Easy Victories, Hard Defeats: Fragile Adversaries and the Lessons of War and Society

For most of recorded history, China was the dominant civilization in East Asia. Then came the Meiji upstart: Japan rose, China stumbled, and the balance reversed—with profound consequences for the region and the world. Today, we are watching another reversal of the reversal, as China reasserts itself and seeks to constrain Japan’s strategic space. That raises an enduring question: why do these shifts happen, and what do they tell us about the interplay of war, society, and power?

The hillside was slick with blood. At 203-Meter Hill above Port Arthur (Lüshunkou) in December 1904, Japanese troops clawed their way up under Russian fire, charging again and again until the ground itself seemed made of corpses. When the crest finally fell, Japanese artillery could at last rain shells onto the harbor, sinking the Russian Pacific Fleet. The victory was decisive, but it cost over 11,000 Japanese dead (and almost 10,000 wounded). General Nogi, who lost both his sons in the war, later wrote that he had won a “mountain of corpses.”

That image captures both the brilliance and the fragility of Japan’s early rise. The victory at Port Arthur was hailed worldwide as proof of Asian modernity, yet Japan was already nearing exhaustion. Only deft diplomacy and U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt’s mediation prevented the war from sliding into defeat. Success was real—but it was contingent, narrow, and deeply dependent on timing, alliances, and restraint.

As an anthropologist, I am interested in what is particular and local but also in what is true across time and space. Japan’s rise and fall illustrate both. This particular story is about Meiji reforms, battlefield victories, and diplomatic finesse. The broader truth is about war and society: how institutions mobilize power, how restraint preserves success, and how hubris—fueled by victories over cooperative adversaries—can drive states into ruin.

Building a Modern Power

Japan’s rise began with the Meiji reforms (1869–1890). Faced with the humiliations of the treaty-port system, Japanese leaders recognized that survival required more than rifles and ships: it required Western-style institutions that could mobilize society and, crucially, both manufacture and manage modern technology.

Compulsory education created a literate citizenry; conscription produced a national army; a central bank stabilized currency; a professional bureaucracy and legal code mirrored Europe’s. Children were pulled from farms, samurai were stripped of privilege, and peasants were taxed to fund unfamiliar schools. To be sure, these reforms were deeply unpopular—conscription and schooling provoked resistance (“blood tax” riots), yet the reforms underwrote state capacity and gave Japan the institutional backbone to sustain power.

The 1871 Iwakura Mission confirmed the necessity. After touring Europe and the United States, meeting with President Ulysses Grant, Japanese officials returned convinced that adopting Western technology without Western institutions was impossible. The lesson was pragmatic, not cultural: to protect sovereignty, Japan would have to mimic not the popular culture but the institutional foundations of Western power.

The First Sino-Japanese War

When Japan went to war with Qing China in 1894, these reforms bore fruit. Japan’s modern army routed Chinese forces at Pyongyang; its navy shattered the Chinese fleet at the Yalu River. Over the winter, Port Arthur and Weihaiwei fell.

The consequences were transformative. Victory silenced domestic opposition to Westernization, legitimized the Meiji reforms, and elevated the prestige of the military. Regionally, Japan replaced China as Asia’s dominant power, annexing Taiwan and the Pescadores. Internationally, Britain recognized Japan as a peer, culminating in the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902.

But this success also carried a cost. Military prestige grew disproportionately, and the balance of civil–military power tilted, foreshadowing the militarism that would constrain its foreign policy in the future.

The Russo-Japanese War: Victory by Finesse

The war against Russia a decade later revealed both Japan’s sophistication and its limits. On paper, the odds were grim: Russia’s population was three times larger, its resources vastly greater. Yet Japan seized a fleeting “window of opportunity” before the Trans-Siberian Railway could deliver Russia’s full weight into Manchuria.

Japan’s success couldn’t have been brute force—it was finessed. Diplomatically, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance ensured no other European state would join Russia. This is, of course, straight out of China’s own Sun Tzu’s Art of War: build your own alliances while disrupting that of your rival; isolate them, and then ideally you win before the battle is even fought. In modern terminology, we’d call it isolating the adversary. That was the purpose—and the genius—of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.

Economically, Japan financed nearly two-fifths of the Russo–Japanese War through foreign loans—approximately 820 million yen of the 2,150 million yen total war expenditure. Much of this was enabled by Jacob Schiff’s pivotal $200 million loan, which alone accounted for about half of Japan’s war funds. Strategically, Japan integrated diplomacy, intelligence, finance, and the military into a coherent plan.

A third factor in overturning the balance of power was Japan’s ability to master grand strategy and to recognize the “culminating point of victory.” The concept of the “culminating point” in military strategy originated from the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, who introduced it in his classic work On War (published posthumously in 1832).

At the operational level, there is the “culminating point of attack.” And of course, a point of culmination exists for both attackers and defenders on every level of war. If you fail to reach it in a battle or campaign, you could have advanced further. Push too far though, and your extended lines collapse while the enemy’s shorten—your supply chains fray, theirs improve—and you invite a counterattack that drives you back further than if you had stopped earlier.

At the strategic level, however, there is the “culminating point of victory.” This concerns the purpose of the war itself. Japan fought Russia not to conquer Siberia but to secure its sovereignty and recognition as a great power. Stopping short of this point leaves gains on the table. Going too far, however, risks drawing in third parties, shifting the balance against you. What had once been achievable becomes impossible once outsiders intervene. In other words, Japan’s brilliance was restraint; it was knowing where to stop.

Even so, the war strained Japan to breaking. At Mukden, one of the largest land battles before World War I, Japan fielded exhausted troops against a larger Russian army. By 1905, Japan was nearing collapse.

Here, diplomacy proved decisive. Even before the war began, Tokyo had lined up Theodore Roosevelt as mediator. The Peace Treaty of Portsmouth delivered Japan its core objectives—dominance in Korea, southern Manchuria, and Sakhalin’s southern half (Karafuto Prefecture)—without demanding unconditional Russian surrender. Had the war dragged on, Japan would likely have lost. Its leaders succeeded not because they were omnipotent, but because they knew when to quit.

The Perils of a Fragile Adversary

These victories, however, were misleading. China was collapsing under civil wars and dynastic decline. Russia was plagued by illiteracy, corruption, divided command, and revolutionary unrest. Both were “fragile adversaries”: foes who, though determined to win, undermined themselves.

Building on Samuel Zilincik’s adaptation of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s idea of antifragility, we can think of adversaries as falling along a spectrum. At one end are antifragile opponents, who actually grow stronger from the stress of conflict. In the middle are resilient adversaries, who can restore themselves to their prior strength after a campaign. At the other end are fragile foes, whose military capabilities diminish when tested in strategic performance. They move and behave as you’d like them to move and behave. Think of the boxing fighting technique of “rope-a-dope,” most famously associated with Muhammad Ali in his October 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” match against then world heavyweight champion George Foreman. These are of course ideal types—real adversaries rarely fit neatly into a single category—but the typology helps us ask the right question: does war weaken, restore, or empower the adversary we face?

More to the point, defeating fragile adversaries may teach the wrong lessons. It tempts societies to believe that boldness and sacrifice alone guarantee victory, obscuring the role of timing, diplomacy, and luck. Japan mistook contingent success for a permanent formula.

In the 1930s, the balance of power within Japan tipped decisively toward the military. The assassination of Itō Hirobumi in 1909 deprived Japan of one of its most capable civilian leaders. The brilliant, cautious Meiji statesmen passed from the scene. Their successors pursued unlimited objectives in China and, by 1941, struck Pearl Harbor.

But unlike Nicholas II’s Russia, Franklin Roosevelt’s America was not a fragile foe. Unlike Qing China, the Chinese Republic refused to collapse. What had once been finesse had become hubris. Japan confused luck for genius, tactical success for strategic mastery—and paid the ultimate price.

Lessons for War and Society

Japan’s story underscores enduring truths:

• Institutions matter. Victory depends not just on weapons but on the institutions that mobilize society and sustain war.
• Diplomacy matters. Japan’s rise owed as much to alliance-building and timing as to battlefield skill. Without Britain’s alliance or Roosevelt’s mediation, the Russo-Japanese War might have ended in ruin.
• Restraint matters. The Meiji generation knew when to stop. Their successors (the next generation) did not.
• Adversaries matter. Victories against fragile foes can deceive, encouraging hubris when adversaries no longer oblige.

Contemporary Echoes

Russia in Ukraine: Institutions as Weapons

Like Nicholas II, Vladimir Putin assumed his opponent was a cooperative, fragile adversary: corrupt, divided, incapable of mobilization. Ukraine, he believed, would collapse under the first blows. Instead, Ukraine rallied with remarkable cohesion. Its institutions—civil society, decentralized local governance, and the capacity to improvise technologically—proved resilient.

Internationally, Ukraine displayed Japan-like finesse. By aligning itself with NATO, the EU, and the United States, it secured the lifelines of finance, weapons, and training. Just as Japan leveraged the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and Roosevelt’s mediation, Ukraine has turned external partnerships into force multipliers.

Russia, by contrast, replayed its own history of dysfunction: corruption hollowed logistics; divided command bred confusion; brittle autocracy isolated decision-making. Like Nicholas II, Putin found himself in a grinding war that eroded legitimacy at home.

The echo is unmistakable: Moscow mistook its adversary’s will and institutions, just as Japan did in 1941. The result then was not quick victory but drawn-out entanglement.

Israel and Iran: From Tactical Brilliance to Strategic Limits

Israel’s wars across six fronts illustrate a different parallel. Iranian networks in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen helped provide it depth and resilience. Against Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, Israel achieved repeated tactical brilliance—swift air campaigns, targeted assassinations, and suppression of adversary militaries. These victories resembled Japan’s triumph over Qing China in 1895: decisive, impressive, and affirming of its modernized military.

But they also bred illusions. Victories against weaker or fragmented adversaries suggested that force could deliver strategic transformation. This confidence underpinned Israel’s campaign against Iran: sabotage, cyber strikes, assassinations, and pressure designed to collapse Iran’s nuclear program or even the regime itself.

Iran, however, has proven anything but cooperative. Like the United States in 1941, it absorbed blows and mobilized for a longer struggle. Its institutions—repressive but cohesive—prevented collapse. Israel’s hopes for Syria-fication instead became a long contest of endurance. Moreover, its strikes appear to have unintentionally reshaped Iran’s political future.

Here, the lesson mirrors Japan’s misstep: tactical brilliance does not guarantee strategic victory. Like Japan pressing beyond the culminating point of victory, Israel discovered that what had worked against weaker adversaries faltered against a stronger one. Iran refused to collapse. Instead, it absorbed the blows, and Israel felt forced to push for American backing. Without the diplomatic finesse that Japan once wielded in 1905—or that Israel has struggled to replicate against Iran—military power alone runs up against hard limits.

The danger here then is the same one that undid Japan: mistaking tactical victories for proof of strategic invincibility, and assuming yesterday’s fragile adversaries define tomorrow’s wars.

Conclusion: From Port Arthur to Kyiv

The story that began at 203-Meter Hill echoes in Kyiv today. In February 2022, as Russian tanks rolled toward the Ukrainian capital, Western governments offered to evacuate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. His reply was simple: “I need ammunition, not a ride.” Where Japan at Port Arthur bled itself dry and pressed on until diplomacy saved it, Ukraine stood fast, mobilized society, and rallied allies before collapse. One was a mountain of corpses; the other, a moment of resilience.

Japan’s rise and fall illustrate a timeless pattern. Societies rise when they build institutions, integrate military and diplomatic power, and practice restraint. They fall when they mistake fragile adversaries for the norm, abandon diplomacy for force, and let hubris override prudence.

Russia in Ukraine and Israel against Iran face the same test. Victories against weaker or more divided foes can obscure the limits of power. But tomorrow’s adversaries may not cooperate in their own defeat.

And looming in the background is China. For centuries, it dominated East Asia, until Japan reversed the balance in the late nineteenth century. Now, we are living through another reversal of that reversal, as China reasserts itself and seeks to constrain Japan’s strategic space. The lesson is clear: power is never permanent, victories are never final, and hubris is always fatal. The deepest lesson of war and society is not how to win battles, but how to recognize the limits of one’s own power—and how to know when to stop.

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