Russo-Japanese War in 1912

will not start ww1

Alexander III of Russia lives until 1907

Nicholas II does his thing and the Russo-Japanese War happens in 1912

who will win the war?
 
OK, so I assume this is INSTEAD of a 1904-5 war.

Also, since Manchuria etc was in Nicholas II's reign, I am not sure if you intend to be seeing that in Aleksandr III's later reign or not?

If not, then I don't think this question is answerable as I think butterflies have already run riot over history

If we assume that Aleksandr III keeps to Russia's agreement with China and pulls out of Manchuria APART from Port Arthur, then I could see Japan not feeling so threatened as they were OTL, especially if Russian attitudes to logging, the Yalu etc are less apparently hostile. That was as much a reason as the other.

Then when Nicholas II takes over, things go downhill, and he cares less for Japanese sensibilities, riles them and they start the war in 1912

One thing to note is that no 1904-05 war means no 1905 revolution, and no perception of Russian weakness, so no 1908 annexation of Bosnia, and probably no Balkan War in 1911-1912, so Russia is going to feel reasonably secure on its South-Western front.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Ok, so assuming all that (one has to make assumptions) then what are the various OOBs.

Without the R-J War its an interesting question what the state of WORLD naval warfare will be.

We can probably assume (that word again) the Dreadnought has come along as it is trending that way, but it might have been a year or so later, allowing the King Edward VII analogues to merge into the Lord Nelson analogues and then into the Dreadnought analogue, rather than sort of rush them altogether. In addition, some of the apparent lessons of Yellow Sea/TsuShima won't have been adopted, which might not be a bad thing!

Neither Russia nor Japan would have run into budget problems of the type that slowed their OTL battleship building plans, but though probably building more, they are probably building more final generation predreadnoughts - these may well not have the high-calibre intermediary guns, because these were an apparent "lesson" of the R-J War.

Paradoxically, this could mean that the first generation of Russian and Japanese dreadnoughts actually come earlier than OTL since the intermediate development is done away with, and with the later deployment date for Dreadnought it would allow other nations to be more closely following British design thought, and thus more able to make their own changes.

Even so you're probably looking at 1911 before the first Russian and Japanese dreadnoughts are ready, which would be interesting because Japan would have them in home waters, and Russia would only have them in the Baltic.

But the more numerous later generation predreadnoughts would be what are going to be fighting the main battles, together with more of the later generation armoured cruisers, a la Rurik

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Grey Wolf

There will be a war similar to the First Balkan War in the
Balkans going on at the same time starting a few months later after Russo-Japanese War had started
 
Grey Wolf

There will be a war similar to the First Balkan War in the
Balkans going on at the same time starting a few months later after Russo-Japanese War had started

That certainly makes sense. Russia is distracted, and the smaller nations can fall upon the Ottomans and fight among themselves, with less regard for Russia's strategic needs.

What did you think of my questions regarding Dreadnought development?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
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