December 7 2003                                                              THE 21^st CENTURY POPULIST

The Other Pearl Harbor

By Don Schellhardt

             72 years ago, at dawn on this very day, carrier-based Japanese aircraft launched a dramatic surprise attack on American military targets in Hawaii :   most notably, naval ships clustered together in Pearl Harbor .     Most of America’s Pacific Fleet was crippled, or destroyed, in a single day   --   and the wounded but furious United States, which until then had been “neutral in favor of Britain and China”, found itself charging into World War II with a vengeance.  

             If you don’t know of this event, you should go to your high school history teacher and ask for your parents’ tax dollars back.      I say this because, ever since that dawn attack so long ago, December 7 is supposed to have been a “Day Of Infamy” for all Americans.      To use President Franklin Roosevelt’s words on December 8, 1941, the surprise attack is supposed to “live in infamy” in the minds of Americans for generations   --   not as a grudge against Japan, but as a warning against complacency in the face of danger from any future enemy.  

           However, in applying the need for “eternal vigilance in defense of liberty” to the politics of the Pacific today, it is vitally important to remember the other Pearl Harbor :    the coordinated Japanese attack on other targets in the Pacific, following fast on the heels of the staggering blow in Hawaii .

           These other targets were much closer to Japan than Hawaii , and much more important to Japan than Hawaii :  

            The Philippines

             Singapore

             Malaya (now Malaysia )

             The Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia )  

            All of these targets, except Singapore , offered the prize of rubber   -- 

in an era when rubber had to be grown on trees, in equatorical climates, instead of being produced artificially in factories.     In addition, military occupation of Singapore , and of parts of Malaya (now Malaysia ) and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia ), offered a chance for Japan to straddle the Straits of Malacca.    These straits are the narrow geographical “chokepoint” through which virtually all seaborne trade must pass on its way between the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean:   that is, for all practical purposes, between East Asia on the one hand and Europe and the Middle East on the other.     A single nation that controls the Straits of Malacca, as Great Britain did before the Japanese attack of 1941, has the power to threaten national economies on 3 different continents.  

          Of all these targets, the Dutch East Indies were “the honey pot”   --   combining rubber tree forests, and control of one of the approaches to the Straits of Malacca, with vast treasures of oil, natural gas and other vital minerals.    As a nation with few energy, mineral or agricultural resources of its own, Japan looked covetously toward “the honey pot” to its south   --   not least as a source of fuel, and other raw materials, for its massive military machine.

           War planning documents, found in Japan after the end of World War II, show that equatorial Asia   --    again, what is now the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia   --   was, from the start, the primary target of the Japanese war effort.    

           While the Philippines were not nearly as attractive to the Japanese as the lands to the south, they nevertheless held a strategic location along much of the seaborne invasion route.     Thus, seizing the Philippines had to be made a part of Japan ’s war plans.      This decision, in turn, made conflict with the Americans inevitable.     While only the British (who were already in the war, fighting Nazi Germany) were defending their colonies in Singapore and Malaya, and only the Dutch (who were also already in the war, fighting Nazi Germany) were defending their colonies in the Dutch East Indies, the Americans (who were then neutral) had placed troops and air bases in the Philippines.    Thus, the Japanese war planners reasoned, seizing the prizes on the equator would require expansion of Japan ’s ongoing war against China     --   not merely to include distracted colonial powers who were already battling the Nazis, but to include America as well.  

          Once the Japanese had made the decision to attack the Philippines , and with it the United States , they judged   --   correctly   --   that their military forces could, in time, overrun the American forces on Filipino soil.    (This happened, in fact, far more rapidly than either Japan or the United States had expected, thanks to serious pre-attack and post-attack errors by decision-makers on the American side.)    The question then became whether America ’s Pacific Fleet could reinforce the soldiers and aircraft in the Philippines quickly enough to change the outcome of the invasion.     Japan ’s solution to this problem was daring but simple:   Destruction of the American Pacific Fleet, at its primary base in Pearl Harbor , before it could reinforce anyone, anywhere.     (As with the attack on the Phillippines, the attack on Pearl Harbor was also more successful than Japan had expected    --    thanks to major pre-attack and post-attack errors in decision-making by the Americans.)

            There ARE several points to this history lesson:  

            1.    The incentives for a major Asian nation to attack equatorial Asia     --   notably, Singapore and the modern nations of Malaysia and Indonesia    --   are as great as they ever were.     

            Oil, manufactured goods and other resources still flow through the Straits of Malacca in huge volumes.     Further, Indonesia apparently still boasts a disproportionately large share of the total oil, natural gas and other minerals found in Asia .     In addition, since 1941, the neighboring island nation of Brunei has become another major source of oil and natural gas production.

             2.     In fact, if we view China rather than Japan as the next potential invader of equatorial Asia , the possible rewards from possible aggression are greater than they were in 1941.     This is because Japan, after seizing the resources of equatorial Asia by military force, and then being compelled by military force to relinquish those resources, has hit upon the novel strategy of actually paying for the resources it wants.     Today, Japan produces less than 10% of its energy domestically (and most of that domestic energy is nuclear power, not fossil fuels).    The leading source of energy in modern Japan is now  oil and natural gas purchased from Indonesia and Brunei .   The second leading source of energy is oil and natural gas purchased from the Middle East   --   almost all of which passes, in tankers, through the Straits of Malacca.

             The seizure of equatorial Asia therefore offers the possibility of a “double

dividend” for Japan ’s longtime rival.    First, of course, is the direct acquisition of vast, pirated natural resources that can fuel China ’s economy and rapidly growing military.      The second “dividend” for China comes from the fact that acquisition of these resources by China would also constitute, at least potentially, a denial of these resources to Japan .    The ability to squeeze Japan ’s “energy lifeline” in Asia , as well as Japan ’s primary trade route for importing energy from the Middle East , could well be enough to make Japan a “neutral” in the competition between China and the United States    --   and possibly even an unofficial “satellite” of China .     At an absolute minimum, the leverage should be sufficient to force Japan to force the United States to remove its military forces from Japan .      America ’s military retreat from Asia would then be complete.

                 3.     Implicit in this analysis is the lesson that the United States might have avoided involvement in World War II, at least in the Pacific and at least for a time, if it had decided not to deploy military forces in the Philippines.    It was the American troops and aircraft stationed there, and their possible reinforcement by the American Pacific Fleet, that led Japan to the attack on Pearl Harbor .    The absence of military forces from the Philippines might have freed Japan to concentrate on defeating Great Britain and the Netherlands along the equator.  

                The question is:    In retrospect, would keeping the United States out of the war have been a good thing?    Certainly, it would not have been a good thing for the people of equatorial Asia .    They would have been attacked in any case

 --   and, in the absence of American involvement, might have stayed under Japanese rule indefinitely.   Probably, it would not have been a good thing for the Philippines , either.    The odds are good they would been invaded as well,    

if only as a precaution, even if all the Americans had been back in Hawaii .

                 Most Americans, looking back, would agree that continued detachment from the worldwide war would not have been good for America , either.    Had we been so “lucky”, the Americas would have found themselves isolated behind the shrinking shields of two oceans, facing an Asia under the total control of imperial Japan and a Europe under the total control of Nazi Germany.     In such a world, the ultimate odds for the survival of American-style representative democracy would have been greatly diminished.

                  This question from 1941 is not so academic today  --   because America ’s military presence in the Philippines , and other Asian countries south of Japan , is now nil.    In 1941, tens of thousands of American soldiers were based in the Philippines .  In 2003, America has only 3,500 soldiers to defend East Asian countries other than South Korea and Japan .     In addition, all major military  bases in the Philippines , including both Clark Air Force Base and the huge naval complex at Subic Bay , were closed down decades ago.     Presidents from both major parties presided over the phased withdrawal of American forces.  

                 The remaining, wafer-thin “shield” for most of East Asia raises the possibility that China might be able to invade and occupy equatorial Asia without having to attack any American forces.    The modern question is:    Would this be a good thing for America ?  

                 4.      If the answer to that question is “No”    --    if the possibility that China might come to dominate all of Asia, including even Japan, and might simultaneously fortify its emerging military alliance with several Middle Eastern nations, is too great a risk for friends of representative democracy to accept   --   then America should be deeply concerned that it probably lacks the “forward deployments” to stop a Chinese military campaign without resorting to nuclear weapons.     With 120,000 soldiers in Iraq and 35,000 soldiers in South Korea and Japan   --   that is, in locations from which they cannot be safely diverted in any great numbers  --   and with only 3,500 soldiers protecting all the rest of East Asia, and with no military bases in either The Phillippines or Taiwan, America has made the southward route to conquest easier for China than it ever was for Japan.     

                 It should also be borne in mind that there are no longer British troops defending Singapore and what is now Malaysia .     Nor are the any Dutch troops defending what is now Indonesia and Brunei .     No American troops have moved in to replace them:    the local military forces are the only barriers to invasion.

                 Thus, America ’s Pacific Fleet no longer plays the role it played in 1941, as vital “backup” to first lines of defense in Asia .     For all of Asia south of Japan , America ’s Pacific Fleet has itself become the first, and only, line of defense.

                              What do we do today??