitler’s declaration of war on the USA was rooted in his cultural and racial

prejudices, in his contempt and underestimation of that country, betraying atthe same time his own anti-modernism. ‘I don’t see much future for theAmericans . . . It’s a decayed country . . . it’s half Judaized and the other halfnegrified. How can one expect a state like that to hold together? . . . everythingis built on the dollar.’ Meacham (2004), p.134. The Japanese may have been‘too foreign for us, by their way of living, by their culture . . . But my feelingsagainst Americanism are feelings of hatred and deep repugnance.’ Quoted inBuruma and Margalit (2004), pp.7–8.

136 Churchill’s approach to diplomacy with the USA could now change. As Churchillput it, ‘That is the way we talked to her while we were wooing her, now that sheis in the harem we will talk to her quite differently!’ Meacham (2004), p.135.

137 Kennedy (2002), p.59.138 Bix (2000), p.393.


139 Quoted in Hoyt (2001), p.199.140 Iriye (1999), pp.221 and 225–6.141 Wilford (2002), p.137.142 Iriye (1999), p.36.143 Ibid., p.37.144 Quoted in Thorne (1986), p.69.145 Quoted in Buruma (2003b), pp.89–90.146 Buruma and Margalit (2004).147 Ellis (1990), p.495.

5 Military strategy: the paradox of inevitability and surprise

1 Bix (2000), p.47.2 Kitaoka (1993), pp.77–8.3 The Japanese had also demonstrated the value of amphibious operations at

Shanghai in 1932 and 1937. Grove (1997), p.34.4 By 1941, Britain’s GDP was five times Japan’s and the USA’s twelve times.5 The United States subsequently concluded that this had indeed been the Japanese

intention. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey summary of July 1946assessed that Japan had had no intention to defeat the USA, but rather to achievelimited objectives prior to negotiating a favourable settlement. Ellis (1990), p.445.

6 Japan miscalculated the likely cost of the war. The Japanese Navy estimatedthat losses in the first year would be 1,000,000 tons of shipping and 800,000tons in each subsequent year. In fact, losses in the first year were 1,250,000tons, 2,560,000 tons in the second and 3,480,000 tons in the third year, fourtimes the estimate. Butow (1961), p.317. Another fatal miscalculation was thebelief that a small cadre of first-class naval pilots would suffice for what wouldbe a short war. Peattie (2002), p.134.

7 Quoted in Butow (1961), p.164.8 Ellis (1990), p.444. On 6 October 1941, Fukudome Shigeru, chief of the first

division of naval staff, told his colleagues that he had no confidence that Japancould win the war.

9 Bywater (1925). This was based on earlier articles he had written for theLondon Daily Telegraph.

10 Agawa (1979), p.291.11 Ibid., p.326.12 Japan’s logistic debacle is described in Ellis (1990), Chapter 10. In late 1942,

Tojo was so concerned about the lack of fuel supplies that he directed his tech-nicians to find an aviation fuel made from ‘something like air’. They laugheduntil they realized that he was serious. Ellis (1990), p.465. By 1944 there werefour tons of supplies and weapons for every deployed American serviceman inthe Pacific Theatre. His Japanese counterpart had just two pounds of guns,ammunition and food. Webster (2004), p.179. Between 1941 and 1945, theUSA spent $288 billion on the war while Japan could find just $41 billion. Bysummer 1941, the USA had laid down over 300 carrier hulls, although not allof these ships were completed. The disproportionate scale of the resourcessometimes took unlikely forms. The USA built a ship to produce 5,100 gallonsof ice cream per hour for US forces in the Pacific.

13 Similarly, Colonel Tsuji Masanoubu, who planned the assault on Singapore,believed that the effete and selfish Anglo-Saxons would put mercantile profitabove all else and make a deal rather than fight a protracted war. He boastedthat his own successes were due to the beneficial effects of consuming brewedhuman liver. Bradley (2003), p.200.


14 Agawa (1979), p.231. He predicted that Japan would last out for only18 months against the USA. Agawa (1979), p.233.

15 Yamamoto mused that after the war he would either be guillotined or sent toSt Helena. Agawa (1979), p.331. Yamamoto was to die on 18 April 1943,ambushed by American aircraft, following a breach of Japanese signals security.

16 Agawa (1979), p.192.17 The attacks on Pearl Harbour might have been more damaging. Yamamoto

envisaged landings on Hawaii and capturing all US naval officers, who wouldbe hard to replace. Fuchida reported to Admiral Nagumo that the Americanfleet could not do battle for 6 months. This may have encouraged Nagumo tosail away from Pearl Harbour without making further devastating attacks. TheJapanese, for unknown reasons, also failed to hit the US Navy’s huge oilreserves at Pearl Harbour. Schom (2004), p.63.

18 The Navy Chief of Staff, Admiral Nagano Osumi, assured the Emperor that itwould take just 3 months to win the war in the South Pacific. A worriedEmperor reminded him that he had also assured him in 1937 that the proposedwar in China would be over in 1 month. Having deployed just 250,000 troopsin 1937, there were 2,000,000 on Chinese soil by 1941. Schom (2004), p.84.

19 Reproduced in Goldstein and Dillon (2000), Chapter 19.20 Ibid., p.365.21 Ibid., p.331.22 The Japanese Navy studied European and American military history, whereas

the Japanese Army’s study of these was said to be ‘indifferent’. Goldstein andDillon (2000), p.328.

23 Goldstein and Dillon (2000), p.332.24 Bix (2000), p.420.25 Quoted in Buruma (2003b), p.97.26 Von Clausewitz (1976), p.86.27 Yamamoto was allegedly barred from the casino at Monte Carlo in 1923

because of his excessive wins.28 One of Yamamoto’s staff officers, Fujii Shigeru, quoted in Agawa (1979),

p.290.29 Quoted in Agawa (1979), p.290.30 Zimmermann (2002), p.445.31 Gole (2003), p.xv.32 Memorandum, FDR to the Chief of Naval Operations, 10 August 1936, PSF,

Departmental: War Department: Harry Woodring, FDRL. Courtesy ofDr Calvin L. Christman.

33 Gole (2003), p.56.34 Vlahos (1980), p.117.35 Gole (2003), p.42.36 Ibid., p.65.37 Linn (1997), p.232.38 Gole (2003), p.90.39 Ibid., p.94.40 Ibid., p.96.41 Ibid., p.88.42 Ibid., p.86.43 Ibid., p.86.44 Ibid., pp.141–2.45 The US NWC fought fifty ‘Jutlands’ against RED, the Royal Navy, the most

challenging opponent; but it was Japan that was the most likely opponent, andmost games against ORANGE had messy and unsatisfactory outcomes.


6 Tactics and technology: novelty repeated

1 Morrow (1996), p.2.2 Quoted in Morrow (1996), p.1.3 Quoted in Morrow (1996), p.3. Nearly 100 years later, this would be termed

‘shock and awe’.4 Quoted in Morrow (1996), p.5.5 In 1904, the American inventor, Simon Lake, sold his revolutionary

submarine Protector to Russia for $250,000 and agreed to build five morefor the Russian Navy. The purchase followed trials in which the Russianobject was to find a boat capable of penetrating the harbour of Libau withoutbeing detected. Protector achieved this, surfacing alongside a Russian battle-ship. Lake (2000), p.1. The Japanese commissioned five submarines fromthe USA. These were laid down at Quincy near Boston but were not completedin time for the war. Meanwhile the Japanese seem to have had varioussecret submarine programmes of their own, but these produced little.Warner (2002), p.243.

6 Hallion (2003), pp.304–5. The next to achieve this feat were the British in 1917.7 Hough (1999), pp.20–1.8 Grove (1997), p.30. Peattie reports the dropping of nearly 200 bombs around

Tsingtao in 1914, but not the sinking of a vessel. Peattie (2002), pp.8–9.9 Hough (1999), p.39.

10 Wragg (2003), pp.22–3.11 The later Lord Sempill was a founder of the Royal Flying Corps and a

respected figure, but in 1926 he was discovered to have been a Japanese spy.He was not prosecuted, so as to conceal the fact that Britain was interceptingJapanese diplomatic mail. This scandal was only made public in 2002 with therelease of declassified documents from the Public Record Office (PRO).Strangely, Sempill was decorated by a grateful Japanese Government as late as1961, before his treachery was made public. See Day (2002) and Phillips(2002) and PRO Documents KV2/871-874.

12 A small British team remained. Peattie (2002), p.24. As late as 1930 and 1931,the RAF ran courses on aerial gunnery and tactics for the Japanese Navy.Peattie (2002), p.43.

13 Bradley (2003), p.49.14 Hough (1999), p.78.15 Ibid., p.58.16 Agawa (1979), p.127.17 Ibid., pp.92–3.18 Hough (1999), p.58.19 On 10 April 1940, the German cruiser Königsberg was sunk by the 500 lb

bombs of British Skua dive-bombers. The leading attacker, Lieutenant FraserFraser-Harris, had been warned some years earlier by Captain Tom Phillips notto become a naval pilot, as the future belonged to gunners and navigators.Obituary of F. Fraser-Harris in The Daily Telegraph, London, 8 November2003. Phillips was to be killed by Japanese aircraft.

20 Quoted in Warren, History, vol.88, no.291, July 2003, p.522.21 Yamamoto had to pay one of his staff officers, Miwa Yoshitaki, 120 bottles of

beer in payment of a bet, Miwa having claimed that the Japanese could sinkboth Repulse and Prince of Wales. Agawa (1979), pp.267–8.

22 Ramsey was the first to sound the alarm at Pearl Harbour when the Japaneseattacked.

23 Hoyt (2001), p.32.

Notes to pp. 97–101 245

24 The Type-96 land-attack aircraft was produced in large numbers unseen by therest of the world. It had superior automatic-pilot and radio equipment and areturn range of 1,200 miles. Agawa (1979), p.106.

25 Gole (2003), p.81.26 Schom (2004), pp.149–50. After the war, all commanders who had served in

the Philippines between 1941–2 were asked to provide accounts of theirexperiences. MacArthur declined to submit a report. Schom (2004), p.241.

27 Millions of gallons of gasoline in Manila and million of rounds of ammunitionin Cebu remained in storage. MacArthur ordered American forces to destroythe gasoline, even though tanks in Manila lacked enough fuel to deploy. Troopsin Bataan had to go without. Schom (2004), p.231.

28 The British originally planned to make their attack on the Italian fleet onTrafalgar Day, 21 October 1940.

29 The British operation at Taranto was a startling achievement even by comparisonwith that of the Japanese at Pearl Harbour, despite its much smaller scale. AtTaranto in one night, twenty-one biplanes from one ship inflicted more dam-age on their enemy than had Nelson at Trafalgar, and twice the damageinflicted on the German High Seas Fleet at Jutland in 1916, with few losses,albeit without the immense strategic consequences. It was conducted in the faceof an enemy in a state of war, with 1,000 anti-aircraft guns in twenty-oneshore-based batteries of anti-aircraft guns, which alone fired 12,800 rounds,and the air defences of sixty-four Italian naval vessels which fired many more.The Swordfish sank or damaged seven ships. At Pearl Harbour, 350 Japaneseplanes sank or damaged fourteen unprepared American warships, with minimalanti-aircraft support.

30 Genda said, after the war, that the attack on Taranto had not affected Japanesethinking; but when interviewed for the TV series The World at War, he testi-fied that it had. Genda subsequently became head of air forces in the JapaneseSelf-Defence Force.

31 Quoted in Gannon (2002), p.14.32 Ibid., p.66.33 Ibid., p.13.34 Letter Exhibit No.17 in the Hart Enquiry.35 Lowry and Wellham (2000), p.87. In August 1944, Kimmel explained that he

feared a submarine attack on Pearl Harbour, but believed that there was nochance of an aerial attack, given the maximum depth of Pearl Harbour was 45feet.

36 Quoted in Gannon (2002), p.20.37 Ibid., p.22.38 Lowry and Wellham (2000), p.93.39 Quoted in LaFeber (1998), p.209.40 Quoted in Thorne (1986), p.9.41 Agawa (1979), p.279.42 Eight hours before the attack on Pearl Harbour, American cryptologists

apparently decoded a ‘Magic’ intercept which indicated that Japan planned amajor operation. Two and a half hours before the attack General Marshall fin-ished reading this report and a warning was sent to Hawaii, but by WesternUnion telegram rather than scrambler, and it was handed over 2 hours after theattack had commenced.

43 Others maintain that it was only early versions of JN-25 that had been crackedas early as 1939. See Stripp (1989), p.68.

44 Even in the USA, two of the forty, serial-numbered, telegrams between Londonand Washington are apparently not available for viewing. Irving claimed thatthe diaries of Stimson covering the period before the Japanese attack on

246 Notes to pp. 101–105

Pearl Harbour seem to have been rewritten after the event, omitting referenceto Magic intercepts. On 4 November 1944, Morgenthau wrote that Stimsonhad apparently spent ‘two weeks on the Pearl Harbor report, to keep outanything that might hurt the President’. Quoted in Irving, p.5.

45 Wilford (2004), p.131.46 Ibid., pp.141–2 and 155.47 Theodore White, quoted in Thorne (1986), p.9.48 At 10:20 hours on 7 December 1941, a Japanese aircraft shot down a British

aircraft tracking the Japanese invasion force heading for Malaya. Goldsteinand Dillon (2000), p.84. The Japanese landed in Malaya over an hour beforethe attack on Pearl Harbour, so Japan attacked Britain first, rather than theUSA – its war with the West did not start at Pearl Harbour. Goldstein andDillon (2000), p.84.

49 Goldstein and Dillon (2000), p.329.50 Koda (2005), Footnote 12.51 Chihaya Masataka appears to have his details wrong in using this example. He

states that the attack took place in 1865 and that the David was commandedby a Lieutenant Jackson. The attack took place on the 5 October 1863 and thecommander was Lieutenant W.T. Glassell.

52 Warner (2002), p.205.53 Storry (1979), p.63.54 Quoted in Wilson and Wells (1999), p.23. Speaking as he gave up sea

command on 20 December 1905, Togo referred to the Battles of the Nile andTrafalgar and how these had placed Britain at the forefront of the world eco-nomically and strategically. Roosevelt was so impressed by Togo’s address thathe directed it be issued in the form of General Orders to the US Navy andArmy. Falk (1937), pp.425–6. Togo reciprocated the admiration by presentingPresident Roosevelt with a miniature set of samurai armour.

55 Lea (2001), pp.290–1.56 By coincidence, the British naval force sent to reinforce Singapore in early 1941

was named Force Z.57 To the annoyance of his impatient Government, he waited until 21 October

1905, the centenary of the Battle of Trafalgar, to make his triumphant returnto Tokyo. Following Tsushima, Togo was presented with a bust of Nelsoncarved from the wood of HMS Victory and a lock of Nelson’s hair. He returneda lock of his own. Togo had trained on HMS Worcester and presented the shipwith the battle flag he had flown on Mikasa at Tsushima. On the centenary ofthe Battle, this flag was in turn presented by Britain’s Marine Society to theTogo Shrine, built in Tokyo in 1940. Joyce (2005a).

58 Before the Battle of the Marianas in June 1944, Admiral Yamamoto againurged on his fleet with the same message, ‘The fate of the Empire hangs on theoutcome of this battle.’

59 Warner (2002), p.20.60 Warner (1974), pp.181–2.61 Quoted in Buruma (2003b), pp.89–90.62 The spirit of Yamato was also fuelled by the Yamato’s bunkers of edible vegetable

oil, there being no other fuel left to the Japanese Navy. Miller (1982), p.131.63 As defences on Okinawa collapsed, Japanese civilians committed suicide in

front of the memorial to the Russo-Japanese War.64 Yoshida (1999), p.38.65 Ibid., p.17.66 Although Japanese bomber crews wore parachutes in training, even in the

1930s they declined to use them on operations. The idea was to ‘go down withtheir aircraft’ and to avoid any chance of capture. Peattie (2002), p.107.

Notes to pp. 105–107 247

67 Morris (1975), p.306. Disturbingly similar traits in terms of education andsocial standing were noted of the suicide bombers of the World Trade Centerand the Pentagon on 11 September 2001.

68 Quoted in Yoshida (1999), p.xxi.69 Musashi, Yamato’s sister ship was also sunk by American aircraft, just as

the Tirpitz was destroyed by British bombers in Operation TUNGSTEN inApril 1944.

70 The degree of the Emperor’s involvement in wartime decision making has beencontroversial. In 1988, the Mayor of Nagasaki, Motoshima Hitoshi raised thesubject of imperial responsibility. He was shot by a right-wing assailant butreceived massive support from the general public. Smith (1998), p.230.

71 Quoted in Bradley (2003), p.150.72 Murray and Millett (1996), p.241.73 The USS Missouri was remembered over half-a-century later as a suitable

venue for surrender ceremonies, rather as a French railway carriage had been in1940. Generals Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell hoped to use theship to take the surrender of Iraqi forces in 1991. No doubt, they hopedto associate their victory in the First Gulf War with the decisive outcome of1945, and in contrast to that of the Vietnam War. Apparently it would havetaken too long to put the ship in place. President George H.W. Bush expressedregret that such a ceremony had not been possible. Eliot Cohen has noted thetwo generals’ ‘astonishing lack of historical perspective as well as theirmisperception of the completeness of the military’s success’. Cohen (2002),pp.197–8.

74 A negotiated end to the war was first discussed officially in Japan at theImperial Conference on 22 June 1945. Frank (1999), p.281.

75 On 25 July 1945, Ambassador Sato in Moscow asked for the USSR’s helpto achieve a peace settlement short of unconditional surrender. Molotovwas leaving for Potsdam and delayed his response. Japanese hopes were dashedon 9 August 1945 with the Soviet declaration of war and massive offensive inManchuria.

76 It seems probable that the astonishing Soviet defeat of the million-manJapanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria played a major part in convincing theJapanese that the war was lost. It also played a part in shaping future Soviettheory on nuclear deterrence. In the immediate post-war years before theUSSR had its own atomic weapons, the presence of the US Army in WesternEurope, held ‘hostage’ by the potential damage that could be caused by mas-sive Soviet forces in Eastern Europe, was seen to deter any American threat toSoviet cities.

77 In 1281 the Mongol fleet sailing to attack Japan had been destroyed by the‘kamikaze’ typhoon. Had the Second World War not ended when it did in1945, thanks to the atom bomb, a similar typhoon would almost certainly havedevastated the Allied fleet invading Japan. The typhoon that struck the USThird Fleet east of the Philippines on 18 December 1944 had caused more lossthan the most damaging massed kamikaze attack.

78 The Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King was relieved that the bombshad been dropped on Asian rather than the White races in Europe. Ironically,atom bombs might have been available to drop on Germany, but for a delayof many months in their production caused by Japanese intervention, inthe second most significant strategic attack on the USA in the SecondWorld War. On 10 March 1945, an incendiary balloon launched from Japandamaged the Hanford power facility which provided electricity for theManhattan programme, delaying production of the weapons until afterGermany’s defeat.

248 Notes to pp. 108–109

7 Europe bows out

1 Towle (1974), p.69.2 Ibid., p.69.3 Quoted in Wilson and Wells (1999), p.16.4 Towle (1974), p.70.5 McCullagh (2004), p.327.6 Ibid., p.375.7 Letter to N. Sellar, quoted in Lee (2000), p.96.8 Towle, p.70.9 Quoted in Warren (2002), p.46. Alfred Duff Cooper reported that

Brooke-Popham was ‘damned near gaga’. Bayly and Harper (2004), p.112.10 Lewis and Steele (2001), p.25.11 John Ferris maintained that misjudgements about the Japanese were not so

much based on racism per se, but on an ethnocentricism that saw the Westernapproach as the universal measure of military value. Ferris (2005), p.121.

12 In 1935, the British naval attaché in Tokyo informed the Admiralty that theJapanese ‘have peculiarly slow brains’. Thorne (1978), p.4. The British com-mander in the Far East, visiting Hong Kong in 1940, described the Japaneseacross the border as ‘various sub-human species dressed in dirty grey uniform’.Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands looked for the defeat of Germany beforeturning to the Japanese who should then be ‘drowned like rats’. Quoted inThorne (1985), pp.18–19.

13 Quoted in Lewis and Steele (2001), p.26.14 Ibid., p.144. ‘The most eloquent contention that the Allies’ war with Japan was

at root a ‘race war’ is made in Horne (2004).15 Johnston (2000), pp.86–7.16 Ferguson (2004a), p.181.17 Dower (1986), p.59. Cultural misunderstandings sometimes took unlikely

forms. Japanese soldiers were heard to call out abuse at some of Merrill’sMarauders in Burma with the humiliating slur on the American First Lady’sculinary competence, ‘Eleanor eats powdered eggs.’ Webster (2004), p.175.

18 Opinion polls during the Second World War showed that 10–13 per cent of theAmerican population favoured the extermination of the Japanese people.A poll for Fortune magazine in December 1945 found that 22.7 per cent regret-ted that the Japanese had surrendered before the USA had had the opportunityto drop more atom bombs on Japan. See Dower (1986), p.54. Roosevelt pro-jected himself as the champion of colonial peoples but was prone to outburstsabout their inferiority. He was so convinced of Japanese racial delinquency,caused by malformation of the skull, that he suggested, in private, that thiscould only be cured by a programme of cross-breeding with Europeans.Roosevelt was apparently serious enough to set Dr Ales Hrdlicka, curator ofthe Division of Physical Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution, to workon the issue. He once joked about Puerto Rico’s excessive birth rate being dealtwith by ‘the methods which Hitler used effectively’. Thorne (1978), p.159.

19 Johnston (2000), p.86.20 The day after Emperor Hirohito renamed Singapore ‘Shonan’, Churchill faced

an angry and disturbed House of Commons, yet the fall of Singapore wasbarely considered. The cause of the Commons’ anger was the humiliatingescape of the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau from Brest up theEnglish Channel. Churchill noted that a debate on Singapore would not beappropriate. Christie (1998), p.99.

21 Ironically, Britain went on to fight a successful internal security campaign inMalaya from 1948 to 1960 and defended Malaysia successfully against attacks

Notes to pp. 113–115 249

from Indonesia from 1962 to 1964. Malaysia and Singapore, along with HongKong, went on to become the most successful of all Britain’s former colonies,and among the most prosperous states in the world.

22 Toland (1988), p.279.23 Hitler (1953), Night 28/29 December 1941, pp.152–3.24 Churchill (1964), p.209.25 Irving (1989), p.285.26 Thorne (1978), p.7.27 Ibid., p.7.28 Ibid., p.207.29 Ibid., p.207.30 Quoted in LaFeber (1998), p.217.31 Thorne (1978), pp.207 and 291.32 Admiral King remembered fondly his youthful service aboard the USS Cincinnati

cruising Chinese waters, tracking the events of the Russo-Japanese War.33 Dower (1986), pp.7–8 and 53.34 Quoted in LaFeber (1998), p.222. DeWitt maintained that ‘The Japanese race

is an enemy race and while many second and third generation Japanese bornon the United States’ soil . . . have become “Americanized”, their racial strainsare undiluted.’ Quoted in Azuma (2005), p.209.

35 Secretary of War Stimson believed that Japanese and Communist agitators werebehind Black demands for equality. General Marshall declared that he ‘wouldrather handle everything the Germans, Italians and Japanese can throw at me,than face the trouble I see in the Negro question’. Dower (1986), p.173. A piecein the Atlantic Monthly in 1943 noted that ‘Like the natives of Malaya andBurma, the American Negroes are sometimes imbued with the notion that a vic-tory for the Yellow races over the white race might also be a victory for them.’Walter White, head of the National Association for the Advancement of ColoredPeople equated the lot of the Negro in America to that of the Asian people underWhite rule in Asia and urged resistance to the ‘Anglo-Saxon practices’ of racismand imperialism. See Dower (1986), pp.173–8. See also Horne (2004).

36 Thorne (1978), p.9.37 Allied troops, for example, were disturbed by the ferocity of Japanese prisoners

hospitalized on Rabaul who, on regaining consciousness, tried to commit suicideby pulling out their drips or biting off their tongues.

38 Masters (2002), p.163.39 ‘Again we were wrong in our estimate of Japanese production and design . . . on

both of these counts he has exhibited an originality and an engineering experienceand skill at least comparable with our own.’ ‘Tojo’s Terror’ (1944), p.2.

40 Ibid., p.1. The British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden was so convinced ofJapanese aerial incompetence that he attributed Japan’s successes to hundredsof seconded German pilots. Toland (1988), pp.283–4.

41 ‘Tojo’s Terror’ (1944), p.1.42 Quoted in Johnston (2000), p.106.43 Ibid., p.103.44 Ibid., p.93.45 Johnston (2000), p.123.46 Ibid., p.112.47 On one occasion Japanese troops repeatedly advanced six abreast down a track

having warned of their approach with bugle blasts. The Australian soldierswere ordered never to shoot the bugler. Johnston (2000), p.107. Whatwas most incomprehensible was that Japanese soldiers would often commitsuicide for no military purpose when they might have fought on and inflictedcasualties.

250 Notes to pp. 115–118

48 Johnston (2000), p.108. On the Bonga-Wareo track in October 1943, theAustralian 2/32nd Battalion placed Vickers machine guns enfilading the trackand ‘became “almost hysterical with joy” as day after day groups of Japanesecontinued to walk along the track – heedless of the piles of Japanese corpsesaround them – to their deaths’. Australian troops so enjoyed their task thatthey refused to be relieved in the line. Johnston (2000), p.111.

49 Britain’s return to the Far East would subsequently be of a very modest sort,providing peacekeepers alongside the Japanese in UN-mandated operations inEast Timor in 1999, tidying up the unfinished business of the Netherlands’ FarEastern Empire and the nationalists who had inherited it.

50 On 2 September 1945, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnamese independence. Threedays after the war ended, a Vietminh flag flew over government offices.

51 Slim (1956), p.139.52 Thorne (1978), p.453.53 Ibid., p.59.54 Ibid., p.391.55 Quoted in Thorne (1986), p.106.56 Thorne (1978), p.455.57 Ibid., p.146.58 Ibid., p.149.59 Ibid., p.95.60 The historical confusion persists. When President Bush visited Mongolia on

21 November 2005, he celebrated the common experience of settling the plainsand shaking off colonial rule. Sanger (2005). It was as if he spoke as the chiefof the Sioux Nation, rather than as the leader of the descendents of those whohad conquered it and colonized their plains.

61 The Philippine pre-war government ministers José Laurel and Jorge Vargasendorsed the role of Japan in fighting for Asia against what they saw asAnglo-Saxon imperialism. The Philippines was declared independenton 14 October 1943, and President Laurel declared war on the USA inSeptember 1944. Three quarters of the pre-war elected Senate served inLaurel’s administration. In spring 1943, many leading Filipinos were sent toJapan for training as political leaders, including President Laurel’s son.

62 Stimson denounced the mixing of the two races. John Foster Dulles and otherswere particularly concerned that when Black Americans were serving in GreatBritain, the rules of segregation that applied at home were not enforced by theBritish, and Stimson complained to Roosevelt about this. There were manyracial incidents, sometimes involving gunfire, among American troops inBritain as attempts were made to impose social segregation in a country wherethe imperial ethos mandated that all the Kings subjects were entitled to thesame treatment, irrespective of race. Violent incidents are described in James(2001), pp.673–84. A contrary view highlighting British intolerance is given inHorne (2004), pp. 234–43.

63 Thorne (1978), p.143. Others resented the American accusations that theBritish Empire was a means of economic exploitation, while at the same timeregarding Latin America as the USA’s economic preserve.

64 Lord Cranborne was indignant that one of his own coloured staff at theColonial Office was barred from his usual lunchtime restaurant because it wasused by White American officers.

65 Thorne (1978), p.339.66 Ibid., p.209.67 Ibid., pp.82 and 13.68 Ibid., p.339.69 By 1954, the USA was paying 90 per cent of the costs of France’s war in Indochina.

Notes to pp. 118–123 251

70 Prados (2002), p.8.71 By 1952, the USA had supplied the French with 777 armoured vehicles, 13,000

transport vehicles, 228 aircraft and 253 naval vessels. Prados (2002), p.10. By1954, France was being given $1.1 billion per year and was the largest recipientof American military aid.

72 Prados (2002), p.13.73 As the US Air Force Chief of Staff put it, ‘You could take all day to drop a

bomb, make sure you put it in the right place . . . and clean those Commies outof there; and the band could play the Marseillaise and the French could comemarching out . . . in great shape.’ Prados (2002), p.212.

74 Prados (2002), p.214.75 Johnson (2004c), pp.131–2. General Matthew Ridgeway’s assessment was that

American involvement would require more than 300,000 troops who wouldsuffer heavy casualties for up to 7 years, at great financial cost. Johnson(2004c), p.132.

76 Prados (2002), p.213.77 Dower (2000), p.471.78 The USA created the offence of ‘waging an aggressive war’ retrospectively.

General William Chase wrote, ‘We used to say in Tokyo that the US had betternot lose the next war or our generals and admirals would all be shot at sunrisewithout a hearing of any sort.’ The US Army Chief of Staff, George Marshallapparently ruled that the receipt of orders by American service personnel couldbe used in legal defence of any American accused. This was not to apply toJapanese defendants. Bradley (2003), pp.315 and 320.

79 Before Japan’s attack on the USA, Hirohito obviously had some intimation thathe might be held responsible if Japan lost. On 16 September 1941, he askedKonoe, ‘What will happen should Japan be defeated? Will you, Prime Minister,bear the burden with me?’ Bix (2000), p.382.

80 Tojo was asked after the war who had been responsible for starting it. Hereplied to his American captors that ‘You are the victors and you are able toname him now. But historians 500 or 1,000 years from now may judge differ-ently.’ On 11 September 1945, Tojo attempted and failed, perhaps deliberately,to commit suicide with an American pistol, a culturally aberrant choice ofweapon. In his redundant suicide note he predicted that with the continuationof the Imperial house and the loyalty of the people, Japan would return toprosperity. Butow (1961), pp.448, 451, 462, 465 and 468.

81 Haslam (1991), p.41.82 On news of the fall of Port Arthur, Lenin exclaimed, ‘The European bourgeoisie

has its reasons to be frightened, the proletariat has its reasons to rejoice. Thedisaster that befell our worst enemy meant not only that Russian freedom hadcome nearer.’ Deutscher (1966), p.515. See also Lenin (1905).

83 The USSR never recognized the Treaty of Portsmouth and Japan’s control overSouth Sakhalin. From 1918 to 1922, the Japanese occupied the Soviet FarEastern province and only departed North Sakhalin in 1925. Soviet fears wereraised once more by the Japanese conquest of Manchuria in September 1931which was seen to threaten Soviet territory.

84 Lenin, in the preface to the 1920 French and German editions of (Lenin 2004)which was first published in 1917.

85 The terms were agreed, and Stalin was elated that the USA had thus ‘rehabilitated’itself, in his eyes, after its role in drawing up the Treaty of Portsmouth. AndreiGromyko later recalled Stalin’s reception of Roosevelt’s letter, ‘Several times hepassed through the room . . . with it in his hands, as though he did not want tolet go of what he had received. And he was still holding the letter in his handat the moment I left him.’ Quoted in Haslam (1991), p.43.

252 Notes to pp. 123–125

86 Quoted in Haslam (1991), p.44.87 Deutscher (1966), p.515.88 Haslam (1991), pp.38–50.89 In 1957, Khrushchev described the complexity of Soviet relations with Japan

and the enduring impression left by the Japanese attacks of 1904 and 1918. Ina letter to Prime Minister Ikeda on 8 December 1961, he again referred to theaggression of 1904 which ‘inflicted a great deal of grief on the Russian people’.Haslam (1991), pp.46–7. Attempts to settle territorial issues were renewed inOctober 1969 but foundered, for the same reason. Gromyko noted, ‘Historyhas reinforced a sense of caution in the consciousness of our people towardsthe good intentions expressed by the politicians of that country. They knowabout the treacherous attack by Japan in 1904 on Port Arthur, that led to thestart of the Russo-Japanese War.’ Haslam (1991), p.40.

90 For example, Harrison Salisbury’s The Coming War between Russia and Chinaof 1969 maintained that war was imminent. Salisbury (1969).

91 Between 1960 and 1964 there were about 1,000 incidents on the border, andthere were 4,189 between October 1964 and March 1969 when the majorSino-Soviet clash occurred. Kaneko, Sakaguchi and Mayama (2003), p.5.

92 In 1965 the USSR had twenty divisions on the frontier with China, but by 1973it had forty-five and fifty-five by the mid-1980s.

93 The complexities of the tri-polar relations between the USA, China and theUSA and the Cold War are described in Ross (1993).

94 Kaneko, Sakaguchi and Mayama (2003), p.8.95 Bellamy (1992), pp.50–6.

8 Asia on the march

1 Fuller (1963), pp.142 and 170.2 Quoted in Warner (1974), p.541.3 Curle (1926), p.283.4 Quoted in Warner (2002), p.545.5 Falk (1937), pp.vii–viii.6 Ibid., p.viii.7 This ‘Black Internationalism’ is described in Gallicchio (2000).8 Clarke (1998).9 Admiral Koda Yoji has criticized Japan’s failure to disrupt the USA in 1941 as

it had Russia in 1904. ‘The United States . . . had problems that Japan couldhave capitalized upon . . . nationwide racial issues, and her relationship withMexico.’ Koda (2005), p.22.

10 Bayly and Harper (2004), pp.7–8.11 In September 1940, the British arrested the Japanese press attaché, Shinozaki

Mamoru following a ‘sightseeing tour’ of southern Malaya with two compan-ions, one of whom was Colonel T. Tanikawa, chief of planning for the ImperialArmy. Bayly and Harper (2004), p.26.

12 In June 1940, Aung San, Thakin had been particularly offended by the Britishplacing a price on his head of just Rs 5, the price of a chicken. Bayly andHarper (2004), p.12. Aung San’s daughter became a prominent dissidentagainst the Burmese Government 50 years later.

13 While travelling back to Burma from London via Hawaii, he called at theJapanese consulate, which remained open even after the Japanese air attacks,to offer his services should Japan invade Burma. Bayly and Harper (2004),p.104.

14 Quoted in Hoyt (2001), p.245.

Notes to pp. 126–130 253

15 Quezon had fought as a nationalist against American forces in the Philippines, butsurrendered in 1900 to Major General Arthur MacArthur. Schom (2004), p.174.

16 The proposal was endorsed by Douglas MacArthur who chose at the same timeto accept a gift of $500,000 from the Philippine Government. Thorne (1986),p.204.

17 Quoted in Hoyt (2001), p.250.18 In 1942, Yamashita was ‘banished’ to command in Manchuria having made a

speech in Singapore referring to the conquered as citizens of Imperial Japan.The authorities in Tokyo saw matters differently. Yamashita was executed bythe Allies on 23 February 1946.

19 L.E. Eastman cited in Thorne (1986), p.20.20 After the war the Huk was disarmed, but in 1948 it began a guerrilla campaign

against the Philippine government. MacArthur refused to send forces to fightthe Huk, saying that if he were a Filipino peasant, he would be a member of ithimself. Manchester (1983), p.16.

21 Bayly and Harper (2004), p.16.22 Ibid., p.23.23 In May 1941, the British arrested Ng Yeh Lu the leader of the Malayan

Communist Party. By 1970, he had become Singapore’s Ambassador to Japan,under another name. Chin Peng of the Malayan Communist Party set up theMalayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army. He was awarded the Officer of theOrder of the British Empire (OBE) by the British at the end of the war but wenton to lead the Chinese Communist insurgency against the British in Malayawhich had failed by the early 1950s.

24 Iriye (1999), pp.213, 215 and 218.25 Bayly and Harper (2004), p.316.26 Ibid., p.313. The Japanese Army sold Persian heroin in China. Ienaga (1978),

p.165.27 Ienaga (1978), p.155.28 Ibid., p.173. Gerald Horne paints a very different picture, emphasing how

much the Japanese conquested Malaya and Singapore was welcomed by muchof their population. See Horne (2004), Chapter 8.

29 Dower (1986), p.7.30 For Gandhi, ‘Machinery . . . represents a great sin . . . ’ and millions of his coun-

trymen probably died from the poverty that resulted from policies sympatheticto this notion. This judgement is at odds with the emotional attraction of hisviews and is thus often rejected, especially by those who have not been the vic-tims of Gandhi’s economic theories. The admiration of Gandhi and his advo-cacy of non-violence by so many in the West has been more sentimental andirresponsible than their consciences would probably bear on reflection or inpractice – but it is appealing in the cinema. Gandhi opposed British resistanceto Nazi Germany, ‘I would at once ask the English to lay down their arms . . . anddefy all the totalitarians of the world to do their worst. Englishmen will dieunresistingly and go down as heroes of non-violence . . . ’. Gandhi ‘found no dif-ferences in kind’ between the two sides in the war in Europe. Quoted in ‘Thorne(1986), pp.41 and 164.’ Gandhi initially urged that the Japanese should not beresisted since they would eventually tire of killing. By 1942, he was claimingthat India would show its valour when it was attacked, if this martial commitmentwere traded for independence. His principles were clearly ultimately tradablecommodities where self-interest was concerned.

31 Bayly and Harper (2004), p.246.32 After the war, contrasting his experience of the Japanese with his knowledge of

the British, Mohan Singh praised the nobility of the British race which he hadonce hated.

254 Notes to pp. 130–133

33 Quoted in Bayly and Harper (2004), p.455.34 Quoted in Thorne (1986), p.113.35 Iriye (1967), p.232.36 Thorne (1978), p.310.37 Ibid., p.310. The influential Indian scholar, K.M. Panikar, warned in his India

and the Indian Ocean of the expansion of China as an Asian power, in thewake of Japan’s defeat. J. Brobst in Edmonds and Gray (2001), pp.144–51.

38 Thorne (1978), p.308.39 Ibid., pp.326–8.

9 America advances

1 Gole (2003), p.21.2 Ibid., p.24.3 Embarrassingly, some of F.D. Roosevelt’s family fortune was apparently derived

from the opium trade.4 Fairbank (1970).5 Moser (1999), p.174.6 Thorne (1978), p.663.7 Ibid., p.597.8 Lingering resentment against the American ‘colonial presence’ in the Far East

was witnessed in the rejection by the Philippines in 1992 of continuing the USForces’ basing-rights in that country. The degree to which the Philippines hadmoved away from American influence was evident in the erection of a statue inmemory of the kamikaze pilots on Mabalacat Airfield (formerly the AmericanClark Air Base), albeit with commercial motives in mind. In 2004, Japan overtookthe USA as the Philippines’ primary trading partner. Berger, 2005.

9 Quoted in Thompson (2001), p.326.10 Thompson (2001), p.379. Chalmers Johnson’s has described American

extraterritoriality in its ‘colonies’ as typical of the ‘imperial’ attitude that gen-erated anti-Americanism in South Korea, Japan and the Philippines. Johnsoncited American support for actions such as the killing by Syngman Rhee’sGovernment of tens of thousands of rebels on Cheju Island between April 1948and May 1949. Johnson (2004a), pp.100–1.

11 Thorne (1986), pp.197–8.12 Roosevelt agreed to Stalin’s terms for entering the war against Japan without

reference to the Chinese.13 Coker (1998), p.12.14 In 1945 the USA received rights of extraterritoriality in Okinawa similar to

those of the British treaty-ports in nineteenth-century China. The USA occupiedand ruled Okinawa until 1972. Similar rights were established in 1954 forAmerican bases on Taiwan.

15 Thompson (2001), pp.328–9.16 Ibid., p.308.17 Ibid., p.309.18 Ibid., p.387.19 Edward Luttwak, ‘Imperialism Ancient and Modern’, The British Academy, 29

October 2004.20 Moser (1999), p.5.21 Ibid., p.40.22 Ibid., p.178.23 Ibid., p.24.24 Vlahos (1980), p.106.

Notes to pp. 133–141 255

25 Moser (1999), p.107.26 Ibid., p.108.27 Ibid., p.127.28 Thorne (1978), p.107.29 Quoted in Thorne (1986), p.24.30 Quoted in Thorne (1985), p.25.31 Moser (1999), p.131.32 Ibid., p.145.33 The value of the investments of the Anglo-Dutch Shell Oil Company in the

Netherlands East Indies was greater than the value of all American investmentsin China and Japan combined. The USA was also dependent upon parts of theBritish Empire for some strategic commodities, taking 90 per cent of its rubberand 75 per cent of its tin from Malaya.

34 Meacham (2004), p.238.35 Ibid., p.239.36 Thorne (1978), p.140. In 1936, President Roosevelt had sent US Marines to

take the British owned Canton Island in the Phoenix Islands for use as a stopoff for Pan American Airways.

37 Thorne (1986), p.227.38 The British were shocked by the tough terms of American material support, the

payment of the maximum amount in cash, with gold shipped from SouthAfrica. Churchill, who acknowledged the absolute necessity to keep Americansupport noted unhappily, ‘As far as I can make out we are not only to beskinned but flayed to the bone.’ Thorne (1978), p.105. During the war,Britain’s external disinvestment was £30 billion. The principle of equal sacri-fice and full partnership between Allies caused further resentment in Britain,for over 75 per cent of public opinion in the USA wanted Britain to repay thefull cost of lend-lease material.

39 Thorne (1978), p.138. In 1939, Britain had gold reserves of £650 billion; butby 1945, these stood at £1 billion.

40 Irving (1989), p.9.41 Thorne (1978), p.72.42 Meacham (2004), p.245.43 Ibid., p.295.44 Thorne (1978), p.508.45 Thompson (2004), p.276.46 Bradley (2003), p.304.47 Thorne (1978), p.689.48 Dower (2000), p.550.49 Thorne (1978), p.12.50 ‘The bankrupting of Britain’ remained a sensitive issue 60 years later in the

debate about ‘Anglo-Saxonism’, values and empire. A.N. Wilson depicted theUSA as behaving like a predatory empire bent on bringing down Britain.Wilson (2005). Andrew Roberts criticized this thesis on the grounds that, givenBritain’s collapse, ‘it was imperative for the other half of the English-speakingpeoples to step into the breach’. Roberts (2005b). Thus, the view that there isbut one broadly beneficial Anglo-Saxon imperium and that it has some ongoingmission in international affairs lives on in today’s debate about twentieth- andtwenty-first-century history.

51 Moser (1999), p.184.52 Anderson and Cayton (2005).53 The implications of the ending of the tri-polarity of the Cold War are assessed

in Ross (1993).54 Layne and Schwarz (1993), p.21.

256 Notes to pp. 141–146

55 Johnson (2004a), p.217.56 Peters (1998), p.238. An even more optimistic view of the waxing power of the

USA was offered in Peters (2005).57 Peters (1998), p.215.58 Ibid., p.216.59 Bennett (2004).60 Joffe (2004), p.25. For Joffe, the American empire would be one based upon a def-

inition of mutual interests and the creation of reciprocal obligations, rather thanmilitary occupation and economic exploitation. The USA’s primary imperialagency was thus the granting of preferential access to the USA’s market, technol-ogy, culture and society; but even membership of organizations such as the WTObrings nations into this imperial orbit. Eventual global governance ‘can only bedone with American leadership and American-led institutions . . .America’sguiding vision for the 21st Century’, Joffe (2004), p.36.

61 Barnett (2004). Barnett condemned ‘The Myth of America as Globocop’ andthe ‘Myth of the American Empire’. Barnett (2004), pp.350 and 354–66.

62 Ibid., p.359.63 Ibid., p.360. Barnett asserted that ‘Globalization does not come with a ruler,

but with rules.’ The USA, however, was often the enforcer of the rules whichwere based on Western values, and those rules were often of the USA’s making.Barnett merely noted, without apparent sense of irony, that ‘America seeksglobal adherence to protocols, nothing more.’ He did not explain why othersshould observe these protocols, any more than why the USA should observe theprotocols of others. Indeed there is stiff resistance in the USA to the notion ofits complying with international laws, let alone with any that might be at oddswith its Constitution. His was thus a deeply traditional, Western imperialworld view, rooted in a new American exceptionalism. Barnett insisted that ‘Itis not nationalism that drives America to spread its ideals around the world butan innate need to share our belief in a better tomorrow.’ Barnett (2004), p.356.For him, it was therefore this ‘soft Manifest Destiny’, not imperialism, thatmotivated the USA. Barnett thereby appeared inadvertently to make the case hesought to deny.

64 Galeti (2004), p.3.65 Ferguson (2004b).66 Boot noted that Britain had controlled a quarter of the globe with 331,000

servicemen and by spending just 2.4 per cent of its GDP on defence. Boot(2005), p.2. He advocated the creation by the USA of a class of colonial admin-istrators and agents similar to that of the British Empire, and the use of largenumbers of indigenous auxiliaries, conducting nation-building by proxy and bystealth.

10 Nippon resurgat

1 Yoshida (1999), p.40.2 Jung Chang and Jon Halliday claim that it was Chiang Kai-shek, not Mao, who

wanted a united front against the Japanese. Mao calculated that if Chiang weredefeated then the Soviets would be forced to intervene against Japan. Theyassert that after the Nazi–Soviet Pact of 1939, Mao reached an agreement withJapanese military intelligence to help undermine Chiang. They allege that after1945, Mao used former Japanese prisoners of war of the Soviets to train hisarmy and to create his air force. Some Japanese apparently also fought for him.Chang and Halliday (2005).

3 Buruma (2003a). Terrill (2003), pp.283–4.

Notes to pp. 146–148 257

4 In 1953, Vice-President Richard Nixon described this element of the JapaneseConstitution as ‘an honest mistake’. Quoted in Buruma (2003b), p.132.

5 Nathan (2004), p.13.6 During the Korean War, Toyota supplied the US Army with 1,500 trucks per

month, the proceeds of which were largely invested in future car production.Stalin’s death in 1953 caused the Tokyo stock exchange to plummet as theeconomic cost of peace was appreciated.

7 Quoted in LaFeber (1998), p.305.8 From 1955 and into the 1960s the CIA is widely thought to have provided

secret funding to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) as a bulwark againstCommunism. Johnson (2004a), p.16.

9 Japan played a critical role in setting up the Asian Pacific Council (ASPAC) andthe Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), without majorAmerican involvement.

10 Nevertheless, in September 1950 when MacArthur counter-attacked north ofthe 38th Parallel he was apparently assisted by undisclosed secret Japaneseunits. See, The Unknown War by J. Halliday and B. Cummings (1988). InOctober 1950, Japanese minesweepers were said to have cleared WonsanHarbour. Friedman and Lebard (1991), p.285.

11 Friedman and Lebard (1991), p.121.12 Emmott (1989), pp.1–3.13 Iriye (1997), p.168.14 See Barnet and Mueller (1974).15 Prestowitz (1988), p.70.16 Johnson (1982).17 Prestowitz (1988).18 Emmott (1989), p.196.19 Ishihara (1992).20 Quoted in Burstein (1988), p.13.21 Wolf (1983).22 Braddon (1983).23 Quoted in Emmott (1989), pp.8–9. When Japan seemed not to fulfil this dire

prediction, Prestowitz transferred that mantle of menace to China, whose roar-ing economic development would be the USA’s downfall. This case may bestronger than his first. Prestowitz (2005).

24 Prestowitz (1988).25 Burstein (1988), p.67.26 Ibid., p.35.27 Ibid., pp.13–20.28 Such arguments were reinforced by claims that the post-war Japanese govern-

ment was very similar, at least in its cast of personalities to that of the defeatedregime of 1945. The role in the founding of the Liberal Party by convicted warcriminals Kodama Yoshio and Tsuji Karoku was seen as evidence of this, aswas the appointment of another war criminal Kimura Toutaro to the post ofMinister of Justice.

29 Burstein (1988), p.6.30 Prestowitz (1988), p.333.31 Friedman and Lebard (1991), p.7.32 Johnson (2004a), p.60.33 Friedman and Lebard (1991).34 Prestowitz (1988), p.305.35 Kearns (1992).36 Prestowitz (1988), p.110.

258 Notes to pp. 148–155

37 Beason and Patterson (2004).38 Hall (2002), p.10.39 Bosworth (1992), p.113.40 ‘Asian leaders find it incomprehensible that the United States does not recognize

the inevitable consequences for its national power of its mounting debt . . . ’.Bosworth (1992), p.128.

41 Hall (2002), p. xxiv.42 Quoted in Emmott (1993), p.38.43 ‘So Hard to be Friends’, The Economist, 26 March 2005, p.26, London.44 By 2003, Asia accounted for 48 per cent of Japanese exports and the USA for

only 24 per cent. The main reason for Japan’s current account surplus increasingby 13 per cent in early 2004 was exports to China. Zaun (2004).

45 Pilling (2004b).46 Ibid.47 In October 2003, Western literature described the fate of the colleagues of the

first President George Bush, shot down and captured by the Japanese inSeptember 1944 on Chichi Jima, the island at which Perry had called on hisway to Tokyo. They were apparently butchered by garrison surgeons andselected body parts cooked with soy sauce and eaten at a special dinner forJapanese officers. Bradley (2003).

48 Lloyd Parry (2004), p.2.49 See for example, Menpes (1905).50 Vogel (1981).51 Nippon Steel Corporation had 8,000 such groups in 1982. Nippon . . . (1982),

p.131.52 Nippon . . . (1982), p.119.53 Ibid., p.123.54 By 1990 there were about 1,000 books on the subject. Some explained

Japanese uniqueness on their having 10 metres more intestine than other races,on their brains and thinking processes being organized differently, or on thepeculiarities of Japanese soil. The website www.alllooksame.com playfullypointed out that any difference was hard to discern.

55 Henning (2000), pp.170–1.56 A polemical view was published by Dr Mahathir Mohamad, and the Japanese

nationalist, Shintaro Ishihara, in 1995 in their The Voice of Asia: Two LeadersDiscuss the Coming Century. Their assertion that by 2000 combined AsianGNP would exceed that of America and Europe was made to look wayward bythe economic woes of 1997–8. Calls for Japan to act as a more assertive leaderfor Asians and to stop worrying about criticism of its role in the Second WorldWar were made by Mahathir Mohamad in June 2000.

57 Quoted in Smith (1998), p.10.58 Underlying the plot of Rising Sun is the apparent assumption that Japanese

men are motivated by the desire to obtain Aryan American women, and thatthe demise of the USA in the face of this onslaught is a consequence of socialindiscipline and Western moral degeneracy. Colonel Maude and LordKitchener would probably have enjoyed the film.

59 Quoted in Spillius (1998).60 The language of historical grievance and cultural divide lay just beneath the

surface of Asian politics. In December 2002, the Australian Prime Minister saidthat he would authorize pre-emptive strikes on neighbouring countries if theythreatened Australia’s interests. This was reported to have provoked a vigorousresponse from Dr Mahathir, using his familiar points of historical reference.‘This country (Australia) stands out like a sore thumb in Asia, trying to impose

Notes to pp. 155–160 259

colonial values . . . as if these are the good old days where people can shoot atAborigines without caring for human rights.’ Johnston (2002).

61 He is reported to have declared the British, Americans and Australians propo-nents of ‘war, sodomy and genocide’. Quoted in Simpson (2003). Mahathirwho considered himself a Malay despite being the son of an Indian immigrant,seemed impatient with his people, ‘I still cannot get Malays to understand theworkings of a free market economy and what they must do about it.’ Quotedin Spillius (2003).

62 Ian Buruma has attributed Japanese political failure in managing the growingcrisis of 1940–1 to a systemic irresponsibility, with decision-makers lurchingfrom one crisis to another, reacting to events, while the emperor, the ultimateauthority, in effect had none.

63 Buruma (2003b), p.97.64 Katz (2003), p.125.65 ‘The American Way’, The Economist, 3 April 2004, p.73, London.66 Katz (2003), p.115.67 The American hero is temporarily marooned in Japan, confounded by anatom-

ical difference and cast adrift in cultural bewilderment. The film created astormy debate on the internet, with many accusing it of bigotry and racism.Day (2004).

68 The film represents the story of Saigo Takamori, the samurai who helped torestore the Meiji emperor, only to see the samurai class stripped of its traditionsas Japan was launched on the path of modernization.

69 Another popular manga, Space Battleship Yamato appealed to the same patrioticsentiment.

70 The Yamato Museum, which opened in April 2005, featuring a one tenth scalemodel of the battleship Yamato, astonished by attracting 430,000 visitors in itsfirst 4 months, more than three times original estimates. Fackler (2005), p.5.The model was the star of a stirring war film about the ship’s demise, releasedin 2005.

71 von Wolferen (1989).72 Report of a CIA-funded seminar of 1991, Japan 2000, quoted in Henning

(2000), p.172.73 Hasegawa (1984), p.11.74 Ibid., p.12.75 Quoted in Hasegawa (1984), p.10.76 Shoji (2003). A nationalist view developed that Japan had fought a war to

liberate Asia from Western imperialism; a war that began when CommodorePerry forced the West upon it – the ‘Hundred Years War’. The ‘Fifteen YearWar’ interpretation saw Japan as waging a war of aggression against Asia, inparticular against China, beginning with the ‘Manchurian Incident’ and endingin 1945. This was seen as a war in which the rest of Asia defeated Japan. The‘Seventy Years War’ saw China triumph over Japan after a prolonged strugglefollowing China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War.

77 Ienaga Saburo was an opponent of the Japanese ‘patriotic’ version of historyfor over 30 years, fighting his campaign in the courts against what he saw asGovernment censorship. Kersten (2004), p.22.

78 Okamoto (1998), Period 1, p.6.79 Murao Jiro, quoted in Okamoto (1998), Period 3, p.1.80 Quoted in Hasegawa (1984), p.4.81 Reported in The Daily Telegraph, 23 February 2001.82 Quoted in Nathan (2004), p.131.83 Kersten (2004), p.21. While the Chinese complained that the Japanese have

never faced up to their culpability in the Second World War, the Chinese

260 Notes to pp. 160–165

Communist Party (CCP) has arguably been even more remiss in facing up to itsown history. Chinese textbooks make no reference to China’s 1,000-year colo-nization of Vietnam, or of its invasion and rule of Korea. They make no refer-ence to the famine caused by ‘the great leap forward’, or to Japan’s inadvertentrole in the CCP’s rise to power.

84 See ‘Court Rules Koizumi’s Yasukuni Shrine Visits Were Private’, Japan Today,14 May 2004.

85 During the Asian Cup football final on 7 August 2004, in Beijing betweenChina and Japan, the Chinese crowd displayed aggressive nationalist behaviouragainst anyone looking Japanese. See ‘Grudge Match’, The Economist,14 August 2004, p.50.

86 ‘So Hard to be Friends’, The Economist, 26 March 2005, p.27, London.87 Lloyd Parry (2005c).88 Reported in Nakamoto (2004).89 Lloyd Parry (2005c).90 The Emperor Akihito caused nationalists some consternation when he asserted

privately, but presumably no less authoritatively, that it was not necessary tostand during the playing of Kimigayo (‘His Majesty’s Reign’). Joyce (2004).

91 The film opens with the statement that ‘The Greater East Asian War wasfought in self-defense’, echoing the Emperor Hirohito’s words when Japandeclared war in 1941. Kase Hideaki, the co-producer of the film said that hiswas the first film about Japan as the liberator of Asia. The role of Japanesesoldiers in fighting for Indonesian independence and shaping its system ofgovernment is described in Greenlees (2005), p.5.

92 The Japanese have always tried to avoid obligations of collaborative militaryaction in their alliances, and the same is true of their alliance with the USAsince 1945. In 1960, it was agreed that American forces based in Japan wouldonly be used after ‘prior consultation’. In practice this was never observedbecause agreement after consultation would have implied Japanese support forthat action. Koji (2000), p.22.

93 Japan apparently secretly sent twenty-eight landing craft, flying the US flag,manned by Japanese in US uniforms, to operate along the Vietnam coast. Theysustained deaths and other casualties. LaFeber (1998), p.343.

94 Hoyt (2001), p.x.95 Funabashi (2003), p.46.96 Karniol (2005b), p.27.97 Japan deployed troops for UN duty in Cambodia in 1992 and in Mozambique

in 1993. It helped with relief to Rwanda in 1994 and deployed UN observerson The Golan Heights from 1996. Japan contributed a further 600 troops forpeacekeeping in East Timor in 2002.

98 Review of Nathan (2004) in The Economist, 7 February 2004, p.85, London.99 Larimer (1999).

100 Quoted in Larimer (1999).101 See Sherman (2001).102 ‘Report on Defense and Strategic Studies . . . ’ (2003), Part IV, p.23.103 Pilling (2004a).104 An assessment of North Korea’s strategic intentions is given in Scobell (2005).105 Quoted in Green (2003).106 Ibid.107 Sherman and Kallender (2003).108 Okada Katsuya, Japan’s main opposition leader, quoted in Brooke and Sanger

(2005), p.A8.109 Alan Dupont saw the deterioration in relations between China and Japan as an

inevitable consequence of both states being powerful simultaneously; but that

Notes to pp. 165–170 261

the tipping of the balance in favour of China would tend to strengthen Japan’sties with the USA. The Australian Chief of Army’s Conference, 22–23September 2005.

110 Harris (2005).111 Ibid. The President of Japan’s National Defence Academy, Masahi Nishihara,

maintained that ‘If there is a conflict between China and the United States overTaiwan, Japan would be almost immediately involved.’ Joyce and La Guardia(2005). He speculated that China might mount a Pearl Harbour-style attack onAmerican forces on Okinawa to prevent them assisting Taiwan in the event ofa Chinese attack.

112 On 12 April 2005, the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, insisted that ‘Onlya country that respects history, takes responsibility for past history and winsover the trust of the people of Asia and the world at large can take greaterresponsibility in the international community.’ Lewis (2005).

113 Spencer (2005a).114 The Japanese Foreign Minister, Machimura Nobutaka announced the initiative,

saying that ‘From the perspective of a Japanese person, Chinese textbooksappear to teach that everything the Chinese Government has done has beencorrect . . . the Chinese textbooks are extreme in the way they uniformly conveythe “Our Country is Correct” point of view.’ Lloyd Parry (2005b).

115 ‘The China Question’, The Economist, 23 April 2005, pp.16–17.116 Improved relations between Japan and the USA caused outrage in South Korea

when it was reported that in May 2005 a Japanese Deputy Foreign Minister,Yachi Shotaro, had told South Korean Members of Parliament that Japan wasreluctant to share American intelligence with South Korea because the USA didnot trust South Korea as much as it trusted Japan. Opinion polls showed thatSouth Koreans held Japan to be a greater threat to peace on their peninsulathan either North Korea or the USA. ‘America Loves One of them More’, TheEconomist, 11 June 2005, p.60.

117 Karniol (2005b), p.28. Former US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitageexpressed the hope that the US–Japan alliance would become more like thatbetween the USA and the UK. Taniguchi (2002).

118 Joyce and Gedye (2003).119 Pilling (2004a).120 Lewis (2004).121 Joyce (2005b).122 Quoted in Pilling (2004c). See also ‘North or South?’, The Economist,

4 September 2004, p.61, London.123 ‘King Solomon’s Pipes’, The Economist, 7 May 2005, pp.70–2, London.124 Quoted in The Economist, 23 February 2002, p.77.125 ‘China’s New Stature’ (1998). Roach (1998).126 Burstein and de Keijzer (1999), p.146.127 Pilling (2004b).128 By 2005, Japan’s growing assertiveness and its closer military partnership with

USA was resented by the Chinese who complained that this partnership madeno sense and was ‘ . . . outdated – but what we see is that it is being strength-ened’. Mallet and Dinmore (2005).

129 Quoted in Onishi (2004), p.A4.130 Larimer (1999).131 Buruma (2003b), p.xi.132 The possible consequences of an American military withdrawal from Japan are

discussed in Tadashi (1998), pp.27–30.133 Burstein and de Keijzer (1999), pp.305–7.134 Ibid., p.147.

262 Notes to pp. 170–174

135 Quoted in The Economist, 17 March 2001, p.24, London.136 The development of Japan’s military capabilities and their integration with

those of the USA is described in Hughes (2004).137 McVeigh (2004), p.282.138 Ibid. He concludes that nationalism does indeed exist in post-imperial Japan

and that it is diverse but is often subject to forces demanding a single identity.139 For example, Smith (1998) and Nathan (2004).140 Menpes (1905), Chapter IV.141 In 1911, Natsume Soseki pondered whether the Japanese civilization was

‘internally motivated’ like that of the West or ‘externally motivated’, formed bypressure from external forces. ‘A nation, a people that incurs a civilization inthis way can only feel a sense of emptiness, of dissatisfaction andanxiety . . . and this is what makes us so pitiful.’ Nathan (2004), p.11.

11 The next hundred years: Chinese futures

1 Kennedy (1989).2 Yao Youzhi, head of the Department of Strategic Research in the Chinese

Academy of Military Research, quoted in Deng (2001), p.347.3 F.P. Sempa in the Introduction to Mahan (2003), p.38.4 Sempa in Mahan (2003), p.39.5 Johnson (2004a).6 The relationship between India and China was discussed in ‘The Tiger in Front.

A Survey of India and China’, in The Economist, 5 March 2005, London.Indians may have to choose between a bias to the USA or to China, rather astheir forebears in 1941 had to choose between the British and the Japanese.

7 Abramowitz and Bosworth (2003), p.119.8 Whereas many in the twentieth century spoke of conflict in terms of race,

culture and civilization, and the meaning of those terms often overlapped, theCommunist lexicon’s code for such differences was often ‘class’, frequentlyapplied to the whole of Western society. What Communist China sometimesportrayed as class struggle was often merely an expression of traditionalEast–West cultural conflict. Deng Xiaoping often spoke of ‘spiritual pollution’from the West and its ‘bourgeois liberalism’, as much as any Japanese imperialistor follower of Gandhi.

9 Mahan (2003), p.99.10 Quoted in Kristof and Wudunn (1995), pp.368–9.11 Atkeson (2001), p.8.12 ‘The Hungry Dragon’, The Economist, 21 February 2004, p.69, London.13 N.R. Lardy, quoted in Perlez (2002).14 J. Castle, former leader of the American Chamber of Commerce, quoted in

Perlez (2002).15 Kristof and Wudunn (1995), p.374.16 Quoted in LaFeber (1998), p.358.17 Pollack (2001b) refers to J.D. Pollack, ‘The Cox Reports’ Dirty Little Secret’,

Arms Control Today, vol.29, no.3, April–May 1999.18 Sutter (1996).19 In April 1996 the US AWC at Carlisle held a conference entitled, ‘China into

the 21st Century: Strategic Partner or Peer Competitor?’ By contrast, the AWCConference of 1–3 October 2004 had a less confrontational title, ‘ChineseCrisis Management’.

20 Pumphrey (2002).21 Barnett (2004), pp.101–6, 226.

Notes to pp. 174–179 263

22 On 24 February 2005, the United Nations’ World Population Prospectspredicted that India’s population would overtake China’s in 2030. Turner (2005).

23 The rise of China’s economic power and its implications for others is discussedin Fishman (2005) and Shenkar (2005).

24 General Fu Quanyou, Chief of the PLA General Staff, quoted in Godwin(2003), p.73.

25 ‘The Dragon and the Eagle. A Survey of the World Economy’, The Economist,2 October 2004, p.8, London.

26 McGregor (2005).27 Spencer (2005c).28 John Gittings maintained that environmental degradation was a greater threat

to Chinese people than political or economic instability. Gittings (2005).29 ‘The Great Wall of Waste’, Special Report on China’s Environment, The

Economist, 21 August 2004, pp.63–5, London. The World Bank estimated thatenvironmental degradation costs China $170 billion per year. ‘China’sGrowing Pains’, The Economist, 21 August 2004, p.11, London. China alsofaces the rapid desertification of much of its farmland. Kuehl (2005).

30 It seemed that China’s surplus with the USA in 2005 might rise to $200 billion.31 In 2003, China replaced Japan as South Korea’s largest export market.32 Burstein and de Keijzer (1999), p.175.33 Ibid., p.172. Such consumption would carry penalties. The environmental threat

to all of China and India consuming resources at the rate that Western popula-tions have become accustomed to, ‘would be catastrophic’. Searjeant (2004).

34 In December 2004, the United States National Intelligence Council maintainedthat ‘The single most important factor affecting the demand for energy will beglobal economic growth, particularly that of China and India.’ Quoted inMallet (2005), p.11.

35 Searjeant (2004).36 Dyer (2005a).37 Daly (2003), p.4. In October 2003, China made an agreement with the Kazakh

Government to build a 400,000 bpd oil pipeline at a cost of $800 million tosupply North-West China.

38 The Chinese People’s Daily maintained that competition over the East China Seawas ‘A prelude of the game between China and Japan in the area of internationalenergy’. The competition for resources between China and Japan was reportedto be at the heart of the incident in November 2004 when a Chinese submarineentered Japanese territorial waters. Spencer (2004). The Japanese Chief CabinetSecretary complained that ‘It is an act of provocation.’ Nakamoto (2004).

39 Pilling (2005), p.7.40 Spillius (2002).41 Kazmin (2002).42 Acharya and Seng (2003), p.145.43 Chao Chien-min, a Taiwanese professor of political science maintained that

‘China is using its huge market as a bait to lure ASEAN nations away from theUS and Japan . . . Japan is in a terrible dilemma now. China’s call for a free tradearea has forced Japan to do something in order to remain as a major player inthe region.’ Berger (2004).

44 Ibid.45 ‘Yankee Stay Home’, The Economist, 11 December 2004, p.11, London.46 China’s aim seemed to be to create a secure environment around its frontiers.

In June 2003, China offered Mongolia $300m, more than its foreign exchangereserves, and in December 2003 Mongolia paid off its $250m debt to Russia.A Mongolian banker noted that ‘It was as if we had decided to close theaccount with Russia and open it with China.’ Murphy (2004).

264 Notes to pp. 180–183

47 Kurlantzick (2005).48 Sheridan (2004b).49 ‘The Dragon and the Eagle. A Survey of the World Economy’, The Economist,

2 October 2004, p.5, London.50 South Korea hoped that production in North Korea might provide an even

greater cost advantage and reduce its dependency upon China. At a summitmeeting in 2000, North and South Korea agreed to build the Kaesong indus-trial complex on the northern side of their border. This would provide SouthKorean industry with a cheap source of labour and avoid having to move muchof its manufacturing base to China. Ward (2004).

51 Atkeson (2001), p.15.52 Gaillard (2003).53 Smith and Rushe (2004).54 Cave (2005).55 Stelzer (2005).56 Quoted in Russell (2005), p.14.57 ‘The Dragon Comes Calling’, The Economist, 3 September 2005, p.26, London.58 Zhang Guobao, Vice-Chairman of China’s National Development and Reform

Commission, referring to efforts by American politicians to block the bid forUnocal. Quoted in ‘The Dragon Tucks In’, The Economist, 2 July 2005, p.70,London.

59 See ‘The Disappearing Dollar’ and ‘The Passing of the Buck’, in TheEconomist, 4 December 2004, pp.9 and 77–80, London.

60 At 4.4 per cent in 2002, China’s exports were a smaller percentage of worldexports than were those of Japan’s record of 10.1 per cent in 1986, and evenits 6.6 per cent of 2001. ‘Is the Waking Giant a Monster?’ The Economist,15 February 2003, p.74, London.

61 ‘The Dragon and the Eagle. A Survey of the World Economy’, The Economist,2 October 2004, p.11, London.

62 ‘Enter the Dragon’, The Economist, 10 March 2001, pp.25–8.63 Pine (2003), p.19.64 ‘Losing its Balance’, The Economist, 20 March 2004, p.14, London.65 Morgan Stanley estimated that by 2004 low-cost production in China had

saved American consumers $100 billion. Watts (2004), p.7. It may be that theentire increase in American consumption in the 1990s can be attributed to thedifference in the price of products imported from China and the cost of thoseproducts if they had been made elsewhere.

66 Quoted in Peterson (2004), p.119.67 The USA, the world’s largest debtor, has the particular advantage of being able

to denominate its debts in its own currency. Others have had to finance theirdebts, denominated in foreign currency, with their own interest rates rising,and a falling domestic currency, causing those debts to spiral rapidly out ofcontrol, placing them at the mercy of direction from international institutions.

68 Meek (2004), p.3.69 Hosking (2004), p.72.70 Roberts (2005a).71 Quoted in Peterson (2004), p.119.72 Japan and China’s falling birth rates, and the probable future need to finance

care for their elderly, will almost certainly require that some of their capitalfinancing American debt be repatriated – the timing of that will be critical forthe global economy. Peterson (2004), p.123.

73 Fears of the threat posed to the USA by China’s growing power were graphicallydescribed in books such as Clyde Prestowitz’s Three Billion New Capitalists.The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East. Prestowitz (2005).

Notes to pp. 183–187 265

74 Bergsten (2004).75 Morgan Stanley’s Andy Xie, quoted in Berman (2004), p.1.76 Morgan Stanley’s Stephen Roach, quoted in Berman (2004), p.1.77 Scotland (2003), p.13.78 China had warned that a devaluation of the Yen could lead to a competitive

devaluation of the Renminbi, and international markets took note. Asia as awhole was now seen to depend more on Chinese economic stability than on theJapanese economy. Roach (1998).

79 ‘Bush Poised to Seal New Friendship with China’, The Daily Telegraph,19 October 2001, p.13, and Gertz (2002), p.xii, London.

80 Sheridan (2002), p.9.81 Quoted in Wolf (2003), p.21.82 The hardening of American views about China is described in Small (2004).83 Mallet and Dinmore (2005), p.11.84 Bernstein and Munro (1997), p.3. The authors argued that China has set itself

strategic goals contrary to American interests, that conflict seems to be themost likely condition between the two countries and that a wealthy Chinapresents a greater threat than did a poor Communist one.

85 Karniol (2000), p.23.86 Gill and Henley (1996).87 H. Hawksley and H. Holberton’s Dragon Strike, for example, envisaged China

going to war with its neighbours, with a surprise air attack on the Vietnamesefleet at Cam Ranh Bay, to secure oil supplies in the South China Sea for itsgrowing economy. Hawksley and Holberton (1997).

88 Annual Report to Congress on the Military Power of the People’s Republic ofChina, United States Congress, 22 June 2000, p.2.

89 You Ji speaking at the Australian Chief of Army’s Conference, Canberra,22–23 September 2005.

90 Quoted in Gertz (2002), p.16.91 Pomfret (1999).92 Quoted in Harrison and McElroy (1999).93 Ming Zhang (1999).94 The Pentagon’s Report of 2002 on the Military Power of the People’s Republic

of China, quoted in Tkacik (2003), pp.314–15.95 Ibid., p.314.96 The extraordinary story of strategic surprise, and the psychology that has made

it possible, is analysed by Keith Payne in his Introduction to Payne (2001).97 Heisbourg (2004).98 Spencer (2005b).99 Godwin (2003), p.35.

100 China was reported to be investing in long-range missiles to keep the US Navyat a distance from its coast. Taniguchi (2002).

101 Godwin (2003), p.42.102 Quoted in Annual Report on the Military Power of the People’s Republic of

China, US Congress, Washington DC, 2002, p.14.103 Editorial in DefenseNews, 13 October 2003.104 Richard Fisher, quoted in Sheridan (2003), p.31.105 Lynch (2003), p.15A.106 With echoes of the Japanese battleship Yamato, Shenzhou means ‘divine ves-

sel’, a homonym of the poetic term for China, Divine Land.107 This perceived threat caused the Taiwanese Prime Minister, Yu Shyi-kun, to

suggest that Taiwan should build a missile force to establish a ‘balance of ter-ror’ in response to the threat of Chinese missiles. It was reported that Taiwanhad tested its own missiles with a range of 150 km. ‘Tit for Tat’, TheEconomist, 2 October 2004, p.64, London.

266 Notes to pp. 187–192

108 Nancy Bergkopf Tucker, quoted from Dangerous Strait, in ‘The Dragon NextDoor’, The Economist, 15 January 2005, p.6, London.

109 Quoted in ‘The Dragon Next Door’, The Economist, 15 January 2005, p.6,London.

110 Quoted in ‘World Bulletin’, The Daily Telegraph, 23 December 2005, p.16,London.

111 The Chinese termed the attack on critical nodes as ‘Acupuncture War’. Acyber-skirmish between China and the USA, or what the Chinese themselvescalled a ‘network battle’, is thought to have occurred on 8 May 1999 follow-ing the American attack on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade; and apparentlyinvolved the mobilization of thousands of IT users. T.L. Thomas (2003), p.12.The Japanese Government and institutions have been subject to continuouscyber attack since 2000; it seems likely that this emanates largely from China.As one Japanese cyber-expert maintained, ‘Whenever there is political tensionbetween China and Japan, the attacks surge.’ Lloyd Parry (2005c).

112 T.L. Thomas (2003).113 Bernstein and Munro (1997), pp.18–32.114 For example, China’s Kilo-class submarines could pose a major threat to

American carriers with wake-homing, 200-knot Russian Shkval torpedoes.Gaillard (2003).

115 Annual Report on the Military Power of the People’s Republic of China, USCongress, 2002, p.8.

116 Burstein and de Keijzer (1999), p.218.117 Quoted in Burstein and de Keijzer (1999), p.218.118 Deng (2001), pp.357–8.119 Ibid., p.363.120 Quoted in Yoshifumi (2000), pp.74–5.121 Rennie (2000), p.18.122 The North Koreans achieved strategic surprise with their development of

long-range missiles. In November 1995, the American intelligence communityreported that ‘No country, other than the declared nuclear powers, willdevelop or otherwise acquire a ballistic missile in the next fifteen years thatcould threaten the contiguous 48 states or Canada.’ On 31 August 1998,North Korea tested its Taepo-Dong I missile. Payne (2001), p.5.

123 Woolsey and McInerney (2003). Some also speculated that China might intervenemilitarily should the North Korean regime collapse. Foley (2004).

124 LaFeber (1998), p.xxi.125 ‘So Hard to be Friends’, The Economist, 26 March 2005, p.25, London.126 Armitage (2005).127 Longman (2004b), p. 71. Longman pointed out that concern about declining

fertility echoed that of Lothrop Stoddard’s Rising Tide of Colour in the 1920s.Longman (2004b), p.75.

128 Darwin’s logic led him to similar views to those who saw the expansion of the bestto be desirable: ‘Our natural rate of increase . . .must not be greatly diminished byany means.’ Darwin (2004), p.liii. He feared that laws and customs might reducecompetition, and prevent the best from out-breeding lesser people. Those whosechildren would be brought up in poverty should not marry. Today it is the pros-perous who tend to refrain from multiplying. Longman (2004b), p. 71. ThomasBarnett has described the international frictions that will likely arise from thechanges in the world’s population after 2050, especially those caused by under-developed nations with large youthful populations set against those of the devel-oped world with falling populations. He struck a Darwinian tone, seeing thedeclining populations of the West as ‘completely against nature as we have cometo understand it . . . frankly we shouldn’t be able to do this as a species . . . . Toomany of the two billion young will be in the Gap’. Barnett (2004), pp.208–9.

Notes to pp. 193–196 267

129 Dyer (1980), p.167.130 Longman (2004a) and Longman (2004b). ‘Death Wish’, The Economist,

2 October 2004, p.36, London.131 Roosevelt (1995), p.314.132 Buchanan (2002), p.109.133 At a Brookings Institution seminar, quoted in The Economist, 18 December

2004, p.66, London.134 Gouré (2004), pp.49 and 56.135 ‘Europe’s Population Implosion’, The Economist, 19 July 2003, p.34, London.136 Ibid.137 Buchanan (2002), p.9.138 Ibid., p.10.139 Hoge (2004), p.2.140 ‘The Incredible Shrinking Country . . . ’, p.71.141 Between 2000 and 2050, the anticipated trebling of the world’s population to

9 billion, will occur entirely in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Buchanan(2002), p.12.

142 ‘Europe’s Population Implosion’, The Economist, 19 July 2003, p.34, London.143 Evans-Pritchard (2004).144 Quoted in ‘A Civil War on Terrorism’, The Economist, 27 November 2004, p.50,

London.145 Eco (2004), p.4.146 Leonard (2005).147 The Economist, 18 December 2004, p.66, London.148 Ibid.149 ‘Half a Billion Americans?’, The Economist, 21 August 2004, p.23, London.150 Peterson (2004), pp.111–25. In 2004, the USA’s birth rate was 2.1 per woman,

1.5 in Western Europe, 1.4 in Japan and 1.2 in Italy. Peterson (2004),pp.121–2.

151 Longman (2004b), p.3.152 Smith (2004), p.3.153 Steyn (2005).154 In the last two decades of the twentieth century, the Chinese population increased

by twice the total size of Russia’s, and in the eastern third of its territory theRussians had only 20 million people, many of whom were not ethnic Russians.At the same time, closer economic ties between China and Russia’s maritimeregions could cause Moscow’s sovereignty to leak away by stealth. In 2004,Nikolai Markovstev a Member of Parliament for Vladivostok complained, ‘Ifofficial policies don’t change, within thirty years the Chinese will dominate theFar East. Last year alone 40,000 Russians left the coastal regions’. Strauss (2004).

155 The desire for a male child has led to illegal selective abortions of female foe-tuses. Abortion is regarded by many of its opponents as a modern self-inflicted‘Holocaust’, echoing the language of ‘race suicide’. Ironically, in 2005, it wasthe USA which was accused of trying to thwart women’s rights by demandingthat the UN renounce abortion rights. Goldenberg (2005).

156 China’s coercive population control policy was one of the main human rightsgrievances of the West. Dinmore (2004).

157 Longman (2004b), p.67.158 Meek (2004), p.4.159 Ibid., p.2.160 K. Campbell in Pumphrey (2002), Chapter 3.161 Burstein and de Keijzer (1999), p.8.162 Ibid., p.8.163 Quoted in Tyler (1999).

268 Notes to pp. 196–200

164 Frank Capra’s Why We Fight depicted China as a united liberal society. PearlBuck saw China as the hope for the USA’s relations with Asia, while any asso-ciation with Britain, the oppressor, would be detrimental to American interests.

165 Quoted in Thorne (1986), p.60.166 Mahan (2003), p.91.167 Gilley (2004).168 Brahm (2001), p.413.169 Atkeson (2001), p.3.170 Gilley (2004).171 Cheng Li maintains that divisions within the Communist Party could evolve

into some form of bi-party political system. Li (2005).172 Meek (2004), p.4.173 Gilboy (2004), p.33.174 Burstein and de Keijzer (1999).175 David Aikman estimates that up to 30 per cent of China’s population may be

Christian by 2030, and that Christianity will provide its dominant world view.Aikman (2003), p.285.

176 Aikman (2003), p.285.177 Ibid., p.292.178 This initiative was launched at the Boao Economic Forum on Hainan Island.

The slogan was repeated when China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visited theUSA in December 2003.

179 Scobell (2003), p.198.180 ‘Peaceful Rise’, The Economist, 26 June 2004, pp.67–8, London.181 J. Grieco in Pumphrey (2002), Chapter 2.182 Deng (2001), p.344.183 See Scobell (2001). The differences are deep seated. China and the USA seem,

for example, to disagree about fundamentals of international law and the useof force, and the UN.

184 Kaplan (2001), p.28. Kaplan cited the principal reasons for freedom aroundthe world: tolerant cultural traditions, British colonization, internationalpressure, US military occupation and political influence.

185 ‘Peaceful Rise’, The Economist, 26 June 2004, p.67, London.186 Derbyshire (2001).187 Quoting the Santoli-Doran Report in Gertz (2002), pp.93–4.188 Gertz (2002), pp.75–7.189 Terrill (2003), p.299.190 Ambrose-Pritchard (2004).191 Roberts (2003), p.19. Concerns about an economically dynamic and poten-

tially expansionist China, ruled by a regime trying to preserve its domesticposition are described in Schweller (1999).

192 Mallet and Dinmore (2005).193 Quoted in de Jonquieres (2005).194 Ian Buruma saw the Chinese Government’s education programmes on patriotic

history and its exhortations to its people to be disciplined and vigilant againstfuture enemies as the only way to avoid repeating the humiliations of the past,as a modern form of Social-Darwinism. He regarded North Korean ideologyas an even more extreme variant of this. Buruma (2005).

195 Martin Vander Weyer maintained that these flaws would eventually curbChina’s economic growth. Vander Weyer (2005).

196 The record of false optimism over Asia’s advance is described in Smith (1998).197 ‘Rich Man, Poor Man’, The Economist, 27 September 2003, London.198 Chang (2001). Also discussed in J. Lloyd-Smith, ‘Is the Party Over?’, The

Evening Standard, 23 January 2004, London.

Notes to pp. 200–205 269

199 Chang (2001), pp.281–2.200 King (2004), p.29.201 Heisbourg (2004).202 Wolf (2003), p.21.203 Published by People’s Daily, Beijing, March 2003.204 Bracken (2000), p.xi.205 Wilborn (1996), p.v.206 Pfaff (2001).207 Quoted in Sherman (2002), p.1208 China began its border security upgrade in 1996. It included 15,000 km of new

roads. In negotiations with Kazakhstan, China kept only 20 per cent of disputedland, and it agreed to keep just 30 per cent of that disputed with Kyrgyzstan.China also conceded most of its claim to the Pamir Mountains to Tajikistan.Treaties with neighbours were praised by The Peoples’ Daily as bringing ‘Afavourable and peaceful atmosphere to China’s northern borders’. Hill (2004).

209 Johnson (2005).210 Tsuneo Watanabe in Pumphrey (2002), Chapter 8.211 Montagnon and Kynge (1999).212 Hu (2005), p.23.

12 Conclusion: centennial themes

1 ‘The Story of Man’, The Economist, Leader of 24th December 2005, p.9, London.2 Zimmermann (2002), p.446.3 Paul Bracken noted the ‘Needham Paradox’ in Bracken (2000), pp.20–3. In the

fifteenth century, the Chinese suppressed the very military technology that didso much to give the West global dominance. Now the Chinese are developingWestern industrial technology in a quasi-Capitalist system which will makethem a great power, perhaps at the relative expense of the West.

4 For example, from Germany after the First World War. Hitler combined thesame inner contradictions of the Japanese of the 1930s, a hatred of modernityalongside the eager and innovative use of its products. The Cambodian revolu-tionary Pol Pot acquired much of his ardour during his education in France.

5 As President Sukarno of Indonesia put it, ‘We can mobilize all the spiritual, allthe moral, all the political strength of Asia on the side of peace.’ Bonnett(2004b), p.111.

6 Ernest Gellner assessed the frictions and outcomes of meetings between ‘high’and ‘low’ cultures, those which develop rapidly depending upon technology,industry and specialized education, and those which are spontaneously repro-ducing, less organized and, thus, poorer. He identified this cultural distinction,rather than race per se, as the cause of international upheaval. Gellner (1983).Samuel Huntington’s ideas were invigorated, not so much by friction with EastAsia as with Islam, and the heated debate over ‘Orientalism’ and‘Occidentalism’ goes on.

7 Francis Fukuyama’s grandfather emigrated from Japan to Los Angeles to avoidbeing conscripted for the Russo-Japanese War.

8 Fukuyama (1993).9 Buchanan (2002). Timothy Garton-Ash’s Free World: Why a Crisis of the West

Reveals the Opportunity of Our Time. Garton Ash (2004), took a more opti-mistic view, seeing opportunities for the West to prevail if Europe and the USAcould agree on how to promote Western values. This theme had resonance withthe situation 100 years ago when the USA and Europe argued about themanner by which they might promote the advance of ‘civilized’ Western values.

270 Notes to pp. 205–215

10 Martin Vander Weyer maintained that ‘superpowerdom’ is more than economicmight, but also a matter of culture, education, science, military hardware andstatesmanship. Vander Weyer (2005).

11 In 2005, China’s oil consumption per capita was still only one fifteenth of theUSA; and its car ownership one per seventy people while in the USA it was onecar for every two. ‘From T-shirts to T-Bonds’, The Economist, 30 July 2005, p.65,London.

12 Putnam Weale (1910), p.150, London.13 Some aspects of Japan’s dilemma about whether its geographical location in

Asia and its cultural heritage make it necessarily ‘Asian’ mirror the debatein the group of islands lying off the opposite western coast of the Eurasian‘World Island’ as to whether they are truly ‘European’.

14 The predicament of liberal internationalism is described in Rieff (2005).15 President Bush speaking at the Royal United Services Institute, London,

19 November 2003. Quoted in Strachan (2005), p.1. Bush asserted in variousspeeches that freedom was God’s gift to every individual, which would imply thatthe USA was acting as His agent in this strategy. This public association of a mus-cular Christianity with the formulation of foreign policy had a Victorian ring toit, absent from Western discourse for many decades. The relationship betweenculture, religion and strategy in modern times is described in Sloan (2005).

16 ‘Kipling’s Men’ admire the high-minded Victorian administrators of the BritainEmpire, just as Theodore Roosevelt did. Max Boot claimed that what‘Afghanistan and other troubled lands cry out for is the sort of enlightened for-eign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpursand pith helmets’. Porter (2005), p.32.

17 Bonnett (2004b), p.37.18 Arnold Toynbee’s Civilization on Trial expressed an early form of globalism. He

pointed out that the history of the West would also become the history of thosewhom it brought together, and the past of those cultures would also become apart of the West’s future. China is most likely to combine many strands in itsway forward: its traditional culture, Christianity, authoritarianism, democracy,free markets and powerful central Government direction and spending power.

19 Hindu civilization is arguably the most successful in the history of mankind, interms of its longevity and insusceptibility to external influence.

20 In 1998, Eliot Cohen maintained that the Pentagon had yet to realize ‘The realityof an America that now acts as a global empire, rather than as one of twosuperpowers, or a normal state.’ Cohen (1998), p.17.

21 Porter (2005), p.31.22 Ibid., p.31.23 Ibid., p.31.24 Ibid., p.32.25 Ibid., p.31.26 Johnson (2004c), p.137. Kennedy appreciated the dangers of the war in

Vietnam being seen in racial or cultural terms. ‘If it were ever converted into awhiteman’s war, we should lose it as the French had lost a decade earlier.’Johnson (2004c), p.137. A sense of greater American competence also encour-aged the belief that the USA would prevail. In 1961, the Joint Chiefs noted that‘The French also tried to build the Panama Canal.’ Johnson (2004c), p.140.

27 ‘American innocence has been historically nurtured and protected by aconveniently selective collective memory.’ Miller (1982). p.253.

28 Johnson (2004a), p.5.29 Edward Luttwak has maintained that few empires in history have had fixed

boundaries, being identified rather by the sway they have had over politicalentities within their wide orbit, and the same is true of the USA in modern

Notes to pp. 216–222 271

times. ‘Empire exists and is defined only in the eyes and minds of those outsidethe empire. People who have an empire must never be trusted to talk abouttheir empire and what it is.’ Edward Luttwak, ‘Imperialism Ancient andModern’, The British Academy, 29 October 2004.

30 Sir Michael Howard, speaking at a conference ‘Imperialism Ancient andModern’, The British Academy, 29 October 2004.

31 Johnson (2004a), p.xxii. In The Superpower Myth, Nancy Soderberg arguedfor an interventionist American foreign policy but that the USA is unable tobend the world to its will by unilateral military action.

32 Gries (2005), p.405. Gries also discussed the spectrum of Chinese opinionabout future relations with the USA and Japan.

33 Parris (2005).34 Fettweis (2000), p.61.35 Thomas Barnett also highlighted the importance of the supply of raw materials

in future international relations. ‘The Flow of Energy or Whose Blood forWhose Oil?’ Barnett (2004), p.214.

36 Thomas Barnett described a new strategic geography. Barnett (2004). Futuredivisions would not be so much between the ‘Old Core’ countries, of what wasonce called the First World or even the West; but between them and the‘New Core’, nations such as China, India, Brazil, South Korea and Russia. Thisdistinction is, however, more likely to be overshadowed by that betweenthe ‘Core’, participating in globalization, and the non-integrating ‘Gap’ offailing, underdeveloped or dysfunctional states.

37 Fettweis (2000), p.71.38 Posen (2003).39 The growing debate about access to raw materials can create some rather

strange and ironic associations. In the 1930s, the Japanese Minister PrinceKonoe believed that the unequal distribution of land and natural resourcescaused war, and that the international system, especially regarding oil supplies,required rationalization to ensure their guaranteed supply in the face of possi-ble disruption by nations such as the USA and Britain. In 2005, AmericanSenator Gary Hart, undoubtedly with benign intent, called for the ‘Persian’Gulf to be placed under international sovereignty, supported by an interna-tional force, to guarantee the supply of oil to the world’s consumers in the faceof possible disruption by hostile states in the region. Gary Hart, speaking atthe Leverhulme Programme’s ‘Changing Character of War’ Seminar, Oxford,8 February 2005.

40 Gray (2004), Paragraph 7.41 Bracken (2000), p.31. Bracken maintained that the Eurasian chessboard had

run out of room for political and military manoeuvre, and that domestic crisescould not be prevented from spilling over into international affairs.‘Technology’s relationship to geography is shrinking everyone’s maneuveringroom, political and military.’ Bracken (2000), p.32.

42 Johnson (2004c).43 Cincotta, Engelman and Anastasion (2003). They believe that reducing popu-

lations and making them healthier and better educated will ‘help to bring abouta more peaceful world’. Cincotta, Engelman and Anastasion (2003), p.19.

44 Cordesman (2005).

272 Notes to pp. 222–226

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Bibliography 291

Abdullah Badawi 183Abe Koki 102Abe Shinzo 169, 170abortion 197, 268 n.155Abyssinia 15Acheson, Dean 123, 150Adachi Buntaro 51Adachi Kinnosuke 27Adams, Brooks 19, 185aerial warfare 32–3, 97;

Chinese military developments 192,193; kamikaze pilots 107–8; navalaviation 98–103

Afghanistan 49, 168, 169, 271 n.16Africa 11, 16, 219, 224, 268 n.141Aikman, David 202, 230 n.69,

269 n.175aircraft carriers 98–9, 100, 108,

192, 193Akagi 106Akaka, Daniel 231 n.86Akashi Motojiro 39,

235 nn.16, 17, 21Aki 99Akihito, Emperor 261 n.90Akiyama, Commander 106Alaska 19Albright, Madeleine 146Alexander III, Tsar 233 n.143Allen, Horace 26Altham, E.A. 41Amalrik, Andrei 126‘Amau Doctrine’ 124‘American Century’ 3, 142, 153,

177, 214American Declaration of

Independence 23Anastasion, D. 272 n.43Anglophobia 76, 95, 120, 141,

143–4, 145–6

Anglo-Saxonism 11, 12, 14, 72, 77,256 n.50

Angola 182anti-Semitism 40Aoki Yutaka 182APEC see Asia-Pacific Economic

CooperationAPT see ASEAN Plus ThreeArai Hakuseki 23Araki Sadao 75Armitage, Richard 262 n.117Army War College (AWC) 91–6, 104,

136, 137, 179, 263 n.19Arnold-Foster, H.O. 65, 235 n.15artillery: indirect fire 2, 32, 35, 37, 38,

56, 57; lessons of Russo-JapaneseWar 55, 56; perceived importance ofmorale over 33–4; see also firepower

ASEAN see Association of SoutheastAsian Nations

ASEAN Plus Three (APT) 182–3Asia: economic crisis (1997) 160;

inevitable clash with Europe 42–3;population growth 268 n.141; riseof 2, 3, 4, 128–35, 161, 227; USpost-war dominance 146; Westerncultural panic 4, 197; see also theEast; Orientalism

Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 124, 130–1,150, 155, 183, 203, 212, 217

‘Asian Century’ 214, 226Asian Pacific Council (ASPAC)

258 n.9Asian values 45, 159, 160, 215–16‘Asianism’ 28–9, 30, 44, 132, 133Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation

(APEC) 185Asia Solidarity Society 27Aso Taro 193ASPAC see Asian Pacific Council

Index

Association of Southeast Asian Nations(ASEAN) 182–3, 258 n.9, 264 n.43

Atlantic, Battle of the 108Atlantic Charter 120, 139Atlantis 242 n.115Atlee, Clement 120, 143atom bomb 97, 109, 248 n.78; see also

nuclear weaponsAung San, Thakin 130, 133, 253 n.12Auslin, Michael 232 n.111Australia: Anglo-Saxonism 11;

Bonga-Wareo track 251 n.48; Britainrelations with 144; Chinese investment in 182; European imperialism 16; fears about security 64; Japanese designs on 28;Mahathir critique of 259 n.60; USsupport for 93, 116, 144; view ofthe Japanese 118; ‘White Australia’principle 115

authoritarianism 203, 204, 214Automedon 242 n.115AWC see Army War College‘Axis of Evil’ 221

Baden-Powell, Robert 53Badmaev, Peter 233 n.143balance of power 77, 81, 206, 226;

China 201, 214; Eurasian 177, 199;regional stability 208

Balck, William 52Balfour, Earl 72Ba Maw 133Bannerman, Alexander 52barbed wire 2, 35, 56Barnett, Thomas 147, 179, 257 n.63,

267 n.128, 272 nn.35, 36Baruch, Bernard 138The Battle of Dorking of 1871 10battleships 3, 99, 100, 108, 226Beale, Octavius 64, 239 n.18Belknap, R.R. 70–1Bell, J.F. 66Bellairs, Captain 52Bellinger, N.L. 103Bely, Andrei 44Ben-my Chree 98Benn, Gottfried 71Bennett, J.G. 16Berle, Adolf 144Bernhardi, Friedrich von 10, 42Bernstein, R. 266 n.84Beveridge, A.J. 22Bin Laden, Osama 228 n.8

Bismarck (battleship) 100Bismarck, Otto von 210Black Americans 68, 117, 231 n.91,

250 n.35, 251 n.62Black Dragon Society 27, 129,

232 n.118, 235 n.16, 240 n.46Black Rain 160Black Sea Fleet 39Blamey, Thomas 114, 144Bliss, Tasker 96, 136, 206, 219Bloch, Jan 11, 32, 41, 42, 54, 127Blok, Aleksander 45Boer War 33Bolkenstein, Fritz 197Bolsheviks 39, 44–5, 125, 237 n.68Bond, General 114Bonnett, A. 219–20Boot, Max 147, 257 n.66, 271 n.16Borodino 108Bose, Rash Behari 129, 131Bose, Subhas Chandra 128, 129,

130, 132Bosworth, S.W. 259 n.40Boxer Rebellion 31Boy Scout Movement 53Bracken, Paul 223, 270 n.3, 272 n.41Braddon, Russell 153, 241 n.85Brazil 182Britain: Anglo-Japanese Treaty (1902)

26, 32, 43, 175; Anglo-JapaneseTreaty (1905) 65; Anglophobia 76,95, 120, 141, 143–4, 145–6; artillery56; Australia 28, 144; ‘bankruptingof’ 70, 145, 256 nn.38, 50; Chinarelations with 16–17, 75; concernsover nation’s discipline 52, 53, 115;gold reserves 256 n.39; Hashimotocritique of 73; Indian resistance to133; Japanese threat to colonies79–80; Japanese ultra-nationalistview of 48; Japan relations with 65,69, 73, 113–14; Lodge’s view of 21;naval aviation 98–9, 100, 102, 103;naval rivalry with the USA 76, 92,141; Pearl Harbour 104, 105; racialunity with the USA 14, 72;Singapore lost to Japan 93, 115,116; Sterling devaluations 186;support for Japan in Russo-JapaneseWar 2, 39; US relations with 15, 77,78, 80–2, 119–22, 140–6; WorldWar One 49; see also Royal Navy

British Empire 11, 15, 64, 78, 116,142; abolition of slavery 219;

294 Index

Anglo-American tensions 119, 120,121, 122, 141–2, 143, 146;Australasian support for 144; ‘civilizing mission’ 119, 222;collapse of 115, 118, 122–3, 141;‘Kipling’s Men’ 271 n.16; as model for United States 23, 147;Pan-Asianist societies 129; US commodity dependence on256 n.33; US discourse of ‘evil’ 221; withdrawal from Asia 118

Brooke-Popham, Robert 114Bruisov, Valerii 44, 148Brzezinski, Zbigniew 200Buchanan, Pat 196, 197, 215Buck, Pearl 269 n.164Budhism (journal) 49Buffet, Warren 187Bunche, Ralph 138Burgess, John 22Burma 116, 120, 121, 182; Chinese

trade with 183; independence 131;Japanese occupation 133; negotiations with Japan 130;US bases in 137

Burstein, Daniel 154, 201Buruma, Ian 232 n.109, 260 n.62,

269 n.194Bush, George W. 185, 188–9, 195,

219, 221, 222, 248 n.73, 251 n.60,271 n.15

Bushido 50, 53, 84, 162, 238 n.80Buzan, B. 230 n.69, 235 n.7Bywater, Hector 87, 99, 204

Cadogan, Alexander 75Cambodia 183, 209, 261 n.97Campbell, Kurt 193Canada 16, 63–4, 182, 238 n.8Canton Island 256 n.36capitalism 175, 198–9, 203Capra, Frank 269 n.164Carnegie, Andrew 14Carolines 92, 137Chamberlain, J.E. 11–12Chamberlain, Neville 79Chang, Gordon 205Chang, Iris 166Chang, Jung 257 n.2Chanute, Octave 32–3Chao Chien-min 264 n.43Chase, William 252 n.78Chatfield, Lord 73, 79, 241 n.79Chemulpo 35, 140

Chen Jitong 17Cheney, Dick 221Chennault, Claire 81Chiang Kai-shek 120, 132, 145, 148,

257 n.2; Fascism 200; India visit134; as student in Japan 47; US support for 139

Chihaya Masataka 89–90, 105–6,247 n.51

China 177–210, 216, 226; Anglo-American rivalry over 80,120–1; ASEAN Plus Three 182–3;Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 130, 212,217; as Asian champion 4, 178, 217;border security 270 n.208; Britishrelations with 16–17, 75;Christianization 202, 230 n.69, 269 n.175; Curle on 74; demography 180, 197, 198, 268 n.154; economic growth 17,156–7, 178, 180–8, 208–9, 212–13;economic instability 204–5, 214;energy consumption 181, 182, 205,264 n.34, 271 n.11; exchange-ratefriction with the USA 184, 185–6,187; future of 198–210; immigrationto the USA 63; India relations with209; Japan conflict with 78–9, 132,148; Japanese expansionism 73, 74;Japanese trade with 150, 151;Japanese trans-oceanic air attack on101; Japan relations with 26–7,47–8, 66, 76, 127, 152, 157, 170–1,174–5, 209; Korean War 148;Lansing-Ishii Agreement 69; Luce on10; military power and development190–4; new norms of behaviour220; oil projects 170, 172, 181–2;open-door policy in 21, 220; rawmaterials 77, 181; as regional power193, 209; rising power of 2, 156,173, 178–80, 197, 202, 203; Russiarelations with 30, 31, 126–7, 179,194, 209–10; ‘soft-power’ 181, 183,206; as strong state 4, 212–13, 214;Taiwan 168, 170; territorial integrity 69; textbook controversies165, 170, 261 n.83, 262 n.114; trade 2, 19, 22, 136, 178, 180–7,189, 212–13, 230 n.58, 241 n.89;US commercial interests in 18, 20,22, 31, 136–7, 178; US debts to185, 186–7, 213, 265 n.72; US discourse of ‘evil’ 221;

Index 295

China (Continued)US relations with 62, 75, 134–5,139, 170, 178–80, 188–90, 195,200–8; US as threat to 189–90,191–2, 194, 195; weakness of 201,232 n.109; Western concerns about16–19, 46, 47–8, 199–200, 203–6,212, 213–14; Yasukuni Shrine controversy 165–6; see alsoSino-Japanese War

China National Offshore OilCorporation (CNOOC) 184

China National Petroleum Corporation(CNPC) 181–2

Chin Peng 254 n.23Chiozza Money, Leo 71Christianity 18, 145, 196, 215; Africa

219; China 200, 202, 214, 230 n.69,269 n.175; ‘civilizing’ effects of 214;Japan 20, 25, 200; Russia 30; USreligious revival 215, 271 n.15

Churchill, Winston: Anglo-Americanrelations 143, 144, 242 n.136,256 n.38; Atlantic Charter 120;Bismarck sinking 100; Chinesethreat to Indochina 135; ‘IronCurtain Speech’ 146; Japanese threat 79, 104; oil supplies242 n.128; Singapore’s fall 249 n.20;US entry into war 80, 82, 116;US Pacific territories 138

Chynoweth, B.G. 95Cincotta, R.P. 272 n.43cinema 158, 160, 162, 166‘civilizing mission’ 42, 119, 145,

218–19, 221, 222Clancy, Tom 160Clark Air Base 138clash of civilizations 4, 12, 42, 218,

235 n.7class struggle 51, 52, 263 n.8Clausewitz, C. von 41, 91Clavell, James 157Cleveland, Grover 14, 21Clinton, Bill 188, 229 n.22, 230 n.86CNOOC see China National Offshore

Oil CorporationCNPC see China National Petroleum

CorporationCohen, Eliot 248 n.73, 271 n.20Cold War 42, 127, 156, 167, 219; end

of 4, 178, 179; Japan’s position164; ‘Third World’ 215; US imperialdecline 177; Western values 218

Collins, Lawton 94–5Communism: China 132, 134, 151,

198–9, 202, 204, 212; class struggle263 n.8; Cold War 218; as Europeanideology 215, 217; India 132;Indochina 123; Japan as bulwarkagainst 150; Korea 139; Russia44–5; US discourse of ‘evil’ 221; USfear of 145

Conrad, Joseph 233 n.133Coolidge, Calvin 72Corbett, Julian 38Corregidor 95Cotton, L.A. 68Craigie, Robert 82Cranborne, Lord 251 n.64Cresson, Edith 156Crichton, Michael 160, 190Cuba 229 n.22cultural conflict 2, 194, 263 n.8,

270 n.6Cultural-Darwinism 127cultural panic 4, 128, 152, 197, 211cultural perceptions 15, 46, 51, 53, 74,

157–63, 200; see also raceculture: clash of civilizations 218;

Western model 216Curle, J.H. 71–2, 74, 128Curtin, John 115Curtis, W.E. 20cyber attacks 166, 193, 267 n.111

D3A bomber 99Dark Ocean Society 25Darwin, Charles 9, 10, 15, 16, 25,

267 n.128Darwinian theories 2, 9–10, 13, 14,

23, 206, 211; Cultural-Darwinism127; demography 196; Japanesescientists 51; resurgence of 212;Russian imperialism 29; Social-Darwinism 10, 41, 51, 71,75, 204, 214, 269 n.194; see also‘survival of the fittest’

Davis, A.C. 123Davis, Elmer 122de Keijzer, A. 201Dealey, J.O. 72Debt of Honor 160‘Deep Battle’ 57, 129, 191defensive strategy 2, 33, 37–8, 55–6,

85, 93, 164Dekansky, – 39Dell 186

296 Index

Deming, W.E. 158–9democracy 198, 200–1, 203, 214, 221demography 4, 127, 224; China 180,

197, 198, 268 n.154; decline of theWest 196–8, 211, 212; strategic 14,42, 222

Deng Xiaoping 189, 263 n.8Derbyshire, John 203Dewey, Admiral 106, 231 n.99DeWitt, J.L. 95, 96, 117, 250 n.34Dobbie, W.G.S. 79Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 28‘Double Patriots’ 51Douglas, Robert 49Drum, H.A. 94Du Bois, W.E.B. 129Dulles, John Foster 123, 150, 251 n.62Dupont, Alan 261 n.109Dutch East Indies 93, 116, 256 n.33;

see also NetherlandsDyer, T.G. 196

EAC see East Asian Communitythe East 14, 16, 25; inevitable clash

with the West 13, 42–3; Russianidentity 28, 29, 30; spiritualism 21,23; stereotyped views of the West235 n.7; see also Orientalism

East Asian Community (EAC) 183‘Easter Island Effect’ 224East Timor 166, 251 n.49, 261 n.97Eco, Umberto 197economic issues: Chinese growth 17,

156–7, 178, 180–8, 208–9, 212–13;demographic expansion 224;Japanese post-war rebirth 148–57;US global dominance 143, 145, 156,208; see also trade

Eden, Anthony 250 n.40Edmonds, C.H.K. 98Egypt 137Eisenhower, Dwight 123, 150Ely, Eugene 98Emeny, Brooks 77‘The Empty Cradle’ 13–14‘end of history’ 127energy supplies 181, 182, 205, 212,

264 n.34; see also oil;raw materials

Engelman, R. 272 n.43engineers 56entrenchments 37environmental issues 223–4,

264 nn.28, 29, 33

Esenin, Sergei 45Esher, Viscount 13esprit de corps 41, 54, 85;

see also moraleEto Jun 153EU see European Unioneugenics 10, 72, 211Europe: anti-interventionism 220;

Chinese economic threat to 18; concerns over Japanese economicdominance 156; decline of Empires109, 115–16, 118, 122; demographicdecline 196–7; ‘economic sclerosis’160; imperialism 16, 46, 122, 124,222; inevitable clash with Asia 42–3;‘Old’/’New’ dichotomy 196; Russia’sAsian identity 45; transatlanticrelations regarding China 205;see also the West

European Union (EU) 180–1, 196–7,220, 222

Evans, Don 184evolutionary theories 51, 224,

237 n.67; see also Darwinian theo-ries; ‘survival of the fittest’

extraterritoriality 25, 255 nn.10, 14;Japanese in Korea 24; US in China20, 137, 138, 139

‘Fabian Imperialists’ 219Farragut, Admiral 106Fascism: China 200, 203, 204;

as European ideology 215, 217;Japan 84, 132

Federov, Nikolai 29Feis, Herbert 122Ferber, Ferdinand 97Ferguson, Niall 147Ferris, John 249 n.11Fettweis, Christopher 223Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 9Fillmore, Millard 19financial planning 39–40firepower 32, 33, 34, 56; human

character overcoming 54; Russo-Japanese War 37; versusmanoeuvre 55; see also artillery

First World War see World War OneFish, Hamilton 130Fisher, Admiral 98Fiske, B.A. 128–9Fiske, John 11Foch, Ferdinand 33Folger, W.M. 66

Index 297

Force Z 100, 107foreign investment: China 181–2, 186;

Japan 149, 152, 155, 186Formosa 24, 137; see also TaiwanForrestal, J.V. 103Four Powers Treaty (1922) 141France: concerns over Japanese

economic dominance 156; financialweakness after World War One 70;German soldiers in Paris 115; imperial possessions 122; Indochina49, 123; perceptions of degeneracy50–1; ‘triple intervention’ 232 n.127;US military aid to 252 n.71

Fraser-Harris, Fraser 245 n.19Friedman, G. 155frontal assaults 37; see also offensive

strategyFrum, David 221Fuchida Mitsuo 87–8, 102, 106,

244 n.17Fukuda Yasuo 171Fukudome Shigeru 243 n.8Fukushima, Glen 174Fukuyama, Francis 215, 270 n.7Fukuzawa Yukichi 24Fuller, J.F.C. 128Funabashi Yoichi 174Fushimi, Prince 86–7

Ga-Shin-Sho-Tan campaign 232 n.127Gallipoli 54Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand 117,

133, 254 n.30Garton Ash, Timothy 270 n.9Garvey, Marcus 129Gaulle, Charles de 151Geertz, Bill 203–4Gelbe Gefahr 15Gellner, Ernest 270 n.6Gena 98Genda Minoru 88, 100, 102, 246 n.30General Motors 186geopolitics 2, 4, 196, 222–4Germany: aerial warfare 97, 98;

capitalism 203; ‘cult of the offensive’225, 238 n.87; demographic fears211; Fichte 9; French campaign 86;German-Soviet Pact 125, 140, 257 n.2; Haushofer on 228 n.5; inter-war strategy 85; invasion ofSoviet Union 83; Japanese seizure ofPacific colonies 69; Japanese ultra-nationalist view of 48;

Lebensraum 11; Mexico and Japansought as allies 67, 69, 240 n.48;Navy 80, 96, 108; occupation ofthe Rhineland 78; perceptions ofdegeneracy 52; race and culturalstruggle 52–3; Russian perception ofthreat from 30; ‘triple intervention’232 n.127; Tsingtao 69, 93, 98; USdiscourse of ‘evil’ 221; World WarOne 49, 70; Zimmerman Telegram69, 240 n.49

Gilley, B. 201Gittings, John 264 n.28Glassell, W.T. 247 n.51Gliddon, G.R. 9‘Global War on Terror’ 146, 181globalization 19, 61, 177, 257 n.63,

272 n.36Goeben 98Golan Heights 261 n.97Goltz, General von der 32‘good’ versus ‘evil’ discourse 221Gordon, M.L. 25Gouré, Daniel 196Grant, Madison 71, 228 n.1Grant, Ulysses 232 n.114Gray, Colin 223Great Britain see BritainGreat East Asia Conference (1943) 131Greater Asia see Asia Co-Prosperity

Sphere‘Great White Fleet’ 66–7, 80, 92;

see also US NavyGries, P.H. 272 n.32Griffis, W.E. 46Griswold, A.W. 78Gromyko, Andrei 252 n.85, 253 n.89Gronau, Baron von 102Guam 75, 95, 131, 137Guidoni, A. 98Gulf War (1990–1) 167, 190, 248 n.73Gulick, Sidney 46

Haier 184Haig, Douglas 41Haking, R.C.B. 41Halifax, Lord 121Hall, Ivan 156Halliday, John 257 n.2Halsey, Admiral 117Hamby, J.E. 234 n.12Hamilton, Ian 38, 43, 54, 113–14Hamley, E.B. 41hand-grenades 35, 56

298 Index

Handy, Thomas 96Hanson, Victor Davis 215Hara Yoshimichi 83, 91Harris, Arthur ‘Bomber’ 100Hart, Gary 272 n.39Hart, Robert 47Hashimoto Kingoro 72–3Hatta, Mohammed 132Haushofer, Karl 222, 228 n.5Hawaii 13, 15–16, 49, 66, 67, 154;

Clinton apology for illegal overthrow230 n.86; concerns about threat toPearl Harbour 102–3; Japanese population 92–3; self-governance231 n.86; strategic liabilities 207; USannexation of 12, 21–2, 138; USwar planning 94, 95; see also PearlHarbour

Hawksley, H. 266 n.87Hay, John 22, 213Hayashi Fumio 156Hayashi Fusao 107, 164–5Hearst, W.R. 69, 141Henty, G.A. 29Herbert, H.A. 26Herder, Johann Gottfried von 9Higashikuni, Prince 149Hindu civilization 271 n.19Hirohito, Emperor 73, 108, 124, 133,

166, 248 n.70, 252 n.79, 261 n.91Hitler, Adolf 78, 83, 142, 228 n.7;

declaration of war against the USA3, 82, 105, 137, 242 n.135;European imperial decline 115–16;on the Japanese 115; modernity270 n.4; Ratzel influence 228 n.5

HMS Porpoise 231 n.100HMS Prince of Wales 100, 107,

245 n.21HMS Repulse 100, 245 n.21HMS Victory 247 n.57HMS Worcester 247 n.57Hoar, G.F. 22–3Hobson, John 18Ho Chi Minh 118, 251 n.50Holberton, H. 266 n.87Home, J.M. 56Hong Kong: Anglo-American tensions

122; success of 250 n.21; vulnerability to Japanese attack 65,93, 113

Honolulu 92–3Hoover, Herbert 116Hopkins, Harry 104, 144–5

Hornbeck, Stanley 121, 138, 143Horne, Gerald 254 n.28Hoshino Naoki 132Hosho 99Hosokawa Morihiro 140Hotta Masayoshi 24Hrdlicka, Ales 249 n.18Hsin-min Hui 130Hu Jintao 182Hukbalahap 131, 254 n.20Hull, Cordell 82, 104human nature 54human rights 170, 185, 190, 201, 206,

218–19‘Hundred Years War’ concept 164,

165, 241 n.85, 260 n.76Huntington, Samuel 235 n.7, 270 n.6Hurley, Patrick 116, 120, 134Hyde-Thomson, D.H. 98Hyndman, H.M. 47

IBM 184Ichimaru, Admiral 84IDF see Israeli Defence ForceIemochi, Shogun 24Ienaga Saburo 164, 260 n.77Ikezaki Tadakata 73, 75, 78illustrados 138IMF see International

Monetary Fundimmigration 63–4, 67–8, 72, 238 n.8imperialism: American 19–20, 22, 68,

136–40, 143, 147, 206, 220–2,257 n.60; British 49, 120, 122, 141;cultural 218; European 16, 46, 122,124, 222; Japanese 81, 132–3; ‘race’ 14; Russian 29; Western 216;see also British Empire

Inchon 140India: Anglo-Japanese cooperation 65,

113; British Empire 116, 117; Chinarelations with 134, 209, 263 n.6;Communist Party 132; energyconsumption 181, 205, 264 n.34;Gandhi’s opposition to the British133; immigrants to the West238 n.8; insurrection in 49; Japaneseespionage 129; Japanese support for131; nationalists 128; Nehru’s viewof the Japanese 133; new norms ofbehaviour 220; nuclear power 182;population growth 180, 264 n.22;rise of 173, 197; US bases in 137;US relations with 199

Index 299

Indochina 49, 79, 103, 115, 123;Anglo-American tensions 120; AsiaCo-Prosperity Sphere 130; Chinesethreat to 135; US moraljustifications for war 221; US withdrawal from 140; Vichy government 131; see also Vietnam

Indo-Japanese Association 48Indonesia 130, 131, 133, 166, 209,

250 n.21Information Age: cultural values in

127; geopolitical rivalry 223information technology 190, 193Inge, William 14Ingersoll, R. 103intelligence: British 105; Japanese 129;

racial considerations 241 n.88international law 29, 70, 220; Chinese

view towards 17, 232 n.112;human rights 219; US non-compliance 257 n.63

International Monetary Fund (IMF) 145

internet 166, 193, 267 n.111interventionism 219, 220inter-war period: Japanese strategy

85–8; military concepts and doctrine85–6; US strategy 87, 91–6, 140;Western complacency about Japan 94

Iraq War (2003) 169, 220Irving, David 105, 246 n.44Ishiba Shigeru 171Ishihara Kanji 164Ishihara Koichiro 76, 241 n.92Ishihara Shintaro 153, 168, 259 n.56Ishiwara Kanji 73Islam 132, 197, 202, 210, 230 n.64,

270 n.6isolationism 21, 81, 95, 140–1, 219,

220, 222Israeli Defence Force (IDF) 225Italy 15, 102Ito, Admiral 107Ito Hirobumi 24, 27, 202, 222Iwo Jima 84

James, William 22Janeway, Eliot 139Japan: Allied occupation 207;

Anglo-Japanese Treaty (1902) 26,32, 43, 175; Anglo-Japanese Treaty(1905) 65; anti-Americanism

255 n.10; ASEAN Plus Three 182–3;Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 124,130–1, 150, 155, 203, 212, 217;Asian solidarity 27; as Asia’s champion 2, 20, 128, 214; Asia’srise 128–35; Australia 28, 64;British view of Japanese 53, 113–14;business theory 158–9; campaignplanning during Russo-Japanese War38–40; capitalism 203; Chinarelations with 26–7, 47–8, 66, 76,127, 152, 157, 170–1, 174–5, 209;China’s rise 156, 157, 174–5, 179;Christianity 20, 200; cinematicrepresentations of the Japanese 158,160, 162, 166; Constitution of 163,168, 171; costs of war 243 nn.6, 12;critique of Japanese strategy 89–90;‘cult of the offensive’ 225; culturalperceptions 157–63, 200; defeat inWorld War Two 108–9, 134, 148,149; defence policy 167–71;‘degenerate’ youth and perceptions of decadence 50, 148, 166, 174;demography 211, 224; economicrebirth and threat to United States148–57, 158–9; economic recession155, 156, 161–2, 173; ethnic-nationalism 232 n.109; expansionism1–2, 3, 13, 23–4, 26, 45–6, 67,73–4, 75; financial planning 39–40;future for 172–6; Ga-Shin-Sho-Tancampaign 232 n.127; Hawaii 21–2;history and revisionism 163–6; iden-tity confusion 25, 149, 161, 163,175–6, 217; immigrants from 63–4,72; impact of victory in Russo-Japanese War 45, 46–7, 49, 61–2;imperialism and empire-building 3,81, 132–3, 206, 216; inevitability ofconflict with the USA 16, 45–6, 51,66, 71, 74, 76, 78, 95–6, 206; inter-war strategy 85–8; kamikaze pilots107–8; Korean border division 139,234 n.2; Korea occupation 25–6;Mao agreement with 257 n.2; missionaries in 25, 202;modernization 189, 215; nationaldiscipline 52; naval aviation 2,98–100, 101, 102; naval construc-tion race 62; nuclear weapons 171,195, 208, 226; oil competition withChina 170, 172, 182; overestimatedby the West 114, 155, 161; Pacific

300 Index

strategy 48–9; post-war resurgence4, 148–76, 181; racial views held bythe Japanese 51, 83, 84, 115,159–60, 230 n.55; racial views heldby the West towards 25, 68, 70–1,72, 114, 115, 117–18, 163,249 n.12; Roosevelt (Theodore) on65–6; Russia relations with 1, 28,30–1, 125–6, 172; Soviet neutralitytreaty 82–3; ‘spirit’ of the Japanese74, 78, 84, 117; submarines245 n.5; Taft-Katsura agreement232 n.117; threat to United States15–16, 22, 23, 70–1, 116, 117; trade1, 19–20, 24, 150–3, 156, 186, 212,241 n.89; underestimated by theWest 114, 161; US ‘civilizingmission’ to 145; US debts to 154,265 n.72; US discourse of ‘evil’ 221;US relations with 27–8, 62–3,66–79, 149–56, 167–70, 174–5, 217;US war planning 91–6; war crimestribunal 124, 166; Westernization15, 16, 24–5, 26, 215; World WarTwo 79–84, 88–91, 101–7, 114–15;see also Pearl Harbour; Russo-Japanese War; Sino-Japanese War

Japanese Self-Defence Forces (JSDF)167, 168, 171, 173

Java 131Jebson, J. 102Jeudwine, H.S. 56Jiang Zemin 191, 194, 201Joffe, Alexander 147, 257 n.60Johnson, Chalmers 152, 177, 207,

255 n.10Johnson, Dominic 224Johnson, Hiram 142Johnson, Hugh Samuel 142Jordan, William 99JSDF see Japanese Self-Defence ForcesJutland, Battle of 96, 141, 246 n.29

Kagermann, Henning 184Kagoshima 164Kaizen 159kamikaze pilots 107–8Kanban 159Kanzaki Takenori 171Kaplan, L.F. 203, 269 n.184Kase Hideaki 261 n.91Kato Satori 48–9Kato Tomosabuo 69Katz, Richard 162

Kautz, Admiral 231 n.100Kawai Tatsuo 128Kazakhstan 264 n.37, 270 n.208Kearns, Robert 155Kelly, James 203Kennan, G. 25Kennedy, Greg 81Kennedy, John F. 53, 221, 271 n.26Kennedy, Paul 177Kerr, Walter 113Khalkhin-Gol 86Khan, Mohammed Zafrullah 134Khasan, Lake 86Khrushchev, Nikita 126, 253 n.89Kidd, Benjamin 15, 17–18Kill Bill 162Kim Jong Il 194Kimmel, H.E. 74, 80, 102, 103,

246 n.35Kimura, Lieutenant 98Kimura Toutaro 258 n.28King, E. 80, 101, 116, 117,

250 n.32King, Mackenzie 248 n.78Kipling, Rudyard 33‘Kipling’s Men’ 219, 271 n.16Kishi Nobusuke 171Kissinger, Henry 152, 179, 195, 200Kita Ikki 51, 237 n.69Kitchener, Horatio Herbert 49,

197, 259 n.58Knapp, A.M. 25Knight, A.M. 70Knox, D.W. 76, 94, 102, 103Knox, W.G. 41, 56, 237 n.71Knyaz Suvorov 108Kobayashi Yoshinori 165Kodama, Lt General 38Kodama Yoshio 258 n.28Koda Yoji 253 n.9Koizumi Junichiro 165–6, 172, 173Kolchak, Admiral 237 n.68Komura Jutaro 25Königsberg 245 n.19Konoe, Prince 76, 77, 105, 130,

272 n.39Korea: Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere

130, 217; Chinese invasion and ruleof 261 n.83; Japanese extraterritoriality in 24; Japaneseoccupation of 25–6, 31, 65–6, 113,165, 232 n.117; ‘opened’ to US trade20; Portsmouth Treaty 36, 238 n.7;Roosevelt’s betrayal 238 n.7;

Index 301

Korea (Continued)Russo-Japanese War 35; see alsoNorth Korea; South Korea

Korean War 139–40, 148, 149, 151,200, 225, 226, 258 n.6

Kotoku Shusui 62Kowshing 234 n.5Kress, Wilhelm 97Krugman, Paul 221Kuomintang 130, 134, 242 n.109Kurile Islands 125, 126, 139, 172Kurokawa Masaaki 154Kuropatkin, A. 30, 35–7, 47Kusaka Ryunosuke 101, 106Kyoto 241 n.97Kyrgyzstan 270 n.208

Lake, Simon 245 n.5Lansing, Robert 69Lansing-Ishii Agreement (1917) 69Laos 183Lardy, N.R. 186The Last Samurai 162Latin America 268 n.141Laurel, José 251 n.61LDP see Liberal Democratic PartyLea, Homer 45–6, 50, 63, 106League of Nations 78, 128, 220,

239 n.40Leahy, Admiral 81, 117LeBard, M. 155Lebensraum 10, 11, 70, 71LeBon, Gustave 229 n.23Lee Kuan Yew 178Lenin, V.I. 39, 42, 45, 125, 148,

230 n.66, 252 n.82Lenovo 184Lewis, Bernard 197Leyte Gulf, Battle of 96Li, Cheng 269 n.171Liao-Yang 36Li Hongzhang 27Li Ta-chao 134Li Zhaoxing 170Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) 152,

155, 162, 169, 170, 258 n.8Liddell-Hart, B.H. 38, 54Lieberthal, Kenneth 203‘lifetime employment’ 159Livingstone, David 219Lodge, Henry Cabot 23, 72Lodge, John Cabot 21London 52London, Jack 48, 52, 190, 237 n.74

London Naval Conference (1934) 76, 79

Long, John D. 231 n.99Longman, P. 196, 198, 267 n.127‘Loony Leftism’ 52Lost in Translation 162Loti, Pierre 157Luce, Henry 142Luce, S.B. 10Luttwak, Edward 140, 228 n.9,

271 n.29Luxemburg, Rosa 45Lyall, Alfred 231 n.96

MacArthur, Arthur 23, 139,232 n.104, 254 n.15

MacArthur, Douglas 45, 108, 139–40,258 n.10; Anglo-American tensions120; banning of Kabuki play 158;‘civilizing mission’ 145; on Japan149; Philippines 76–7, 94, 95, 101,138, 246 nn.26, 27, 254 nn.16, 20

McBride, Richard 64McCarran, P. 137McCarthy, Dudley 118McCullagh, Francis 42, 43, 46, 62Machimura Nobutaka 262 n.114McIntyre, J.S. 129Mackenzie King, W.L. 63Mackinder, Halford 10, 13, 47, 136,

222, 223, 224, 228 n.6McKinley, William 23McNutt, Paul 117machine guns 35, 55, 56Madagascar 49Magdalena Bay 67The Magnificent Seven 158Maguire, T.M. 45, 53, 238 n.78Mahan, A.T 13, 14, 21, 219, 223;

China 18–19, 178, 193, 201; geopolitical arguments 206; Japaneseexpansionism 15–16, 67; Japanesethreat to Hawaii 22; maritime travel61; naval officers’ self-discipline229 n.49; Russian threat 31; SubicBay base 94; US/Europe relationship229 n.42; US national interests 80

Mahathir Mohamad 160, 161,259 nn.56, 60, 260 n.61

Makarov, Stepan 234 n.6Malaya 79, 104, 121, 254 n.23;

British internal security campaign in249 n.21; Japanese attack on 114,247 n.48; Japanese commercial

302 Index

interests 130; Japanese Great Asiaproject 131, 133; Moslems 132;US trade with 256 n.33

Malaysia 160, 249 n.21Malmstrom, Cecelia 204Malthus, Thomas 51, 196Malthusian theories 2, 224Mamin-Sibiriak, Dmitri 30Manchester School 18Manchukuo 75, 131Manchuria 1, 23, 47, 109, 139;

Japanese intelligence 129; Japaneseoccupation of 73, 75, 76; Lansing-Ishii Agreement 69;new technologies 35; Peace Treatyof Portsmouth 36, 238 n.7;Russian expansionism 31;‘triple intervention’ 232 n.127

Manchurian Incident 83, 260 n.76Manifest Destiny 17, 20, 70, 137,

220–1; Chinese view of 209;Japanese imperialism comparison124; Roosevelt 12; Social-Darwinism10; ‘soft’ notion of 219, 257 n.63

Manila 23, 94–5, 101, 246 n.27Manjuyama 38Mankiw, N.Gregory 199Mao Zedong 47, 148, 204, 232 n.109,

257 n.2March, Peyton 92Marianas 92; Battle of the 247 n.58Markovstev, Nikolai 268 n.154Marshall, George 81–2, 101, 105, 121,

246 n.42, 250 n.35, 252 n.78Marshall Islands 92, 137Martin, F.L. 103Martin, W.A.P. 47Marxism 52–3, 127, 199, 212Masahi Nishihara 262 n.111Mason, William E. 22materialism: Asian ‘Tiger economies’

215; Japanese critiques of 51, 85;Western 21, 23, 44, 50–1, 90, 131,197, 214

Matsuoka Yosuke 73, 82–3Maude, Colonel 41, 54, 197,

259 n.58Maytag 184Mead, Walter Russell 196Meckel, Klemens von 36Mellen, L.O. 158Menzies, Robert Gordon 144Merdeka 166Metz, Steven 209

Mexico 23, 67, 69, 228 n.14, 240 n.48

Mi Zhenyu 189Middle East 223, 224‘Middle Kingdom’ 156, 208, 209, 212,

213, 220, 226Midway, Battle of 91, 96, 126Mikasa 106, 247 n.57militarism: American 177; Chinese

204; Japanese 49, 124, 149, 161,163, 175

Miller, S.C. 271 n.27Minami Kikan 130mines 56Ministry of International Trade and

Industry (MITI) 152, 153, 154,155, 161

missionaries 25, 202Mitchell, Billy 99MITI see Ministry of International

Trade and IndustryMiwa Yoshitaki 245 n.21Miyazawa Toshiyoshi 131modernity 1, 4–5, 24, 214; Bolsheviks

44; as European phenomenon 84;Hitler’s contradictions 270 n.4;Russo-Japanese War 217

Mohammed, Elijah 117Molotov, V. 248 n.75Moltke, Helmut von 97‘Mongol horde’ metaphor 27, 30, 44Mongolia 75, 131, 251 n.60, 264 n.46Monroe Doctrine (1832) 19, 20, 22–3,

75, 96, 136; Japanese version 49,68, 124, 130, 136; ‘virtual’ 206, 219

morale 33–4, 36, 42, 56; Japanesetactical approach 85; Russo-Japanese War 41; World WarOne 54

Morgenthau, Henry 80, 81, 143–4,145, 247 n.44

Morici, Peter 204Moriyama Keizaburo 107Mori Yoshiro 171Morris, Ivan 107–8Morse, E.S. 25mortars 56Morton, S.G. 9Moseley, Henry 228 n.6Moslem states 132; see also IslamMosso, Dr 51Motoshima Hitoshi 248 n.70Mountbatten, Louis, Lord 120, 134Mozambique 261 n.97

Index 303

Mukden, Battle of 36, 37, 43–4, 106–7

multiculturalism 198, 218Munro, R.H. 266 n.84Musashi 99, 248 n.69

Nagano Osumi 244 n.18Nagumo, Admiral 244 n.17Naito Takeshi 102Nakamura Shozaburo 168Nakasone Yasuhiro 152, 153, 160,

165, 167Napier, Robert 17national identity 214–15; American

221; China 178; Japan 28, 149,161, 162, 163–4, 175–6, 217; Russia28–9, 30, 44, 210, 217, 218

nationalism: American 144; Asian118, 128, 129, 130, 134; Chinese203, 204, 205, 232 n.109; Indian128; Japanese 23, 47, 48–9, 72, 155,166, 175, 263 n.138; ‘old right’ viewof interventionism 219; VietnamWar 120, 140

Native American Indians 10, 221NATO see North Atlantic Treaty

OrganizationNatsume Soseki 241 n.81,

263 n.141natural resources see raw materialsNaval War College (NWC) 22, 70, 74,

75, 91–2, 94, 137naval warfare 2, 80; China 179–80,

193, 195; inter-war period 85–8;Japanese inter-war strategy 85–7;naval aviation 98–103; Russo-Japanese War 36; see also RoyalNavy; Tsushima; US Navy

negotiations in time of war 38Negrier, Francois de 50–1Nehru, Pandit Jawaharlal 128, 133neocolonialism 218Netherlands 93, 122; see also Dutch

East IndiesNew History of Japan 165New Zealand 116, 144Ng Yeh Lu 254 n.23Nicholas II, Tsar 29, 30, 230 n.54,

233 n.136Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm 15Nimitz, C.W. 74, 108, 241 n.86ninjas 158Nippon Steel Corporation 159,

259 n.151

Nishimura Shingo 171Nissen Kyowakai 130Nitobe Inazo 46, 50Nixon, Richard 167, 179, 188,

258 n.4Nogi, General 36, 124, 234 n.7Nomura Securities International 154Norman, Henry 26North Atlantic Treaty Organization

(NATO) 123, 199North Korea: border 234 n.2;

Kaesong industrial complex265 n.50; Korean War 139; long-range missiles 226, 267 n.112;nuclear weapons 169, 194–5, 226;regional instability 208; threat toJapan 150, 168, 169–70, 171;see also Korea

Nott, J.C. 9nuclear power 182nuclear weapons: China 190, 192,

194; Japan 171, 195, 208, 226;North Korea 169, 194–5, 226;Soviet Union 248 n.76; see alsoatom bomb

NWC see Naval War CollegeNye, G.P. 142

Oahu 93, 102, 103Occidentalism 25, 75, 115, 214,

235 n.7; anti-modernism 215; Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 131;modernity 24, 84; see also the West

offensive strategy 2, 36, 37, 55, 85–6,225, 238

Ogawa Heikichi 238 n.3Oikawa Koshiro 79, 101oil 170, 172, 181–2, 205, 223,

264 n.37, 272 n.39; see also energysupplies

Okakura Kakuzo 21, 27Okamoto Yukio 173Okinawa 107, 108, 139, 247 n.63,

255 n.14Okuma, Count 48Okuna Takao 84Olangapo 95Olney, Richard 14Ong Keng Yong 183Ono Yoshinori 171Operation Desert Storm 192Operation ICEBERG 108Operation Iraqi Freedom 192Operation JUDGEMENT 102

304 Index

opium trade 136–7, 255 n.3Orientalism 14, 25, 75, 115, 214;

anti-modernism 84, 215; Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 131;Western perceptions of Japan 157–8;see also the East

Osmena, Sergio 138Ostfriesland 99Oyama, Commander 38–9

Pacific islands 137–8Pacific Ocean Society 48Pal, R. 124Panama Canal 66, 94, 101, 138, 204Pan-Asianism 129, 174Pan-Asiatic Association 48Panikar, K.M. 255 n.37Paris Peace Conference (1919) 68;

see also Versailles, Treaty ofParker, Theodore 11Parris, Matthew 222Patria 69Patrick, Hugh 152patriotism 51, 52, 90Pearl Harbour 80, 81, 84, 101, 104–7,

137; aircraft numbers required forattack 100; anti-British feeling 142;British intelligence 105; Bywater’sinfluence on Japanese strategy 88;concerns over Japanese threat102–3; ‘decisive’ nature of attack 89;fortifications expenditure 66;shock and shame of 108; Taranto asstrategic blueprint for 102; US Navytraining exercises 100–1

Pearson, C.H. 17, 185, 196, 230 n.64

Pell, H.C. 141People’s Liberation Army (PLA) 191,

192, 193Perry, Commodore 19–20, 24, 108,

136, 217, 222, 227, 260 n.76Peters, Ralph 146–7Petropavlovsk 233 n.152Pfaff, William 207Phan Boi Chau 49Philippines 116, 130–1, 137, 139;

anti-Americanism 255 n.10;Bywater’s strategy 87; Filipinodeaths during ‘pacification’231 n.102; Hukbalahap 131,254 n.20; independence 138, 251 n.61; Japanese air attack on101; Japanese threat to 66, 67, 74,

75; lingering resentment of US presence 255 n.8; as strategic liability 23, 93, 94, 207; Taft-Katsura agreement 232 n.117;US imperialism 121, 138; US occupation 12, 22–3, 66, 77, 231 n.101; US war planning 92, 93–5

Phillips, Tom 100, 245 n.19Picq, Ardent du 34PLA see People’s Liberation ArmyPlumer, Herbert 53pogroms 40Pol Pot 270 n.4Port Arthur 31, 35–6, 39, 93; Atlantic

Charter 139; as blueprint for PearlHarbour 102; impact of defeat onRussia 44, 124, 125; Lenin on thefall of 252 n.82; significance ofRussian defeat 128; Stalin’s controlover 126; torpedoes and Japanesenaval tactics 98; Western inspirations for 106

Portsmouth, Treaty of (1905) 36, 109,125, 252 n.83; Japanese diplomaticfailure 50, 61; US ‘broker’ role 62,80–1, 195

Posen, Barry 223Powell, Colin 248 n.73Prestowitz, Clyde 152, 153, 155,

258 n.23, 265 n.73Pride 166Protector 245 n.5Pruyn, Robert 20Przhevalskii, Nikolai 28, 29,

233 n.133psychology of kamikaze

pilots 107–8Puerto Rico 121, 138Putin, Vladimir 172, 194, 210Putnam Weale, B.L. 26, 42–3, 48,

128, 217

Qiao Liang 191Quezon, Manuel 130–1, 134,

254 n.15

race 2, 14–15, 17, 64, 116–17; Anglo-Saxonism 11, 12, 14, 72, 77,256 n.50; Asian economic crisis160; Black Americans 68, 117, 231n.91, 250 n.35, 251 n.62; British52, 72; Chinese state ideology 203; clash of civilizations 218; cultural struggle 52–3;

Index 305

race (Continued)Darwinian theories 9–10, 13, 14,23, 211; demography 196; East/Westconflict 45; Hawaii annexation 22;intelligence considerations 241 n.88;Japanese business practices 159;Japanese views on 51, 83, 84, 115,159–60, 230 n.55; Mahathir’s viewson 160, 161; racial homogeneity ofnations 50; Roosevelt (Franklin) on 249 n.18; Roosevelt (Theodore)on 12, 13, 64, 229 n.23; Russianimperialism 29; Russo-Japanese War42–3, 211; US military policy 74–5,77; US racial segregation 121,251 n.62; Western views of theJapanese 25, 68, 70–1, 72, 114, 115,117–18, 163, 249 n.12; Whitesupremacy 71–2; see also culturalperceptions; Yellow Peril

‘race suicide’ 13, 71, 196, 211,268 n.155

Raeder, Erich 108RAF see Royal Air forcerailways 183Ramsey, L.C. 101, 245 n.22The Rape of Nanking 166Ratzel, Friedrich 10, 228 n.5Rau, Johannes 241 n.106raw materials 11, 66, 77, 212,

272 n.39; China 181, 205, 208–9,213; competition for 4, 148, 216;geopolitics 196, 223, 224;Japan/China rivalry 27, 172;Japanese post-war resurgence 149,150; see also energy supplies

Reagan, Ronald 127Reid, T.R. 197Reischauer, Edwin 149Rhee, Syngman 255 n.10Ricarte, Artemio 49Rice, G.T. 232 n.104Richardson, J.O. 76, 102Richelieu 103Richthofen, Baron von 129Ridgeway, Matthew 252 n.75Rifkin, Jeremy 197rifles 2, 32, 33Rising Sun 160, 190, 259 n.58RNAS see Royal Naval air ServiceRoberts, Andrew 204, 256 n.50Robertson, C.C. 56Robida, Albert 32Rogers, W.L. 56, 70

Romulo, Carlos 231 n.101Ronin 158Roosevelt, Elliot 117Roosevelt, Franklin D. 80, 81, 82, 84,

144, 255 n.12; Anglo-American tensions 78, 122, 143; Asiatic threat117; Bywater’s debates with 87;Canton Island 256 n.36; China134–5; economic policy 145; FrenchIndochina 123; Japanese Americansin Hawaii 92–3; Japanese threat 74,103–4; National RecoveryAdministration 142; opium tradewealth 255 n.3; Pacific territories138; Pearl Harbour 102, 104, 105;Port Arthur 139; racial views249 n.18; rearmament 92

Roosevelt, Theodore: admiration forTogo 247 n.54; Chinese territorialintegrity 69; Cuban campaign229 n.22; Grant correspondencewith 228 n.1; Hawaii annexation22; humanitarianism 229 n.26; onthe Japanese 46, 63, 65–6, 106;Japanese threat 15, 66–7; on KaiserWilhelm II 236 n.32; Korea238 n.7; Nobel Peace Prize 36;Philippines 23, 92, 231 n.98; race12, 13–14, 64, 196, 229 n.23;Spanish-American War 231 n.99;support for Japan in Russo-JapaneseWar 31, 62; on war 50

Rossiter, J.H. 53Roxas, Manuel 138Royal Air Force (RAF) 245 n.12Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) 98–9Royal Navy 73, 81, 92, 93; aerial

warfare 98, 100; suicidal tradition107; suppression of slavery 202;US Anglophobia 141–2; US Navy cooperation with 231 n.100

Rozhestvenski, Zinovy 100Rubin, Robert 187Rumsfeld, Donald 196, 221Ruskin, John 229 n.47Russell, Bertrand 45Russia 3, 28–32, 69, 124–7, 217–18,

226; advances into Alaska 19; anti-Semitism 40; Asian identity28–9, 30, 44, 45, 210, 217;Bolshevism 44–5; China relationswith 179, 194, 209–10; demography197, 198, 268 n.154; energy supplies182; European identity 210, 218;

306 Index

German racial views of 53; impactof defeat to Japan 43–4, 124–5, 126;imperialism 29, 30; Japan relationswith 1, 28, 30–1, 125–6, 172;Japanese naval visit to 167;Korean border division 139,234 n.2; Port Arthur 93, 106;Revolution (1905) 49; submarineforce 98, 245 n.5; Trans-SiberianRailway 16, 30, 31, 35, 230 n.54;‘triple intervention’ 232 n.127;Tsushima defeat 89; vast resources51; see also Soviet Union

Russo-Japanese War (1904–5) 1, 7–57;artillery influence 38, 55, 56; Britishview of Japan’s success 113;campaign planning 38–40; characterof war 61; deep attack 39; finance39–40; firepower overcome bystrength of character 54; firepowerversus manoeuvre 55; foreignmilitary observers 42, 43, 54, 55;historical revisionism 164;international impact of 49; Japaneseintelligence 129; Japanese risk-taking90; Japanese victory 45, 46, 47, 49,61–2, 83; Korean War comparison139; lessons ignored 2, 55, 56,224–5; lessons learned 54–7, 86,101, 107; morale 41; new technologies of defence 2, 35; originsof 28, 30–2; outline of events 35–6;patriotism provoked by 52; racialstruggle 42–3, 71; ‘Revolution inStrategic Affairs’ 226; role ofRussian revolutionaries 39; Russianreaction to defeat 43–4, 124–5, 126;significance of 128, 211, 226; tactics of attack and defence 36–8,55; Western perceptions of Asia 43,45, 46–7

Rwanda 261 n.97

Saeki, K. 168Said, Edward 235 n.7Saigo Takamori 260 n.68Sakhalin 126, 139, 172, 252 n.83Salisbury, Harrison 253 n.90Salisbury, Lord Robert Cecil 13Sampson, William 106Sankey, C.E.P. 55Santiago Harbour 106Sato Kojiro 73–4, 78Sato Nobuhiro 23

Satsuma 99Scheerbart, Paul 97Schiff, Jacob H. 40Schlesinger, James 200Schurz, Carl 231 n.91Schwarzkopf, Norman 248 n.73Scott, Percy 98, 99SEAC see South East Asia Commandsearchlights 35Second World War see World War TwoSedan 36Segal, G. 230 n.69, 235 n.7Sempa, Francis 177Sempill, W.F. 99, 245 n.11September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks

168, 188, 248 n.67The Seven Samurai 158Seward, W.H. 20Shell Oil Company 256 n.33Shenzhou 266 n.106Shimada, Admiral 108Shimizu Hayao 164Shimonoseki, Treaty of 27, 31Shinozaki Mamoru 253 n.11Shintoism 84Shi Yinhong 173Shogun 157Shoji Jun’ichiro 164Short, W.C. 102–3Shufeldt, R. 20Shufeldt Treaty (1882) 25Siam 79, 82; see also ThailandSiberia 69, 72, 75, 86, 237 n.68The Silent Service 162–3Singapore 79, 80, 99, 122; Asian

values 160; British loss to Japan 93,114, 115, 116, 249 n.20; IndianArmy discontent 130, 240 n.47;Japanese imperialism 132–3; successof 250 n.21; vulnerability toJapanese attack 65, 93, 113; withdrawal of British troops from 118

Singh, Mohan 133, 254 n.32Sino-Japanese War (1894–5) 30, 35,

61, 83; Chinese humiliation 17, 26;Korean border division after 139,234 n.2; Treaty of Shimonoseki 27

Sjahrir, Soetan 131Slim, Field Marshal 119Smart, E.K. 144Smiles, Samuel 16Smith, Jacob 231 n.103Smoot-Hawley Act (1930) 75

Index 307

Social-Darwinism 10, 41, 51, 71, 75,204, 214, 269 n.194

socialists 51, 52Soderberg, Nancy 272 n.31‘soft-power’ 181, 183, 206, 223Solovev, Vladimir 44, 48, 148,

236 n.21Somervell, Brehon 143Song Qiang 189Soong, T.V. 104, 200Sopwith T1 98South East Asia Command (SEAC)

120, 143South Korea: anti-Americanism

255 n.10; ASEAN Plus Three 182–3;border 234 n.2; Chinese trade with184; Japan perceived as threat to262 n.116; Japanese naval visit to167; Kaesong industrial complex265 n.50; US occupation 139;see also Korea

Soviet Union (USSR) 3, 124–7, 144;China relations with 126–7; ColdWar defeat 218; collapse of 4, 127,209; German invasion 83, 125;German-Soviet Pact 125, 140,257 n.2; GNP 151; inter-war clasheswith Japan 86; Japanese expansionism 75, 252 n.83;Japanese neutrality treaty 82–3;lessons learned from World War One 238 n.87; Manchuria offensive248 n.75; threat to USA 122, 146,154; US discourse of ‘evil’ 221;see also Russia

space-based military technologies 192Spanish-American War (1898) 136,

231 n.99Spanner, E.F. 100Spencer, Herbert 9, 10, 12spiritual issues: Eastern spirituality

versus Western materialism 21, 23,131, 214; Japanese ‘spirit’ 74, 78,84, 117, 241 n.81; Japanese tacticalapproach 85, 86; ‘thought waves’54; US religious revival 215

Stackpole, H.C. 154–5Stafford Cripps, Richard 142Stalin, Josef 45, 82–3, 125–6,

252 n.85, 255 n.12, 258 n.6Stark, H.A. 82, 102, 103, 104Stern, N. 97Stilwell, Joseph 120

‘Stimson Doctrine’ 75Stimson, H.L. 74, 76, 82, 116,

241 n.97; Black Americans250 n.35, 251 n.62; Pearl Harbour103, 104, 105, 246 n.44

stock markets 153, 155Stoddard, Lothrop 71, 75, 196,

267 n.127Story, J.P. 67Stresemann, Gustav 70Strong, Josiah 12Subardjo, Ahmad 128Subic Bay 66, 94, 138submarines 32, 33, 98, 240 n.49,

245 n.5, 267 n.114Sudan 15, 182Sueter, M.F. 98Suez Canal 91suicidal attacks 107–8Sukarno, President 133, 270 n.5Sun Fo 134Sun Yat-sen 47, 204surprise attack 3, 4, 33, 225; Chinese

tactics 191, 192, 193; Japanese tactics 78, 85, 86, 93, 95, 99, 101,106; Russo-Japanese War 35

‘survival of the fittest’ 9, 49, 71; seealso Darwinian theories

Suzuki Keiji 130Suzuki Zenko 153Swanson, Senator 22

Taft, Howard 232 n.117Taft, William 67Taiwan 139, 168, 170, 183, 208, 209;

Japanese air attacks from 101; missile testing by 266 n.107; US-China tensions 190, 191, 192–3,195, 203–4; see also Formosa

Tajikistan 270 n.208The Tale of the 47 Ronin 158Tanaka Giichi 66, 74, 76Tanaka Yasuo 168Tang Jiaxuan 165Tani, Viscount 24Tanikawa, T. 253 n.11tanks 32Tarantino, Quentin 162Taranto 102, 103, 246 n.29Taylor, Rear Admiral 136technological developments: Chinese

military power 190, 192; enhancedfirepower 32; high-technology

308 Index

forces 225, 226; naval aviation98–102; Russo-Japanese War 2, 35

Terra Nullius doctrine 28, 71terrorism 168, 169, 188,

221, 226textbooks 164–5, 170, 261 n.83,

262 n.114Thailand 131, 140, 183, 209;

see also SiamThird Reich 42Thomas, E.D. 116–17Thomas, Shelton 114Thorne, Christopher 81‘thought waves’ 54‘three-dimensional’ warfare 57Tibet 190, 209‘Tiger economies’ 215Tirpitz 248 n.69Tkacik, John 204Tocqueville, Alexis de 10Togo Heihachiro 36, 63, 89, 106, 113,

128–9, 231 n.92, 241 n.86,247 nn.54, 57

Tojo Hideki 90, 124, 131, 243 n.12,252 n.80

Tokuda, Lieutenant 98Tokutomi Roka 62Tokutomi Soho 49Tokyo 20Tokyo war crimes tribunal

124, 166Tolstoy, Leo 44Tomohisa Sakanaka 209torpedoes 3, 98, 99–100, 103,

234 nn.5, 6Townsend, Meredith 16, 46–7Toynbee, Arnold 271 n.18trade 19–20, 216, 227; China 2, 22,

136, 178, 180–7, 189, 212–13,230 n.58, 241 n.89; ethno-culturalgeopolitics 196; Japan 1, 24, 27,62, 75, 150–3, 212, 241 n.89;military power relationship 76–7;US dominance 145; US trade deficit152, 153, 180, 186, 187, 230 n.58;World War One 70

Trafalgar, Battle of 2, 45, 49, 96, 106,113, 246 n.29, 247 n.54

Trans-Siberian Railway 16, 30, 31, 35,230 n.54

Treaty of Friendship, Union andMutual Assistance (China/USSR)(1950) 126

Treaty of Peace and Friendship(China/Japan) (1978) 127, 152

trench warfare 2, 37, 55, 56Treves, Frederick 52Trotsky, Leon 44Truman, Harry S. 105, 145trusteeship principle 122, 138Tsingtao 69, 93, 98Tsuji Karoku 258 n.28Tsuji Masanoubu 243 n.13Tsushima, Battle of 2, 64, 108,

247 n.57; decisive nature of 89, 90;impact of defeat on Russian society36, 39, 43–4; primacy of the battleship 36, 100; ‘Z Signal’ 106

Turkey 197

U-boats 80, 242 n.121Uehara, General 85Ukhtomskii, Prince Esper 29UN see United NationsUnited Kingdom see BritainUnited Nations (UN) 122, 138, 145,

206; ‘civilizing mission’ 219;Japanese bid for Security Councilseat 167–8, 170, 172; Japanese peacekeeping troops 168,261 n.97

United States of America (USA): Anglo-Saxonism 11–12, 72;Anglophobia 76, 95, 120, 141,143–4, 145–6; Army War College91–6, 104, 136, 137, 179, 263 n.19;Asian immigrants to 63, 67–8; atombombs dropped on Japan 109; BlackAmericans 68, 117, 231 n.91,250 n.35, 251 n.62; Britain relationswith 15, 77, 78, 80–2, 119–22,140–6; British Empire decline 118,121, 122, 141, 142; car ownership271 n.11; China relations with 62,75, 134–5, 139, 170, 178–80,188–90, 195, 200–8; Chinese economic threat to 184–7; Chinesesecurity fears 189–90, 191–2, 194,195; commercial interests in China18, 20, 22, 31, 136–7, 178; costs ofwar 243 n.12; demographic decline196, 197, 198; economic dominance143, 145, 156, 208; as empire 4, 13,146, 147, 177, 208, 220–2; Eurasianbalance of power 177, 199;

Index 309

United States of America (USA)(Continued)‘frontier’ 12, 20, 22, 221; geopolitics 223; global supremacy of146–7; ‘Great White Fleet’ 66–7;Hawaii 21–2; high-tech militaryforces 225; imperialism 19–20, 22,68, 136–40, 143, 147, 206, 257 n.60;individualism 129; Indochina 123;inevitability of conflict with Japan16, 45–6, 51, 66, 71, 74, 76, 78,95–6, 206; inter-war planning 91–6;international law 257 n.63; isolationism 21, 81, 95, 140–1;Japan relations with 27–8, 62–3,66–79, 149–56, 167–70, 174–5, 217;Japanese inter-war strategy 87, 88;Japanese post-war economicresurgence 149, 150, 151, 152,153–6; Japanese threat to 1–2, 3,15–16, 22, 23, 45–6, 66–7, 70–1;Japanese ultra-nationalist view of48; Korea occupation by Japanese25–6; Korean border division234 n.2; military interventionism220; as model for Asia 149; multiracial society 160;Naturalization Act 239 n.42; navalaviation 100–1, 102–3; naval rivalrywith Britain 76, 92, 141; Naval WarCollege 22, 70, 74, 75, 91–2, 94,137; Pearl Harbour concerns 102–3;Philippines 22–3, 232 n.117; racialunity with Britain 14, 72; racialviews towards the Japanese 114;religious revival 215, 271 n.15;Sino-Russian relations 210; as stabilizing force in Asia 226;support for Japan in Russo-JapaneseWar 2, 62; Taiwan-China threat192–3; territorial expansion 10, 11,12; trade deficit 152, 153, 180, 186,187, 230 n.58; trade with China 19,22, 136–7, 178, 180–7, 212–13, 230 n.58; trade with Japan 1,19–20, 212; Vietnam War 119, 140,146, 151, 200, 225, 271 n.26; warsupplies to Japan 79; World WarTwo 80–4, 102–8, 116; see alsoManifest Destiny; Pearl Harbour; US Navy; the West

United States Marine Corps (USMC) 87

Unocal 184, 185

Upton, Emory 21U Saw 120, 130US Navy 70, 80–1, 91–2, 93–5, 96;

Anglophobia 141; Bywater’sstrategic scenarios 87; naval aviation100–1; race and cultural awareness74–5; Royal Navy cooperation with231 n.100; USS Birmingham 98;USS Buchanan 108; USS Cincinnati250 n.32; USS Enterprise 104; USSGreer 242 n.121; USS Langley100–1; USS Lexington 101, 104;USS Missouri 108, 248 n.73;USS Niblack 242 n.121; USSPennsylvania 98; USS Philadelphia231 n.100; USS Powhatten 108;USS Reuben James 242 n.121; USS Saratoga 101; see also‘Great White Fleet’

USA see United States of AmericaUSMC see United States Marine CorpsUSSR see Soviet UnionUtkin, Anatoly 198

values: Anglo-Saxon 217–18; Asian45, 159, 160, 215–16; as casus belli127; East/West clash 226; HumanRights discourse 218, 219; Japanese16; US religious revival 215; Western19, 194, 200–1, 202, 212, 214,217–18, 221, 270 n.9; Westerncorruption of 133, 215

Vander Weyer, Martin 269 n.195,271 n.10

Vargas, Jorge 251 n.61Vereschagin, Vasilii 31, 233 n.152Versailles, Treaty of (1919) 81, 141;

see also Paris Peace ConferenceVietnam 49, 134, 167, 182, 209,

251 n.50, 261 n.83; see alsoIndochina

Vietnam War 119, 140, 146, 151, 200,225, 271 n.26

Virgin Islands 138Vladivostok 31Vogel, Ezra 158

Wainwright, J.M. 95Wakamiya Maru 98Wallace, Henry 146Wang Xiangsui 191war, concept of 10–11, 15, 42war crimes tribunal (Tokyo)

124, 166

310 Index

Wards, G.T. 114‘War on Terror’ 146, 181Washington DC 20Washington Treaty (1922) 72, 73, 87,

93, 94, 100Wei-hai-wei harbour 35, 66, 93Weil, Simone 115Weinberger, Casper 234 n.12Welch, Jack 184Welles, Sumner 122, 138Wells, H.G. 32, 97Wen I-to 235 n.6Wen Jiabao 262 n.112, 269 n.178the West 14, 15, 25, 271 n.18; China

as threat to 18–19, 48, 178, 189,205–6, 207; cultural perceptions ofJapan 4, 157–63; demographicdecline 196–8, 211, 212; HumanRights discourse 218–19; inevitable clash with the East 13,42–3; materialism 21, 23, 44; new Eastern influences 215–16; perceived decadence and decline17–18, 50–1, 215; Russian identity 28; stereotyped views of the East 235 n.7; see alsoOccidentalism

White, T.H. 145White, Walter 250 n.35Whitehead, Robert 234 n.5‘White Peril’ 51Whitman, Walt 20Wilborn, Thomas 207Wilhelm II, Kaiser 15, 236 n.32Wilhelmina, Queen of the

Netherlands 249 n.12Wilkie, Wendell 121Wilson, A.N. 256 n.50Wilson, C.E. 150Wilson, Woodrow 67–8, 69,

70, 72, 237 n.58, 239 n.40, 240 n.68

Winant, John 82Windsor, Duchess of 121wireless 35Witte, Count Sergei 30, 31,

233 nn.143, 146Wolf, Marvin 153Wolferen, Karel von 163Wolfowitz, Paul 173, 178–9Wolseley, Lord 15, 17Wood, Leonard 67Woolsey, James 185, 194World Bank 145

World Trade Organization (WTO)184, 185, 188, 189, 205, 220,257 n.60

World War One 2, 3, 49, 54; aerialwarfare 97, 98; Anglo-Americanrelations 78; ‘cult of the offensive’225, 238 n.87; defensive tactics 55;European empires weakened by 70;impact on Japan 72; ‘MilitaryRevolution’ 57; mistakes made after55; naval cooperation betweenBritain and Japan 69; racial categorizations 53

World War Two 3, 79–84; Britishstrategic vulnerability in East Asia65, 79–80; causes 81–2; China’s rise 135; ‘China-Trade’ after212; demise of the battleship 99,100, 108; Gandhi’s views on 254n.30; Japanese historical representations of 164, 165;Japanese war planning 88–91;Japan’s defeat 108–9, 134, 148, 149; Japan’s war in China 78–9;long-term impact of 115–18;military strategy 88–91; navalaviation 101, 102–3; racialdimensions 53, 114–15; USreluctance to enter 80, 81, 142;US war planning 91–6, 137; see also Pearl Harbour

WTO see World Trade Organization

Xiong Guangkai 194

Yachi Shotaro 262 n.116Yalta 139Yamagata Aritomo 16, 27, 70Yamamoto Isoroku 88–9, 90, 91;

Battle of the Marianas 247 n.58;Bywater’s influence on 87; death of 244 n.15; gambling wins and losses 241 n.79, 244 n.27,245 n.21; naval aviation 99; Pearl Harbour 88, 100, 101, 102, 106, 244 n.17; suicidal tradition 107

Yamashita Tomoyuki 88, 131,254 n.18

Yamato 99, 100, 107, 108, 247 n.62,260 n.70

‘Yamato spirit’ 159, 165Yarnell, H.E. 81, 94, 101Yasukuni Shrine 165–6

Index 311

Yellow Peril 46, 47, 49, 127; Asianimmigrants in the USA 63; GelbeGefahr painting 15; Russian Armylikened to 236 n.22; Russian fears of30, 31; see also race

Yokota Yasuo 132–3Yoshida Shigeru 150–1, 171Yoshiro, Admiral 67You Ji 190–1Yu Shyi-kun 266 n.107Yuko, Admiral 27

zaibatsu cartels 149zeppelins 97Zhang Xiaobo 189Zhu Chenghu 192Zhu Xueqin 201Zhukov, G. 86Zilliacus, Konni 39Zimmerman Telegram 69,

240 n.49Zoellick, Robert 195Zuckerman, M.B. 155

312 Index

great_power_strategy_in_asia__empire__culture_and_trade__1905

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