The Confluence of Three World Powers
Paul Kennedy, in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1988), stressed the interrelationships over the last five centuries among economic wealth, technological innovation, and the ability of states to tap their resources for prolonged military preparedness and war-making. Kennedy notes that those states with the relatively greater ability to maintain a balance of military and economic strength assumed the lead. For most of this history before the Industrial Revolution, when a majority of people in a country worked the land, economic wealth was roughly equivalent to feeding the nation’s population. In the 20th century, U.S. economic wealth was linked to the availability of low-cost energy.
“War is a mere continuation of politics by other means.” Oft quoted from Carl Philipp Gottfriend von Clausewitz after his role in the final battles against Napoleon Bonaparte in the early 19th century. Less quoted is: “War is nothing but a duel [or wrestling match, a better translation of the German Zweikampf] on a larger scale.” His synthesis, which resolves the deficiencies of these two bold statements, says that war is neither "nothing but" an act of brute force nor "merely" a rational act of politics or policy. This synthesis lies in his "fascinating trinity" [wunderliche Dreifaltigkeit]: a dynamic, inherently unstable interaction of the forces of violent emotion, chance, and rational calculation. (Christopher Bassford, “Clausewitz and his Works” 2002)
The modern history of China starts with the Western Han Dynasty 220 BCE. To correspond with modern European and American history I move to the end of the Ming Dynasty in 1644. Before the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, there was a regime called 'Latter Jin' that had been set up by Nurhachu, leader of the Man Ethnic Minority. Actually, Man people were the offspring of the Nuzhen people who had always been living in Northeast China. After reunifying all the Nuzhen tribes, Nurhachu proclaimed himself emperor in 1616. In 1636, Huang Taiji, son of Nurhachu, moved the capital to Shenyang (currently the capital city of Liaoning Province) and changed the regime title, establishing the Qing Dynasty. In 1644 when peasant's uprising leader Li Zicheng ended the Ming Dynasty and set up a new regime in Beijing, the Qing army seduced General Wu Sangui to rebel against Li Zicheng, opening the Great Wall to allow the Qing army to capture (present-day) Beijing and root their regime there. By the mid-18th century, the feudal economy of the Qing Dynasty reached 'the golden age of three emperors' spanning the reign of Emperor Kangxi, Emperor Yongzheng and Emperor Qianlong.
Japan in the 1500s is locked in a century of decentralized power and incessant warfare among competing feudal lords, a period known as the "Sengoku," or "Country at War" (1467-1573). These are the final years of Japan's medieval period (1185-1600) just prior to the reunification of Japan and the establishment of order and peace under the Tokugawa shoguns (1600-1868). Within this context of feudal civil war of the 1500s, Japanese pirates are active in the trade along the China coast — an alternative to the official relations between China and Japan where trading privileges are awarded to the Japanese in return for tribute acknowledging the ascendancy of the Chinese emperor. The reunification of Japan is accomplished by three strong daimyo (medieval lords): Oda Nobunaga (1543-1582), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598), and finally Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616). Following the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, he establishes the Tokugawa Shogunate that governs for more than 250 years.
In an effort to reestablish order in its international relations, the Tokugawa Shogunate prohibits trade with Western nations, prohibits Japanese from going abroad to trade (ending the unofficial piracy and trade on the China coast), and reaffirms Japan's official relations with China and Korea within the East Asian international structure. Following the "Act of Seclusion" (1636) setting forth these conditions, Japan is effectively "secluded" from interchange with Western Europe (but not with East Asia) for the next 200 years. Only the Dutch retain a small outpost on an island in Nagasaki Harbor; books obtained from the Dutch are translated into Japanese and "Dutch learning" forms the basis of the Japanese knowledge of developments in the West throughout this period. Within East Asia, trade continues with the Koreans and Chinese, and exchange of goods and ideas with China is maintained. The East Asian political order, with China at the center, is reinforced.
Christopher Columbus sails west to the new World, departing Spain the day before the Jews of the Spanish Realm are giving the choice of exile or conversion to Christianity. After his three voyages of discovery and a century of migration, the present-day United States trails Caribbean-centered Spanish economy as a predecessor of modern times. By the mid-17th century various the competing French and British claims are focused on Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) through lands south of the shores of Lake Erie to Lake Champlain. The “French and Indian War” of 1763 establishes British hegemony in North America, while training young generals George Washington, Nathaniel Green and others in warfare that will enable the American Revolution of 1776. The culminating Battle of Yorktown is won by the revolutionary forces with the help of the French Navy, which although inferior to the British Navy has its sea forces in place to blockade reinforcement of the British Army under General Cornwallis. The United States of America is established by 1983, parallel to the personal reign of Emperor Qianlong (1736-1789). There is little contact in this period between the two Asiatic powers and the newly-formed American power.
After the middle period, all kinds of social contradictions increasingly surfaced and the Qing Dynasty began to decline. Under the corrupt ruling of the later rulers, various rebellions and uprisings broke out. In 1840 when the Opium War broke out, the Qing court was faced with troubles at home and aggression from abroad. During that period, measures were adopted by imperial rulers and some radical peasants to bolster their power. The Westernization Movement, the Reform Movement of 1898 and the Taiping Rebellion were the most influential ones, but none of them had ever succeeded in saving the dying Qing Dynasty.
The War of 1812 between the U.S. and England is often called the second war for independence. An early American win is by Oliver Hazard Perry in the Battle of Lake Erie, and the final American victory, the Battle of New Orleans, is won after peace negotiations are underway in England. Euro-Chinese relations erupt in the first Opium War 1840s, and Second Opium War (1860s), in which the Summer Palace is burned to avenge the massacre of the European negotiating team for a peace treaty. A dozen open cities are scattered along the Chinese Coast, led by Hong Kong in the south, Shanghai in mid-country, and Jiangsu in the north.
Japan’s period of prosperous isolation is ended by Commodore Matthew Perry’s entrenchment of four U.S. naval ships forces in Edo (Tokyo) Bay in July 1853, following an incursion in 1849, and for which Japan has no modern navy to counter-attack in their home waters. For twelve days, Japanese officials refused to speak with Perry, but under threat of attack by the superior American ships they accepted letters from President Millard Fillmore, marking the United States as the first Western nation to establish relations with Japan since it had been declared closed to foreigners two centuries earlier. (An unusual time linkage is Matthew Perry’s presence on his older brother’s flagship in the 1812 Battle of Lake Erie.) Over the next century and a half, Japan emerged as one of history's great economic success stories. By 2003 it was the largest creditor to the world that it previously shunned.
The modernization of China was a century in the making. The First Sino-Japanese War (August 1, 1894 – April 17, 1895) was fought between Qing Dynasty China and Meiji Japan, primarily over control of Korea. Sun Yat-Sen as leader of China's republican revolution did much to inspire and organize the movement that overthrew the Manchu dynasty in 1911. Recognized by Chinese everywhere as their country's modern founder, the physician-turned-nationalist failed in his dream of unification. The Second Sino-Japanese war (July 7, 1937 – September 9, 1945) was fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The Nanking Massacre or Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, was a mass murder and war rape that occurred during six weeks after the Capture of Nanjing, the former capital. During this period hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers were murdered and 40,000–80,000 women were raped by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army. At that time its world effect was lost in the larger context of World War II, but has been recently remembered in films.
Ten Excerpts from “World War II Overview” September 23, 2009
#1. The “World War II Overview” September 23, 2009 starts with the Russo-Japanese War of 1903-1905 and ends with the Korean War 1950-1953. A key excerpt after the opening page is: In six weeks the military lineup in Western Europe had moved from approximate parity to total defeat for the Allies. Hitler controlled, or was allied with, essentially all of the industrial might of continental Europe. On July 6 Hitler proposed a peace pact with Britain based on a joint partition of the world. On July 19 speaking to the Reichstag Hitler addresses a last appeal to Britain as European victor. President Roosevelt signed the Two-Ocean Navy Expansion Act, a key event. The Triparte Pact between Germany, Italy and Japan is signed September 27, 1941 in Berlin, setting the order of battle for the balance of the war. How did the Allies win?
#2. For Japan, 1853 was the year that Admiral Perry dropped anchor in Tokyo Bay, forcing an opening by Japan with the West. (This event encouraged an increasingly powerful influence by the Japanese military during the Industrial Revolution, to offset the humiliation by Perry representing the upstart United States.) By 1905, Japan had won the war with European power Russia, which covers 11 times zones and had to split their forces between east and west. This war was a tremendous boost to Japan, and to a militaristic order that was rising in Japan. There is various analysis of how this happened, but the question is why it happened. Akira Iriye in 1987 wrote a book called the Origins of The Second World War in Asia And Pacific and in 1997, Brad DeLong, a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote a long comment to answer the question of: Why did Japan act as they did? Japan had by far the least potential of great powers as heavy industrial capacity, with perhaps 25% of Germany’s, about 20% of Britain’s, perhaps 15% of the Soviet Union, and perhaps 5% of America’s. Japan’s blue-water battle fleet and air force were substantial, but the industrial base, the key to planes, newly-trained pilots and ships flowing to the front were not. Given Japan’s relative industrial weakness, the first principle for leaders, even the most militarist and aggressive leaders, was that strategy should have chosen targets carefully. Perhaps Japan had the strength to evict the Soviet Union from the Far East and add Manchuria and Siberia up to Vladivostok to its Empire, as long as the Nazi’s were distracted by Stalin in the East. Perhaps Japan had the strength to drive to the Chinese capital and impose a peace of its own choosing on the Chinese Nationalists as long as Britain, America, and the Soviet Union were more worried about Europe and Germany. Perhaps Japan had the strength to take advantage of the fall of Western Europe to the Nazi’s by extending into China and Indonesia, establishing the puppet governments. Japan was claiming the end of European imperialism and forming a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. But could they do all three? The answer turns out; they could not.
#3. There were two events they both occurred in 1941 that set the scene for the rest of the war, to be covered in the next two sessions. The first one was Hitler’s invasion of Russia, the putative ally of Germany in a standoff pact, on June 22, 1941 as Operation Barbarossa was launched. The second, of course that we know well, was the attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941, which actually started 30 minutes before the declaration of war by the Japanese ambassador was delivered to our government in Washington. We know that story pretty well. So, that upset the world scene. But what if Germany had been content to expand their sphere? For instance, the Luftwaffe was only formed in 1933 in Germany, because they were not allowed to have an air force, so they did this in secret. Essentially by 1940 they had built this great strength in seven years. What if Hitler had taken another seven years to quadruple the strength? The Japanese had increased heavy industry; if you read the battles of the war they had some super battleships that were formidable. They had a very maneuverable fighter in the Mitsubishi Zero, and they would become even more formidable.
But the key to both governments was that there were no checks and balances in either the German or Japanese governments. There were certainly no checks on Hitler, and a later act that helped the defeat of Nazi Germany occurred in December 1941, when Hitler personally assumed command of the military and gave increasingly irrational orders. Something similar happened in Japan.
#4. What is another big reason why the allies won? If you talked to people from Russia, (I did visit Russia four times in 1992 and 1993), they described two things. First of all, you can cite the events of Napoleon in 1812 when he crossed the border attacking Russia with 400,000 troops in July to reach Moscow. When he returned he had 10,000 troops, losing most of his force to the Russian winter. Something similar happened to the Russians. Their attack was supposed to be a surprise, but if you look at the distance from Germany to Moscow, it is just too far to be a surprise. The Russians beat the Wehrmacht in fearful intensive fighting, and in 1943 in a series of huge tank battles further south, at Kursk.
#5. We are at a point where I might mention some things that, just as the predecessor events affected World War II, World War II itself affected ones that would come later. For those who remember it, when President Roosevelt died and Harry Truman as Vice President became President, there was general concern. Because, of course, Truman did not have the stature of Roosevelt, and one of the things that President Truman did was to walk from his residence to the Capitol daily, and gave reporters an open question-and-answer session to build his confidence, and the nation’s confidence in him. Before he took over his President, he had not been informed that there was the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. He had not been informed of that little detail. Later it was his decision to use those two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the need for those bombs is still debated today. The order-of-battle estimate of the Japanese home forces was about 10 divisions that would defend the homeland, and we were attacking with 14 divisions. We learned later in reality, there were 16 to 17 divisions, so the Western Allies would have been outnumbered.
#6: If you saw the movie, “Letters from Iwo Jima”, the defense of the Japanese soldiers of occupied islands in the Pacific was essentially fought to the last man. I mean their dedication to the Emperor was far greater than any German’s dedication to Hitler. So, the question later, and some people later apologized for dropping the atomic bomb, that the Japanese casualties in that invasion would be well over a million. Although others died, approximately 130,000 at Hiroshima, it had a tremendous effect because after the first drop on August 5th, there was a key war council to determine what they should do. Their military leader, Hideki Tojo, said the United States only had one bomb. So when a second bomb, which was a different type, was dropped on Nagasaki three days later, that certainly compromised his position. They choose peace, on one condition. The only condition at the surrender was that they retain their Emperor. In reality the military leaders were ready to sacrifice millions of Japanese citizens, thinking that world opinion would stop the Allies because of the slaughter.
#7. Another effect on our ally, the Soviet Union, after we had dropped the atomic bomb, caused them to develop their own bomb by 1949, actually a copy of the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki with help from a spy. The first U.S. hydrogen (fusion) bomb was exploded in 1952, causing the Russians to counter with their own hydrogen bomb in 1955. They continued their push for technology and I am sure everybody remembers the day in 1957 when they launched Sputnik and then 4 years later, launched the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin. That shook us again and our young President, John Kennedy, decided that we were going to the moon in that decade. There is the effect of competitive technology that ended one war, and then caused the start of another, the Cold War.
#8. Some other audacious events occurred in the battle in the Southeast Pacific of Leyte Gulf. At this point, the Japanese no longer had naval superiority, and they were concerned over a landing force by General MacArthur in the Philippines. They devised a plan with four naval forces that included a decoy force to the north, to get the Allied Navy under Admiral William (Bull) Halsey to follow them with his large surface ships. The lead Japanese southern force was mostly destroyed in the Surigao Strait in a classic military maneuver of ‘Crossing the Tee’. The smaller southern force arrived late, lost some ships, and turned around. Halsey pursued that decoy force and so a fourth Japanese force of the super- battleship Yamato, three other battleships, six super-cruisers, two light cruisers, and about a dozen destroyers were opposed by Admiral Kincaid’s task force with 11 Fletcher-class destroyers and lightly-armed escort carriers. These were better destroyers than earlier models and had improved torpedoes. A group of three destroyers then attacked this superior force with torpedoes and 5-inch guns even though they were tremendously outgunned. In fact, it startled the Japanese Admiral Kurita such that he pulled the Yamato back around to the rear because he did not want to lose it. The lead attacking destroyer, the Johnston commanded by Ernst Evans, ¾ American Indian heritage, was pounded by the Japanese cruisers and was sunk, but he did receive the Medal of Honor. When Evans took this initiative, every man on the ship was carried along, with no say except to fight. Even though it was essentially impossible to succeed, that is one of the cases of audacious action and; in fact, the landing force at Leyte by MacArthur was protected.
#9. At the October 7th session, and I was asked for added comments. I replied by saying that the highlight of my talk on September 23 was when, as I started the story on Leyte Gulf, a veteran raised his hand and said: “I was there.” Then Sherwin Goodman came forward and gave his story on first seeing the Yamato, and then trying to attack her. Sherwin loaned me his copy of The Battle of Leyte Gulf by Thomas Cutler, published 50 years later so Cutler had access to the post-war testimony of the Japanese admirals, as well as survivors of the Johnston. The book includes reference to a text in the Napoleonic era, On War by the Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz, a classic work. In a chapter entitled “Friction in War”, Clausewitz used a term ‘friction’ to describe all that can go wrong in a war, and in another chapter “Intelligence in War” described the difficulty in obtaining accurate information. He combined these into the ‘fog of war’, a factor particularly evident at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, where both the American and Japanese sides had a split command, causing mis-communication that led to the uneven battle.
Cutler also references the action in the Crimean War enshrined in history by Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade”, with occurred 90 years to the day (October 25, 1854) before the final day at Leyte Gulf. Cutler’s 18th chapter is entitled “Charge of the Light Brigade”, in which Tennyson’s verses are interspersed with the Leyte battle action. It is the highlight of this book; the last two paragraphs of that chapter follow in [ ].
[As the survivors of Johnston floundered about in their new environment, watching their ship slowly disappearing into the sea, they saw a Japanese destroyer bearing down on them. Fearing they were about to be strafed, many slipped out of their life jackets and dove beneath the water for protection. Others feared being depth-charged and tried to float on their backs, believing they would sustain less injury this way. Still others watched in fatalistic terror as the Japanese vessel rapidly approached.
But the Japanese ship did not strafe and did not depth-charge these men. Instead, some of the crew tossed cans of food to their enemies now floating helplessly in the water. And many of the Johnston’s survivors then witnessed something they would never forget. There on the bridge-wing of the Japanese destroyer, an officer stood watching as Johnston, his enemy of just moments before, slipped beneath the waves. As the noble ship went down, this Japanese officer lifted a hand to the visor of his cap and stood motionless for a moment… saluting. ]
#10. One silent chapter on the behavior of the Japanese in China was uncovered by my elder son Eric, currently a DuPont executive based in Shanghai. He visited a war memorial in ChangChun, the 1930s capital of the puppet government under Pu Yi, the last Emperor of the Qing Dynasty prior to China becoming a republic. The details are too gruesome to include, but see Sheldon H. Harris, Factories of Death: Japanese Secret Biological Warfare, 1932-1945, and the American Cover-up, Routlege, London, 1994
An audacious action was Lt. Colonel James Doolittle’s radio by fifteen B-25 bombers over Tokyo on April, 1942, which shook the Tojo-led Japanese military, who had assured the Emperor that the home islands were safe from attack. The flyers who landed on Japanese-held areas were executed. The lucky ones landed in China, protected by local villagers. The Japanese reaction was the massive Zhejiang-Jiangxi biological attack.
Epilogue
This historical review was triggered on October 12, 2011 by a chance meeting of the undersigned with a member of the Royal Asiatic Society giving a tour of the early-20th century North Bund, just south of Suzhou Creek, now under re-development. The question arose as to why this project had been switched from a Rock Fund under Japanese control, to a Chinese entity. The answer may be Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, which outrage Asian countries that Japan invaded and brutally occupied over the last century. They see his tributes there as honoring Japan's militaristic past. Mr. Koizumi said he had decided on the visit, not previously announced and his fourth since becoming prime minister in April 2001, to pray for ''Japan's peace and prosperity.'' The Yasukuni Shrine honors about 2.5 million Japanese war dead, including executed criminals like the war-era Prime Minister Hideki Tojo.
China protested the visit almost immediately. Mr. Koizumi ''ignores opposition from the Chinese people and Asian people and obstinately insists on visiting the Yasukuni Shrine,'' the state-run by New China News Agency said. South Korea's Foreign Ministry also expressed regret.
This review started with Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. There is no greater rise than the stunning economic progress of the Peoples Republic of China in the last quarter century. While Japan has foresworn the use of atomic weapons, their over-reliance on nuclear power, and inadequate governmental controls, were exposed by the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, caused by an unprecedented earthquake-tsunami, an order of magnitude greater than the previous tsunami to strike NE Japan in 869 AD. That disaster still haunts that region, and has compromised the relative market power of Japan’s automotive companies.
There is a hidden political earthquake that may never occur, the resentment of their SE neighbors toward Japan’s brutal occupation of China starting in 1937 and continuing during World War II. That topic may be examined in a future article for publication in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.
Joseph R. Degenfelder
First Armored Division U.S. Army Oct 1961 - Sep 1963
Advance party for Invasion of Cuba in Russian Missile Crisis Sep-Dec 1962
