The world is a rough neighborhood.

It is sobering to think of Japan’s fate, even in part, as the acting together of generational change and the heady brew of modest success. That bodes ill for almost any nation.

Japan’s victory over Russia was historically significant, and Japan’s leaders at the time probably appraised it correctly and in context. That is to say, it was a victory over a European power for the first time by an Asian one, and a first victory over Europeans for Japan in particular, and it showed stunning technological and tactical success with major strategic benefits. [The first is the one that gets most play now for modern reasons. It was noted then, but the second and third ideas are the important ones.] But I’ll bet they were conscious that it was a victory over the most ramshackle of the European powers at the far end of its power projection capacity, and at the end over a fleet that had bust its mechanical and human guts just to get there, and even at that the whole war had been a bloody, near run thing.

Worth teaching new generations of officers to be proud of their country and service, to respect the achievements of their elders, and to also know the warts version of those events.

Imagine thinking that beating Russia in 1904-5 in a regional conflict Russia could just barely reach by land or sea, and in which Russia had a smallish navy, would be the same as beating the United States on a knockout basis across the Pacific in the 1940s, when the USN was already rather larger and more capable relative to Japan’s navy than Russia’s had been. Even just looking at maps, publicly reported economic stats, location of possible bases, and so on, should have highlighted some differences.

Off topic but I would like to register my deep loathing of Canada’s traditional telecoms company Bell. That is all on that.