Their is no way that the Japanese wouldn't have anthor go, Russia position in the Far East is tenuos.
bobbis14,
No it wasn't, and it was growing stronger.
Russia lacks any major allies in the area..
So did Japan.
... has limited infustructure making any kind of offensive/large scale colonisation (Empire building) difficult...
So did Japan.
... (note Russia has only one railroad to the Far East that isn't even complete in sections, which every bullet going to the Far East to kill the Japanese has to travel along)...
Yeah, a single railroad on which Russia managed to move several army corps to the theatre and then supply them. Lots of naval stores were moved too. Russian logistics were not the issue, the issue was Russian leadership, both political and military, instead.
... but most importantly the Japanese don't have these constraints against them.
Yeah, Japan only has to ship everything across the Sea of Japan and Yellow Sea and then use the equally sparse rail net in Korea and the Liaodong peninsular.
A comparison would be the French holdings in the New World, due to Britains overwhelming supremecy in the region (and other factors) they were bound to fall to Britain eventualy.
There are so many differences between those two historical events that your "comparison" is actually nothing of the sort.
Douglas has this exactly right. Japan never again managed to defeat Russia after 1905 on either land or sea and far too many of Japan's "victories" during the war were pyrrhic in nature. Japan's capture of Port Arthur had everything to do with the defeatism of it's commanders and nothing to do with the actual military situation. Even the last great Japanese "victory" at Mukden was more of a Russian withdrawal than anything else.
Japan was stretched to the breaking point by this war and was actually bankrupt when she signed the Treaty of Portsmouth. Witte knew this and delayed the negotiations until Japan was desperate enough to drop it's demands for an indemnity.
If Russia had been less worried with the festering internal troubles that would become the Revolution of 1905, she would have taken the offensive in early 1906 and drove the Japanese back out of Manchuria at the very least.
Even Japan's celebrated naval "advantage" was razor thin, having more to do with leadership and amazing luck than anything else. If Makarov hadn't gone down with his flagship after it hit a mine, if Vitgeft hadn't been killed by a lucky hit on the bridge an hour before dusk during the Battle of the Yellow Sea, or if the Russians had taken their own advice and based out of Vladivostok instead of Port Arthur both the naval and land wars would have been very different.
Even Tsushima is overblown. The battle was nothing but a turkey shoot. Rozhestvensky had been saddled with ships he didn't want along on the expedition, the trip from Europe had left the vessels in poor repair, the ships were carrying extra coal on their decks, and his second-in-command's death a few days earlier had been covered up for morale purposes. The only thing surprising about the battle is how long it took the Russians to give up.
If you feel comfortable reading English I can recommend a few books about the war you may find interesting.
Bill