62 Ë A Lull
United States did tolerate Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910 (in exchange for secu-
rity in its colonies in the Philippines). Yet soon after the Russo-Japanese War, the end
of which it brokered in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the United States began prepar-
ing for a possible future war with Japan. Indeed, it was “the rst time in American
history that the United States prepared war plans in peacetime directed at a speci c
adversary.”³⁵A political con guration that would lead to the Paci c War in 1941 was
thus already emerging soon after the Russo-Japanese War.
By contrast, Japan and Russia began drawing closer, in part to protect their in-
terests in Asia from the United States, which was beginning to claim its own stakes
aggressively.³⁶In 1907, Russia and Japan came to an agreement, demarcating their re-
spective spheres of in uence in Manchuria, which meant that Japan could annex Ko-
rea in 1910 without Russia’s objection. In 1910 Russia and Japan concluded another
agreement aimed at consolidating their respective spheres. In 1911–12, faced with the
consequences of the 1911 Xinhai Revolution in China, the two powers also secretly
agreed to demarcate Inner Mongolia under their respective areas. In turn, Japan re-
luctantly acknowledged Russia’s special interests in Outer Mongolia (which in 1912
declared independence from China). However strange it may appear, their rapproche-
ment was merely part of their imperial schemes, allowing Russia to concentrate its
attention on Europe and Japan to guard against Russia’s “war of revenge.” In 1916
their diplomatic dance would culminate with a formal alliance between them.³⁷
Despite the rapprochement, however, the world remained in doubt about its en-
durance, expecting that Russia and Japan would ght again in due course. A Georgian
reporting from Persia in 1909 noted that people there were asking whether Japan in-
deed would start a war against Russia and what, in that case, “Giurzhistan” (Georgia)
would do. Local people thought that it “necessary to drive out the Russians from the
Caucasus.”³⁸Indeed, the Russo-Japanese rapprochement did not alleviate the mutual
suspicions of either side.
35 Tal Tovy and Sharon Halevi, “America’s First Cold War: The Emergence of a New Rivalry,” in
Kowner, ed.,The Impact of the Russo-Japanese War, 150.
36 The latest Russian work on the subject is Ia. A. Shulatov,Na puti k sotrudnichestvu: Rossiisko-
iaponskie otnosheniia v 1905–1914 gg.(Khabarovsk-Moscow: Izd-vo Instituta vostokovedeniia RAN,
2008).
37 See Peter Berton, “A New Russo-Japanese Alliance?: Diplomacy in the Far East during World War
I.”Acta Slavica Iaponica, no. 11 (1993), 58–59. For more detail, see Michio Yoshimura,Zoho: Nihon to ̄
Rosia(Tokyo: Nihon keizai hy ̄oronsha, 1991).
38 GARF, f. 102, DP PP, 1910, op. 239, d. 24ch79lA, l. 3.