Germany's position was extremely awkward. After its failed challenge to British and French hegemony in the First World War, Germany had only nominally preserved and consolidated its status as the overlord of continental Europe.
After all, ever since the Franco-Prussian War, Germany had remained the foremost military power on the European continent. Although France had loudly proclaimed before the war that its army was Europe's finest, it had never once surpassed Germany militarily since the Franco-Prussian War. The First World War had instead firmly seated the French Army as Europe's second-ranked land force.
Yet this did not alter the predicament of Germany, the current overlord of continental Europe. Its dream of using war to seize the vast overseas colonies of Britain and France had been shattered.
Germany could only continue cultivating its original markets and sphere of influence, using them as a foundation for outward expansion. The two directions of that expansion were Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
However, Germany's expansion in those two directions had clearly not gone smoothly. In Eastern Europe stood the current Russian regime led by the Russian Labor Party, which still continued the fundamental national policy of the Tsarist era: expansion toward Europe.
So long as Russian leaders had their heads screwed on straight, they would know that Europe was Russia's foundation. The Far East, Central Asia, the Indian Ocean, and similar regions were all secondary directions.
It was not that those regions were unimportant, but that the returns from developing them were far inferior to those from expanding into Europe, while the costs were hardly low.
Nicholas II was a classic example. He had originally hoped to reverse Russia's decline through his eastward policy, only to run headlong into Japan, a rising star. Not only did he fail to gain much, he ended