Presence in the Pacific

Despite its traditional Eurocentric orientation, the United States developed major interests in the Pacific Ocean surprisingly early in its history. The China Trade, Matthew C. Perry’s opening of Japan in 1854, the acquisition of the Philippines after the Spanish-America. War, the cruise of the Great White Fleet, and U.S. resistance against Japan’s efforts to establish itself in East Asia during the first decades of the 20th Century, are a few indicators that the United States had become a major Pacific power.

To be sure, at the time of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States officially embraced a Germany-first strategy that earlier in the year led to the transfer of approximately 20% of the Pacific Fleet to the Atlantic. A major reason for U.S.-Japanese acrimony was clearly Tokyo’s alliance with Adolf Hitler’s Germany. But U.S. naval planners concentrated on planning for a war with Japan many years prior to 1941.¹ Despite the official priority given to the Atlantic, the Navy’s strategic interests in the Pacific, combined with the shock of the Japanese onslaught in the region and British reluctance to mount an early offensive against Germany in Northwest Europe, meant that the Pacific theater absorbed the majority of U.S. forces until late 1943.²

Australia played a particularly critical role in the Pacific campaign. Described by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a vital flank in the war against Japan, the defense of Australia was the first task faced by U.S. military leaders. No prewar plans existed for an active campaign in the Southwest Pacific. But nearly 80,000 troops deployed in the first three months of the war to guard Australia and the lines of communications between that country and North America. Only a fourth that number of troops went to Europe in the same period.³

The importance of Australia and of the Southwest Pacific region in general became dramatically clear during the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Guadalcanal campaign, and the initiation of General Douglas MacArthur’s amphibious advance through New Guinea. Historian and author Clark Reynolds, in one of his most illuminating essays, identifies MacArthur’s objective as the seizure of the Luzon chokepoint, which controlled Japan’s vital sea lines of supply from the south. For that reason, Reynolds characterizes MacArthur as a maritime strategist who sought to use the ultimate weapon of economic pressure to defeat the enemy.

In the rest of Pacific, another famous commander held sway. He was Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, unified Commander of the Pacific Ocean Area as well as the Navy’s Pacific Fleet. Admiral Nimitz was responsible for operations by all services in the south, central, and northern Pacific. In addition, he provided the naval forces placed under MacArthur’s operational control and used his own maritime forces to support the general during specified campaigns.

Despite the overwhelming advantage enjoyed by the Japanese early in World War II, Nimitz was amazingly bold in seeking battle with the Japanese fleet. As we know, he took the initiative in seeking engagements in the Coral Sea and later off Midway. His quest for decisive fleet actions that would eliminate the enemy’s major battle forces and win unchallenged use of the sea by the United States and its allies culminated in the Battles of the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf in 1944 and in many other actions.⁵

Nimitz, like MacArthur, obviously pursued a maritime strategy. As he advanced across the Central Pacific, seizing key bases in amphibious assaults and sequentially destroying the enemy’s main fleet strength, he launched a ruinous U.S. submarine assault against Japanese merchant shipping. At war’s end, out of 10 million tons of shipping available to the enemy, only 2 million tons remained on hand. Allied submarines accounted for more than 50% of that slaughter.⁶ In addition to the blockade of Japan by submarines and other naval forces, carrier and land-based aircraft undertook the aerial bombardment of the enemy’s home islands. In the meantime, capitalizing upon the mobility of naval forces, a half-million men of the Japanese Army were bypassed and isolated in the Pacific. Initially, the plan was to use the armies of China to defeat the two-million-man ground force that Japan maintained on the Asian mainland. But in 1945 the Soviet Union accepted this task was and pledged to enter the war against Japan after the defeat of Germany. These circumstances convinced naval leaders that Japan’s defeat was assured in August 1945, even before the dropping of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and without the need to mount the planned invasion of the home islands.⁷

In tracing Pacific naval strategy evidence of periodic shifts in geographic emphasis is typical. At the outset of World War II, the United States gave special attention to the Southwest Pacific. By the end of the war, however, that focus clearly was on Japan’s home islands.⁸

It is important to distinguish between a strategy for the Pacific and strategic policy with regard to mainland Asia. Although the United States had committed a considerable number of forces to the China-Burma- India Theater, it did not seek to commit a mass U.S. army to an Asian land war. Instead, it planned to use the Chinese and later the Soviet armies. Indeed, the United States maintained a strategic tradition of avoiding major and direct commitment of its limited manpower resources in a war against the enormous populations of Asia. Major U.S. deployments were restricted to the Pacific region, where geography was ideal for the employment of naval and air forces.⁹

The issue of single—as opposed to shared—strategic responsibility for the Pacific is also important to remember. Many historians have noted the situation in World War II in which the two principal U.S. services divided this task geographically. Whether or not interservice comity and the personal ambitions of General MacArthur or the Navy’s high command were advanced by that arrangement, scholars such as Ronald Spector argue that the two-theater approach violated the concept of unity of command and led to wasteful rivalry.¹⁰ Other historians, including Russell Weigley, contend that the U.S. transpacific drive actually benefited from separate Southwest Pacific and the Pacific theaters. Especially after 1943, when large U.S. forces were available for both theaters, MacArthur and Nimitz gave invaluable assistance to each other by forcing the Japanese to divide their forces and attention between the two commands.¹¹

A critical reason for Western success in World War II was the development of a coalition that eventually overwhelmed the Axis powers. Principal players in the Pacific included the United Kingdom, Australia, China, New Zealand, and eventually, the Soviet Union. Collective security was one of the great lessons of World War II. That principle would be remembered well after 1945.

Scholars cannot isolate events in the Pacific during World War II from activities in the rest of the world.¹² One factor in U.S. diplomats’ unyielding opposition to prewar Japanese demands was the conviction that—since Japan was an ally of Germany, and since a formally declared war with Hitler was expected—Japan was destined to enter the world conflict in any case. In addition, U.S. Allies, especially China and Great Britain, specifically opposed a compromise with Tokyo in November 1941. The fear that the antiJapanese coalition might be weakened was another reason the United States refused to make a deal with Imperial Japan.

The major purpose of U.S. naval strategy in the immediate post-World War II years was to support a new general security system in the Pacific. During this period, MacArthur, the Supreme Allied Commander in Japan, once again had unified command of a Pacific military theater. Appropriately, his Far East command centered around Japan. MacArthur continued to have operational control over assigned naval forces, which supported the occupation and political reconstruction of Japan under the General’s leadership. Admiral Nimitz and his successors commanded another unified organization—known after January 1947 as the Pacific Command—that was responsible for the rest of the Pacific south of the Alaskan area.¹³

Naval strategists have recognized for years the critical need for the United States to control the former Japanese mandated islands in the Carolines, Marshalls, and Marianas that, while administered by Japan prior to World War II, posed a major threat to U.S. lines of communication to the Far East. In 1947, this area became part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. Considering its strategic significance, it is not surprising that the Trust Territory was administered in its early years by the naval officer (initially Admiral Arthur W. Radford) who served as the Pacific Commander.¹⁴

West of those positions was a chain of U. S. island bases off the coast of Asia, stretching from the Philippines to Okinawa to Japan. Political scientist Vincent Davis observes that this defense line revealed an instinctive naval inclination to deploy forces forward in order to avoid surprise attack and to ensure that any future war would be kept as far away from the United States as possible.¹⁵

After 1945 the United States watched with agonized interest as its longtime ally, Nationalist China, fell to the Communist Chinese. But despite historical U.S. support of Chiang Kai Shek, the hazards of becoming involved in a continental war ruled out the possibility of U.S. cobelligerency with Chiang. Instead, as Mao’s armies swept to victory in 1949, the United States pulled out its forces— consisting largely of naval and Marine Corps personnel— from mainland China. The departure in 1949 of U.S. occupation forces from South Korea confirmed their overall withdrawal from Asia. In a famous January 1950 speech, Secretary of State Dean Acheson identified the primary U.S. defense line in the Pacific as including Japan, Ryukyus, and the Philippines, although he did not exclude U.S. participation in the collective defense of other Pacific areas.¹⁶

By 1949, the growing crisis between the West and the Soviet Union gave a more specific focus to Pacific strategy. To a large extent the Cold War originated in Europe. But geography made the Soviet Union a Pacific power with a vulnerable second front in the Far East that it could attack in the event of an armed conflict in Europe. In fact, during this period U.S. naval strategists led by Admiral Forrest P. Sherman developed contingency plans to employ the Fleet against the Pacific mainland of the Soviet Union, featuring the use of carrier aircraft to project power far ashore. For this reason, in the fall of 1949, the Navy elected to deploy a carrier task force to the Far East.¹⁷

The perceived threats of Communist China and other Marxist movements in the Far East, including those in North Korea, the Philippines, and Indochina, underscored the need for a containment strategy in the Pacific. In response, Congress appropriated 75 million dollars of U.S. naval and military assistance funds in 1949 for use in the “general area of China.”¹⁸ At the same time, U.S. military authorities, recalling the indispensable value of collective security in World War II, proposed the reestablishment of regional alliances in the Pacific to confront potential enemies.

The containment policy in the Far East vigorously gained momentum following the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950. The North Korean invasion of the south demanded local containment. But Pyongyang’s aggression also was widely viewed at the time as part of a worldwide communist conspiracy, led by the Soviet Union, that aimed to distract attention from the European theater. In the estimation of many U.S. naval and military leaders, Korea was nothing less than a grand strategic diversion designed to draw attention away from the primary danger zone in Western Europe.¹⁹

This assessment inspired acts of breathtaking discipline. The United States and its allies committed themselves to a carefully limited war restricted to the peninsula of Korea, where the maritime and air forces typical of the Pacific region could deploy to maximum advantage. The major exception to this localization policy was Taiwan, which President Harry S Truman added to the offshore chain of defense when he announced that the U.S. Seventh Fleet would protect that island against a possible invasion from mainland China.

In implementing a maritime strategy in Korea, the typical maritime objective of isolating the battlefield was not possible because of the country’s land frontiers with Asia. But a sea blockade, naval air and surface ship bombardment, and a campaign in North Korea by naval and land- based air—that restricted but did not entirely interdict the land lines of communication—had powerful influence on containing the enemy. Remembering the value of amphibious operations in World War II, General MacArthur skillfully used his assigned naval forces to launch the Inchon Landing of September 1950. This dramatic event allowed the Allies to shift over night from a defensive to an offensive strategy. The availability of support bases in Japan and the unhindered use of the sea lanes to move the massive supplies needed for modern warfare were essential. Control of the sea approaches to the theater of war also allowed support to flow from the worldwide coalition established under United Nations auspices. Eventually, 16 nations, including Australia and other members of the British Commonwealth, contributed military forces to the common cause.²⁰

Bearing all these factors in mind, some could argue that the war on the Korean peninsula was not a continental conflict, even after China’s intervention in 1950.²¹ Interesting to note here is that in 1951, when MacArthur sought to expand the conflict to Asia proper by urging attacks on China, he was peremptorily dismissed. Naval strategists in the United States agreed with General Omar Bradley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that MacArthur’s approach would lead to “the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.²²

While fighting a carefully limited war in Korea, the United States began a massive rearmament program. Over the next four years, a quadrupling of U.S. defense spending led to the development of a broad array of conventional and strategic capabilities. In deploying these new forces, the Navy followed national policy by giving priority to reinforcing its principal force deployed in Europe, the Sixth Fleet.²³

At the same time, the United States and its Allies took another step toward promoting collective security by re incorporating the former enemy nations of Germany and Japan into the Free World’s security system. In Japan’s case, the essential step was the negotiation of a final peace treaty and security pact in 1951. Other Pacific powers, however, feared that a restored Japan might once again pose a military threat. To allay these concerns U.S. officials negotiated agreements with Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines.

The Japanese peace treaty and security pact signed in San Francisco in September 1951 were U.S. diplomatic triumphs. Although the Soviets and their allies refused to sign the treaty, 49 other nations agreed to the instrument. The treaty ended the Allied occupation of Japan, reestablished that nation as a full member of the world community, and carefully avoided issues (such as reparations) that might become future grievances and hence threats to the peace. The accompanying bilateral U.S. Japan security pact granted to the United States the exclusive right to maintain military bases in Japan.²⁴

A few days before the signing of these agreements, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States (ANZUS) approved a security pact, along with a separate bilateral pact between the United States and the Philippines. These called for mutual assistance against a common threat, including a resurgent Japan.²³ When combined with a second round of accords negotiated in 1954 between the United States and South Korea, and the United States and Taiwan, and with the eight Pacific and European powers that established the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization in the same year, it was evident that a formidable collective security apparatus was in place to contain communist expansion in the Pacific region.”

At the end of the Korean War, strategic emphasis in the Pacific shifted to the south. The war had checked China’s expansion in the north. Now many people felt that China was turning its attention to the Indochina area, where the French continued to face a widespread insurgency. That region was important in itself because of its strategic location on the flank of the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaya, and as a jumping-off point against Thailand and the rest of the Southeast Asian subcontinent. Aid to the French effort in Indochina also was inevitably connected with the overall military strength of France, an issue of particular importance because of the vital French role in NATO. Fortunately for the U.S. Navy, excellent base facilities were available off the coast of Southeast Asia. These were concentrated in the Subic Bay area of the Philippines, where facilities were undergoing considerable expansion in the early 1950s.²⁷

Although major military aid went to the French in Indochina, the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower was very cautious about direct involvement in their war. This became clear in 1954 during the crisis that developed when the enemy surrounded the French garrison at a Laotian redoubt, known as Dien Bien Phu. Admiral Arthur W. Radford, at this time Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, concluded that a surrender at Dien Bien Phu would spell the end of France’s position in Indochina. For that reason, he recommended that U.S. carrier task forces operating in Southeast Asian waters launch air strikes in support of the French force at Dien Bien Phu. President Eisenhower, however, refused to consider this possibility without the concurrence of our major allies and the congressional leadership, neither of which was forthcoming. Once again, the United States was reluctant to become involved militarily on the Asian mainland.²⁸

In contrast, the United States was bolder in defending its offshore defense line. In 1954 and again in 1958, when Taiwan appeared to be threatened by mainland China’s operations against the Tachens, Quemoy, and Matsu islands, the United States responded by deploying major elements of the Seventh Fleet. In 1954 the result was a naval evacuation of Nationalist forces from the Tachens combined with an agreement to negotiate the U.S. defense pact with Taiwan. During the 1958 crisis, the U.S. Navy escorted Nationalist convoys and massed no fewer than five carriers off Quemoy and Matsu as a powerful demonstration of U.S. resolve to oppose a Chinese assault on those positions. By the end of the year, the threat had receded.²⁹

During these crises in the Taiwan Straits, an important organizational change took place for the U.S. military. In 1957, the Far East command dissolved and became part of a Pacific command that encompassed the entire Pacific Basin. For the first time since 1942, the United States had a single commander in the Pacific. To underscore that officer’s obligation to serve as a unified commander, his collateral duty as the naval component commander ended in 1958. Thereafter, the Pacific Fleet was an entirely separate command.³⁰

While the U.S. Pacific Fleet stood ready to participate in a general war with the Soviet Union, especially by launching carrier air strikes against strategic targets in the Far East, the Navy also continued to respond to regional threats. In the late 1950s U.S. naval strategists watched Indochina with special concern. There an explosive mix of Marxist and nationalistic ideology under the leadership of North Vietnam reached a new level of activity in 1959. Since U.S. planners noted that the insurgents received significant support from China and the Soviet Union, they viewed this campaign as part of the worldwide expansion of communism, as well as a local security issue.

Nevertheless, the traditional U.S. reluctance to accept a continental commitment continued. Prior to 1962, Laos appeared to be the area of major vulnerability. Admiral Arleigh A. Burke, Chief of Naval Operations, urged during 1959-1961 that the United States introduce ground forces to stabilize the situation in this land-locked region. His plan called for the speedy withdrawal of that force. But both administrations of President Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy refused to support this intervention.³¹

After 1962, U.S. naval and military strategists concentrated on South Vietnam, which, because of its long sea- coast, seemed more accessible to U.S. power. For the next three years, extensive aid and advice supported that country’s efforts to suppress a growing insurgency. But in 1965, when it appeared that the government and indeed the social fabric of South Vietnam were unraveling, the United States made the fateful decision to intervene with its own forces instead of allowing an important Free World position to be lost.³²

The situation in Vietnam was similar to the one in Korea in several respects. Both conflicts were carefully limited. If anything, however, the United States was more cautious in Southeast Asia. For example, the air campaign against North Vietnam initially aimed more to give a psychological warning than to interdict enemy supply lines.

The major cities of Hanoi and Haiphong, and targets near Hanoi’s northern border, were exempt from attack until very late in the war. A major reason for U.S. restraint was concern about provoking Chinese intervention. As was true in Korea, enemy sanctuary areas and logistics facilities outside the boundaries of South Vietnam were largely exempt from ground attack, although this changed to some extent late in the war. Both the Korean and Vietnam conflicts spawned efforts by the United States to forge an international coalition to give added strength and credibility to its cause. Another similarity was the unhindered use of the sea, which allowed the non-communist forces to make free use of exterior maritime lines of supply and offshore support bases in the Philippines, Okinawa, and elsewhere.

But there were more basic differences between the two conflicts, which explain why containment was successful in Korea and why it failed in Vietnam. The United States was unable to build a viable and unified government within South Vietnam that could make major contributions to its own defense, as it had done during three years of conflict in Korea. From a more strictly naval point of view, the enemy made extensive and, for the most part, uninterrupted use of the ports of Haiphong in North Vietnam and Sianoukville in Cambodia as major entry and transshipment points for supplies received from abroad. More generally, the fact that Vietnam was not a peninsula, as was Korea, created great difficulties in Allied attempts to isolate the battlefield. By 1968, a half-million U.S. troops, plus about 65,000 men from allied countries outside South Vietnam, were engaged in the Vietnam War. A contingent of approximately 7,500 men from Australia was part of that total force." But in the midst of this major effort, the Tet Offensive of February 1968 convinced many in the United States that the conflict was futile. But in fact, this operation was a major military defeat for the communist side. But Tet began a prolonged, painful, and highly controversial U.S. withdrawal finally completed early in 1973 with a truce settlement with Hanoi. Accompanying this long retreat was a sharp decline in U.S. public support for the defense establishment. After 18 years of military preparedness, many leaders in the United States began to question the level of U.S. involvement in the Cold War. Instead, other issues, notably social programs, came to the fore of the nation’s agenda. This was accompanied by a dramatic budgetary shift; between 1964 and 1975 the U.S. Navy’s total share of the federal budget dropped from 12% percent to 8.5%.³⁴

Despite the bravery and tactical skill displayed by U.S. naval personnel in Southeast Asia, Vietnam represented the diversion that U.S. strategists so carefully avoided during the Korean War. For more than a decade, naval and national attention was riveted on an area of debatable geopolitical importance. During the Southeast Asia war, the U.S. Navy depended heavily upon large numbers of World War II ships. This block of resources abruptly became obsolete. When combined with a limited naval shipbuilding program, the number of major U.S. warships fell from 574 in 1968 to 289 in 1978.³⁵ The strain upon the fleet became especially evident in the last months of U.S. participation in the Vietnam War, when no fewer than six of the Navy’s attack carriers participated in an intense air offensive against the North. That campaign and the Navy’s minelaying operation in the ports of North Vietnam were important factors in convincing Hanoi to agree to a truce in January 1973. But the effect of Vietnam elsewhere in the world surfaced later in the same year when undermanned U.S. carrier task groups, operating in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Yom Kippur War, found themselves closely shadowed by strong Soviet naval forces. The Russian ships carried effective antiship missiles against which the U.S. had limited defenses. The days of virtually unchallenged U.S. supremacy on the seas ended between 1965 and 1973, while the United States seemed to be fixated on the rice paddies and mountains of Vietnam.³⁶

After 1973, the Pacific Fleet faced a new situation. The grueling war in Southeast Asia was over. As a result of the U.S. diplomatic rapprochement with China that began with President Richard Nixon’s visit of 1972 and was confirmed by the administration of President Jimmy Carter and its formal recognition of the country in 1979, the threat posed by Beijing greatly diminished. But the Soviet challenge was far more serious in 1973 than when the United States became directly involved in the Southeast Asian conflict eight years earlier. In the latter stages of the Vietnam War, the Soviets, rather than the Chinese, be- came the major ally of Hanoi. Not surprisingly, following the North’s conquest of South Vietnam in 1975, the Soviet fleet had free use of the base at Cam Ranh Bay, which boasted extensive and modern facilities developed by the United States during the Vietnam War. Using that port, as well as its traditional bases in the North Pacific, the Soviets operated extensively in the Pacific. An increase in submarines was especially alarming. In 1973 not a single Soviet attack or missile submarine operated in the Pacific. But by 1978 no fewer than 64 of these units were in the region.”

Soviet expansionism in the 1970s manifested itself in many ways. Russia’s active interest in the Middle East seemed to be a special threat. Its major deployment to the Mediterranean during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War was a case in point. The Soviets or their close allies also intervened in Angola after 1975, Ethiopia in 1977, and Afghanistan in 1979. Accompanying these events ashore was increased naval activity. Between 1965 and 1974, the number of Soviet naval ship- days in the Indian Ocean grew from approximately 1,000 to more than 10,000.³⁸

Soviet activity in the Indian Ocean was one explanation for the Pacific Fleet’s growing presence in that region. Another factor was the withdrawal in 1971 of the last major British maritime and shore-based forces based east of Suez. Thereafter, despite major commitments in Vietnam, U.S. carrier battle groups made increasingly frequent deployments to the Indian Ocean. In 1972, the boundaries of the Pacific Command expanded to include most of the Indian Ocean. Four years later, the entire Indian Ocean, including the Gulfs of Oman and Aden, formally became the responsibility of that command. By this time, the U.S. base at Diego Garcia became the principal Indian Ocean support base for both the Fleet and for the Rapid Deployment Force established in 1977 that later became known as the Central Command. On a number of occasions after 1977, officials of the new Carter Administration suggested establishing a separate Fifth Fleet to operate exclusively in the Indian Ocean. But as naval capabilities and funding continued to decline, this suggestion was discarded. The nation continued to depend upon the hard-pressed Seventh Fleet to protect U.S. interests in the Indian as well as the Pacific oceans.³⁹

In 1980, the tempo of U.S. naval operations in the Indian Ocean took a sharp upturn as a result of two decisive events that occurred late in the previous year. One of these was the crisis that followed revolutionary Iran’s seizure of hostages from the U.S. embassy in Teheran. The other was the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. In the midst of growing public and official concern that these developments symbolized a decline of U.S. power, major U.S. naval forces deployed to the Indian Ocean. As had been true in other crises since World War II, the United States was joined by its allies.⁴⁰

The failure of the U.S. attempt to rescue the Iranian hostages, the possibility that the Russian bear in Afghanistan might move south into the strategic Persian Gulf region, and other indications of deteriorating U.S. strength led the Carter Administration to propose a rearmament program that served as a preamble to the more famous and substantive defense buildup of the Ronald Reagan years. For the Navy, the promise of expanded resources was accompanied by the development of an aggressive strategic doctrine in a general war with the Soviet Union. Known as the Maritime Strategy, this concept had many similarities with the offensive plan of the late 1940s to project naval power ashore in the Pacific and European theaters. To a considerable extent the new Maritime Strategy originated in the Pacific, where as early as 1977 Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, then the Pacific Fleet commander, put forth the concept of using his carriers, in the event of a general NATO-Warsaw Pact war, to open a second front by attacking Soviet Far Eastern targets.⁴¹

A historian may be excused from carrying this story beyond 1980, except to note that over the last 14 years we have observed the historic climax to the Cold War, and now the dawn of a new era in world affairs whose contours still are not known. 42 Future scholars will need to relate naval strategy in the Pacific to the renewed superpower rivalry of the early 1980s, and the ensuing period of detente after the rise of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to power in 1985. Detente was followed, to the world’s utter amazement, by the crumbling of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe, followed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself. The power and credibility of communist ideology and policy that had such a profound influence in the 20th Century followed these old regimes in marching into oblivion.

Looking back at these eventful years, it is clear that the Pacific campaign of World War II was a classic application of maritime strategy. As for the Navy’s role after 1945 in the ebb and flow of the Cold War in the Pacific, there is no doubt that the U.S. and Allied fleets played indispensable roles. They contained communist expansion in Korea and maintained a defensive line off the coast of Asia. To be sure, Vietnam was a setback and a warning of the hazards of engaging in campaigns on the Asian mainland. It also served as a reminder of the requirement to consider worldwide security interests as well as those of a single region. That lesson appeared to be heeded in the 1970s when a Soviet build-up in the Pacific, new U.S. commitments in the Indian Ocean, and the Navy’s renewed determination to play a major role in a NATO war restored a world strategic perspective.

Whatever challenges arise in the future in the Pacific, navies will play a major role. This assertion is based not only on the long history of maritime endeavor in the area and the current importance of the economies of the Pacific Rim. More fundamentally, the value of naval power in the Pacific Basin is a simple corollary of the maritime geography of that vast and crucial region.