Leon
Trotsky: Clouds in the Far East
Published
August 1934
[Writing
of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 14, New York 1979, p. 512-516]
At
first sight one becomes astonished by the insignificance of those
military forces which were concentrated in the Far East during the
months of extreme tension in Soviet-Japanese relations. On February 3
the Japanese minister of war, Hayashi,
declared
that his government had only 50,000 soldiers in Manchuria while the
Soviets had concentrated 100,000 men and 300 planes on their nearest
border. Blücher, the commander in chief of the Far Eastern army,
refuted Hayashi, stating that the Japanese had actually concentrated
in Manchuria 130,000 men, more than one-third of their regular army,
plus 115,000 Manchukuo soldiers — all told, 245,000 men and 500
planes. At the same time, Blücher added reassuringly that the Soviet
armed forces were not inferior to the Japanese. On the scale of a
major war, we are dealing here, one may say, with partisan
detachments.
The
concentration of masses of millions, an unbroken and deep front and a
positional war are excluded by the properties of the Far Eastern
arena (immense and sparsely populated areas, extremely broken
terrain, poor means of communication, remoteness from the key bases).
In the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05, 320,000 soldiers participated
on the Russian side, and toward the end, i.e., when the czarist army
was completely routed — 500,000. The Japanese hardly numbered as
many. The czarist army lacked not transport, not numbers, but
ability. Since that time, the technology of war has changed beyond
recognition. But the basic properties of the theater of war in the
Far East have remained the same. To Japan, Manchuria is an
intermediate base, separated from the key bases by sea. The Japanese
fleet rules on sea, but not under sea nor in the air. Sea transport
is bound up with dangers. The Chinese population of Manchuria is
hostile to the Japanese. Like the Soviets, Japan will be unable to
concentrate masses of millions on the Far Eastern front. The most
modem technology must, of necessity, be correlated with the tactical
methods of the past. The strategy of Napoleon, and even of Hannibal,
remains to a large measure in force for the Trans-Baikal and the
Maritime Provinces. Large-scale cavalry raids will introduce decisive
changes into the map of war. The Japanese railroads in Manchuria will
be subjected to greater dangers ~than the Soviet line running along
the Amur. In the operations of isolated detachments, in cavalry raids
at the enemy’s rear, colossal work will entail upon modem
technology in the form of aviation as the means of scouting, of
maintaining connections of transport, and of bombing. Insofar as the
war in the Amur and Maritime Provinces will bear, in general, a
mobile and maneuvering character, its outcome will depend to a
decisive degree upon the ability of isolated detachments to operate
independently; upon the initiative of the lowest ranking officers;
and upon the resourcefulness of every soldier who is left to act on
his own. In all these respects, the Soviet army, in my opinion, will
prove superior to the Japanese, at least by as much as the Japanese
army proved superior to the czarist in 1904-05.
As
the events of last year have demonstrated, Tokyo cannot make up her
mind to begin right now. And in the meantime, with every additional
year, the interrelation of forces will not change in favor of Japan.
The development of the Kuznietsk military-industrial base has already
freed the Far Eastern front from the necessity of depending upon the
European rear. The radical reconstruction of the carrying capacity of
the Moscow-Khabarovsk railway, by double-tracking the line, was set
by the Soviet government as one of the principal tasks for 1934.
Conjointly work was begun on the railroad from Lake Baikal to the
lower Amur regions, 1,400 kilometers long. The new main line will tap
the richest coal regions of Bureya and the mines of Khingan. The
Bureya region — which is only 500 kilometers away from Khabarovsk,
i.e., one-tenth the distance to the Kuznietsk region — will be
transformed by the program of industrial construction into an
independent industrial military-technological base for the Far East.
The correlation of the gigantic undertakings in transportation and
industry with the substantial economic privileges extended to the
population of the Far East must lead to a rapid settlement of the
territory — and this will cut the ground from under the Siberian
plans of Japanese imperialism.
Nevertheless
Japan’s internal situation makes war almost inevitable, just as
thirty years ago there was no forestalling czarism from it, despite
all the voices of warning. There is no paradox in the statement that
after the war has broken out in the Far East, it will be either very
short, almost instantaneous, or very, very long. Japan’s goal —
the seizure of the Far East, and if possible of a considerable
section of the Trans-Baikal territory — requires of itself very
long periods of time. The war could end quickly only provided the
Soviet Union will be able to shatter at the very outset the Japanese
offensive, decisively and for a long time to come. For the solution
of this defensive task, aviation provides the Soviets with a weapon
of inestimable power.
One
need not be a devotee of “integral” aerial warfare, i.e., believe
in the transference of the decisive military operations to the air,
in order to realize that, under certain conditions, aviation is
unquestionably capable of solving the war problem by radically
paralyzing the offensive operations of the enemy. Such is precisely
the case in the Far East. In his complaint about the concentration of
Soviet air forces in the Maritime Provinces, Hayashi divulged the
easily understood alarm of Japan’s ruling circles, whose political
centers, whose military-industrial combines and whose most important
war bases are exposed to the blows of the Red air fleets. With the
Maritime Provinces as a base, it is possible to spread the greatest
havoc among the vital centers of the island empire by means of
long-range planes. Even should one concede what is hardly likely,
that Japan will be able to muster an equal or superior air force, the
danger to the islands will only be lessened but not eliminated. There
is no creating an impassable aerial barrier; breaches will be only
too frequent, and every breach is pregnant with great consequence. In
this duel, the decisive importance will be borne not by the material,
technological preponderance which unquestionably lies on the side of
Soviet aviation, and which can only increase in the immediate future,
but by the relative geographic position of the two sides.
While
almost all the Japanese centers are exposed to attack from the air,
the Japanese air forces cannot retaliate with blows anywhere nearly
equivalent; not only Moscow but also the Kuznietsk base (6,000-7,000
kilometers away!) cannot be reached without a landing. At the same
time, neither in the Maritime Provinces nor in Eastern Siberia are
there centers so vital that their destruction could exert a decisive
or even a telling influence on the course of the war. The advantages
of position multiplied by a more powerful technology will give the
Red Army a preponderance which is difficult to express in terms of a
precise coefficient, but which may prove of decisive importance.
Should
the Soviet aviation, however, prove unprepared for the solution of
the grandiose task of the third dimension, the center of gravity
would revert to the two-dimensional plane, where the laws
of the
Far Eastern theater would enter into full force; and the principal
law reads: slowness. The time has obviously elapsed for the sudden
seizure of the Maritime Provinces. Vladivostok today represents a
strongly fortified position which may become the Verdun of the
Pacific Coast. The attempt to capture a fortress can be made only by
land, and would require say a dozen divisions — two and a half to
three times more than are required for the defense. Even in the event
of complete success this operation would consume months, and thereby
leave at the disposal of the Red Army an invaluable supplementary
period of time. The westward movement of the Japanese would require
colossal preparatory labor: intermediate bases must be fortified;
railways and roads must be built. Japan’s very successes in this
line
would create increasing difficulties for her; because the Red Army
would retreat to its own bases while the Japanese would become
dispersed within inhospitable territories, having behind their backs
enslaved Manchuria, crushed Korea and hostile China. A protracted war
would open up the possibility of forming, in the deep rear of the
Japanese, a Chinese army with the aid of Soviet technology and Soviet
instructors.
But
here we already enter into the sphere of world relations, in the true
sense of the word, with all the possibilities, dangers and unknown
quantities latent in them. Many of the considerations and estimates
which were stated above would, of course, be eliminated should the
war last a number of years and force the Soviets to place twenty
million men under arms. In such a case, the weakest link after
transport, or together with transport, would probably prove to be the
Soviet rural economy, the fundamental problems of which are still far
from solution. However, it is precisely in the perspective of a major
war that it is absolutely impermissible to take the question of the
USSR in an isolated form, i.e., without direct connection with the
entire world situation. What will be the groupings of countries in
the East and the West? Will the military coalition of Japan and
Germany be realized? Would the USSR find allies, and precisely whom?
What will happen to the freedom of the seas? What will be the
subsistence level and, in general, the economic position of Japan?
Will Germany find itself within a new blockading ring? What will be
the relative stability of the regimes of the warring countries? The
number of such questions could be multiplied indefinitely. All of
them will flow inevitably from the conditions of a world war; but no
one can answer them a priori. The answer will be found during the
actual course of the mutual destruction of peoples, and this answer
may turn out to be a merciless sentence upon our entire civilization.