A new book on the events that led to the Pacific War illuminates the most likely future U.S. foreign policy.1 Its author argues that resource issues triggered the 1941 crisis. That is a new idea; it usually is argued that U.S. motives in 1941 had little in common with the current idea that conflict over access to resources, such as oil. probably would cause future local wars. It is often suggested that the Gulf War was more about who would control the massive oil reserves of the Persian Gulf than the injustice visited by Saddam Hussein on Kuwait. Those opposing U.S. action at the time argued that whoever owned the oil would sell it, so that the war was really being fought to protect the interests of several major oil companies, rather than U.S. national interests. It also has been argued frequently that the U.S. government precipitated the Pacific War by initiating an oil embargo against Japan, in the hope that it would cause the Japanese to end their war in China.
These historical issues retain interest because they illuminate current events. The U.S. oil embargo did not in fact coerce the Japanese; that much was obvious in 1941. What was not obvious until after the war was that the Japanese not only chafed at the embargo, but they also were painfully aware that they probably would lose the Pacific War. In mid-1941, when the decision to fight was made, they had not yet developed the early wartime theory that the United States would be discouraged by spectacular early Japanese victories. Rather, they calculated the relative mobilization potentials of Japan and the United States. They fought even though they figured they probably would lose, because they also calculated that failure to fight inevitably would be disastrous. It also appears now that the Japanese government accepted as early as June 1944—with the loss of Saipan—that the war had been lost; they hoped, however, to achieve some sort of military success that would force the United States to grant them a limited surrender that would leave their rulers in power. That goal, presented as preservation of the imperial system, was considered far more worthwhile than protecting the Japanese economy and population from massive bombing. As we now know, moreover, in August 1945 elements of the Japanese Army considered the survival of the military dictatorship far more important than the survival of the Emperor himself.
It seems unlikely that in 1990-91 Saddam Hussein expected to defeat the allied forces in direct combat. However, he almost certainly calculated that any surrender without war would be the end of him. Better to fight and claim whatever came out as a victory. The lesson, quite relevant in a very unstable world, is that our enemies rarely calculate quite as we expect them to, and that acquiescence to our demands might seem to them even more suicidal, at times, than resistance.
Part of the problem may be our own tendency to mirror-image. We understand that most potential enemies are not democratically elected, but much of our policy assumes that the rulers of foreign countries behave as if they face popular judgment.
That has real consequences. In the early fall of 1990, the U.S. Air Force offered the U.S. government a plan for a three-day blitz to defeat Iraq: Instant Thunder. Targets were chosen carefully; their destruction would have damaged the Iraqi economy and, to a much lesser extent, the Iraqi government. The unstated assumption was that no government that tolerated damage on this scale could survive. That was the problem: Saddam Hussein had never survived on the basis of popular approbation. He gained power in a coup, and he has retained power by extremely careful use of secret police and other forms of coercion. Instant Thunder offered little to erode Saddam’s power base. Then- Air Force Chief of Staff. General Michael Dugan, understood: He suggested that the United States threaten to kill Saddam, his family, and his immediate associates. This keen insight cost General Dugan his job, since he had committed the sin of suggesting that the United States assassinate a head of state. That political survival is often the only consideration Third World rulers understand was beside the point.
Saddam is hardly unique. Many Third World rulers have little or no interest in national, as opposed to personal, welfare. Many of them also possess vital natural resources. The great question for U.S. policymakers, striving to develop an appropriate post-Cold War military establishment, is: Under what circumstances is the United States likely to go to war?
That is where the new historical evidence is worth reading. The usual interpretation of the events of the fall of 1941 is that the United States was driven by altruism and by long ties with China. As the Japanese pressed deeper into China, public outrage grew and was matched by fury within Franklin Roosevelt’s administration. Fanatical advisors within the State Department thought little of the consequences of their actions. Conspiracy enthusiasts go further and see the embargo as an attempt to bring the United States into the war.
It seems rather odd that the connection with China, which could not have been terribly strong in 1941, was enough to justify some rather dangerous U.S. policies. On the other hand, the U.S. government was far less willing to risk German wrath in Europe, an area of arguably greater sentimental interest. Why was China so terribly important?
Although the United States of 1941 was far more self-sufficient in raw materials and oil than our country is today, it had some very important import requirements. Virtually all rubber came from Malaya (now Malaysia). Tin also came from Southeast Asia. So did several other materials absolutely vital to any U.S. war effort, whether for hemispheric or European defense. There were no massive U.S. stockpiles; indeed, as the country emerged from the Depression, civilian demand for these materials was rising dramatically. Nor did it seem that there were alternate sources of supply, although many short-term alternatives were found in due course.
By mid-1940 it was clear that Japan planned to seize Southeast Asia, which consisted mainly of colonies of countries either overrun or under threat by the Germans. It also was clear that, as a member of the Axis, Japan would have no interest in selling the area’s resources to non-Axis buyers if it took over.
From the U.S. point of view, then, access to Southeast Asia was critical to any U.S. defense in the face of a direct German and—to a lesser extent—Japanese threat. The European powers controlling the resources were willing to sell; the Japanese were not. European powers would buy goods from the United States; the Japanese were more interested in closed trade with the other Axis powers.
True, the U.S. government was infuriated by the Japanese rape of China; but that was one of many gross injustices visible in 1941, and no collection of merchants, missionaries, and well-placed propagandists could make that into a worthwhile motive for war. By 1941, the U.S. government was willing to support the Chinese government, mainly in hopes that the quagmire of China would slow down any Japanese attempt to seize Southeast Asia. For its part, China considered the United States its main hope of defeating Japan. For about a year the U.S. government deliberately avoided embargoing oil for fear that the embargo would accelerate a Japanese move south. The embargo was declared only once it became obvious that the Japanese would move anyway, in hopes of slowing that advance.
In 1940, the United States was only beginning to mobilize. Whether or not the Roosevelt administration expected to enter the European war, it was painfully obvious that the world was becoming extremely dangerous, and that an unarmed United States probably would suffer a great deal. Remarkably, few seem to have realized the extent to which simple preparations for the emergency demanded free U.S. access to foreign resources.
As the Cold War accelerated after 1945, the United States competed with the Soviet Union for influence in the Third World. Clearly, raw materials still mattered. This time the enemy was virtually self-sufficient—unlike Japan. Once again, we were not. We needed access, and we knew that the Soviet empire had little or no interest in trade. It could afford to cut off trade completely in a crisis. At least in theory, the Soviet government could enforce similar cutoffs by its allies and its sympathizers.
As it happened. Western companies were responsible for much of the extraction of resources, and their motives could never be described as altogether altruistic. However, they could be relied on to sell their products. Often, much was made of U.S. reactions to expropriation: surely the new owners of the resources would be just as willing to sell them.
As in the case of bombing Iraq, this logic had a hidden side. The sale of resources, such as oil, provides a country with money. Surely, prosperity is the goal of every government—isn't it? The answer is: Not always. Generally, a government’s real goal is to retain power. In a more-or-less democratic system, the government has to provide something the electorate wants, which—it usually imagines—includes some form of prosperity. But in many cases, power is an altogether different proposition. Some would even argue that poverty can be useful, if—as in classic communist systems—the government becomes the sole provider of important benefits. In that case, general prosperity becomes somewhat dangerous, since it dilutes the government’s appeal. China’s new entrepreneurial class may be a case in point.
In the case of the Cold War, all of this meant that Soviet domination of the Third World was ultimately a threat to strangle us—just as the 1941 Japanese threat to Southeast Asia was seen, rightly, as a threat to U.S. viability. Nothing forced either the Japanese of 1941 or the Soviet Union of twenty or thirty years later to sell anything at all to the United States.
By the same token, nothing would have forced—or will force—Saddam to sell Iraqi or other oil to anyone. He may do so as long as he needs money with which to buy hardware, but the usual longer-term need for money—the need of the population—is unlikely to matter much. That leaves Saddam or his equivalent free to bargain with raw materials in return for unacceptable political leverage. Offers of that sort breed war.
This history can help suggest the sort of forces the United States needs for a post-Cold War future. Southeast Asia was special in 1941 because it had a unique concentration of vital resources. Because they were so concentrated, those resources were seized by a single power antagonistic to the United States. The U.S. government lacked the power and resolve to seize and defend the resources at first; all it could do was try to help those already in control, while trying to deter the antagonist. That attempt failed, and war resulted.
At present, it seems that Persian Gulf oil is the only comparable concentration of a vital resource. As in Southeast Asia, the United States is hardly the sole buyer. Clearly, too, there are several local powers that might well want to deny Western access as a way of applying pressure. There is also the tacit threat that a fundamentalist revolution in Saudi Arabia might bring to power a government that considers foreign money a corrupting factor. It would seem to follow that the defense of the Gulf is likely to be an enduring U.S. requirement, whether or not U.S. forces remain in other foreign areas.
Perhaps the Gulf is not unique; there are other massive oil reserves elsewhere. If indeed the Gulf suffers from inevitable political instability, then access to any alternative area becomes more important. Chinese seizure of the entire South China Sea might become unacceptable because it is not entirely clear that China must continue dealing with outside powers—because the motivation of the Chinese ruling party is self-preservation rather than national prosperity. Of course, no one yet knows whether the South China Sea hides another Saudi Arabia or merely a fishery vital to the survival of Southeast Asian populations.
If indeed we have to fight for access to resources, those we will face will not really feel much affected by classical kinds of strategic attacks. In what amounts to a post-nuclear world, few will really expect the United States or a coalition to be capable of imposing a classical military defeat. It may well be that the only credible threat will be to their personal political survival—or themselves, or to the secret police who keep them in business. Anything less will be ineffective, just as threats to the Japanese economy (in 1941) merely motivated a Japanese military dictatorship to chance war. It would seem to follow that we ought to be developing a combination of rather specific target intelligence and the ability to employ small numbers of very precise weapons capable of breaking into and destroying any bunkers in which our human targets may care to take shelter. We do not need huge attack forces—but we do need extremely smart ones.
1 J. Marshall, To Have and Have Not (Berkeley: University of California Press at Berkeley, 1995).