Sarah Paine

Lake Baikal is about the size of Switzerland.

And the Boxer Rebellion, the Al-Qaeda of their day, and I'll get to them, had destroyed much of the track, really upsetting the Russians.

As a result of all of this, at the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War, which begins in 1904, the carrying capacity of that railway was only 20,000 to 40,000 men per month to the front.

By the end of the war, the last battle,

It's 100,000 men per month.

If those numbers had been available at the beginning of the war, Japan would have faced numerically superior Russians from start to finish and would have been in a world of hurt.

So Japan has got a window of opportunity that it's worrying about sorting things out.

In addition, Japan engages in a really big military buildup.

It gets a really big indemnity from the first Sino-Japanese War, and it spends it, and that spending is finished in around 1901, meaning it's about ready to go to war.

At the time the war breaks out, Russian naval assets in Asia were about three-quarters, those of Japan.

Russia was scheduled to surpass Japan's naval assets by about 1905.

Again, you could see this window of opportunity threatening to shut.

So if you look at it, Japan's window of opportunity of getting its empire, if that's what it thinks it wants, you've got to have treaty vision in place.

You've got to isolate Russians, make sure that there's going to be no other power interfering in these things.

You've got to have your rearmament program completed.

But look, this window is very short.

It's going to close in 1905-ish.

And when you think of windows of opportunities, what they mean is whatever it is you plan to do has to be completed before it slams shut.

If you're on the wrong side of the window, which is what happens to Japan in the Second Sano-Japanese War, you are in a world of hurt.

In addition, what it means is actually time is on the side of your adversary.