The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the New Asian Order

The Soviet Union’s collapse completes a cycle. It was about this time a century ago that Russia’s elaborate involvement with East Asia began. In 1892 Sergei Witte became Tsar Alexander III’s minister of finance. Witte, a vigorous advocate of the trans-Siberian railway, set the project in high motion. The railroad, he believed, would not only foster a large China and Pacific trade, but would position Russia to outflank Great Britain in northern China and Korea. Four years later, Russia with German backing forced Japan to forgo some of the spoils of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, and soon thereafter signed a treaty of alliance with China. By this 1896 treaty Russia pledged to defend its neighbor against attack, an undertaking used to justify Russian rights to a railroad transecting Manchuria and running directly to Vladivostok. Until it all ended in military defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, Russia continued to press on, maneuvering for position in northern China, indeed, seizing Port Arthur in 1898, a prize only three years earlier denied Japan, and contesting Japan on the Korean peninsula. In the 1890s, with German encouragement, Asia thus became a central focus of Russian foreign policy.