Research for Japan

Because security concerns in East Asia have increasingly revolved around problems in the maritime domain, the Center for Naval Analyses has elected to make maritime security in East Asia the focal point for a series of workshops that will explore these issues in depth.

Specific individual military transformations achieve full significance only in the context of the broader processes of multiple interrelated transformations taking place in competition with those of one or more opponents. This study examines one historical case of broad systemic competitive processes to clarify the underlying dynamics: Japan and the United States between the two world wars. The armed forces of both nations envisioned significant risk of war between them and sought, with varying focus and vigor, to prepare. These efforts are contrasted in operational concept, doctrine, and technology. Japanese forces achieved a very high level of excellence in tactical execution, a level that American forces did not initially match in many areas. Moreover, Japan entered the war with materiel that was in many areas equal if not superior to that of the U.S. in both quantity and quality. But the effort the U.S. had put into capabilities for planning and executing higher-level operations frequently enabled its forces to pit strength against weakness, resulting in far faster erosion of Japan's defenses than the Japanese had anticipated. Thus American transformation efforts brought advantages beyond those of simple weight of forces.

This research memorandum is part of a study sponsored by the Commander, Seventh Fleet, to assess the security environment of the Asia-Pacific Region (APR) between now and 2010. The study attempts to identify the most probable evolutionary trends in the APR out to 2010, and to derive implications for U.S. forces, particularly the Navy. This memorandum identifies these trends for Japan. The implications for the forces and for the Navy are contained in the final report for this project. The analysis strongly suggests the importance of a stable, credible U.S. presence in Japan in reinforcing Japan s current, yet potentially problematic, pro-U.S. orientation. The U.S. presence will significantly influence Japan' s defense policies because it will determine the credibility of broad U.S. nuclear and other security guarantees to Japan. Such a presence cannot be taken for granted 15 years hence.

The role of the Pacific theater in a NATO-Warsaw Pact War is considered. The paper argues that the Pacific theater has been neglected in such a conflict because most war scenarios envision a struggle lasting no more than 30 to 60 days. As a result, the conflict is over too quickly in most scenarios for the interrelationships between the NATO and Pacific theaters to develop conceptually. However, in a long-war scenario, the Pacific theater's importance in the course and outcome of such a conflict becomes apparent. The military, industrial, and technological potential of the Pacific nations, especially China and Japan, combined with the U.S., constitute a reserve of strength capable of containing or reversing any Soviet success in a conventional conflict in Europe. This paper concludes that (a) current strategy or doctrine based on the refusal to repudiate the 'first use' of nuclear weapons has lost much of its credibility as a deterrent, and (b) the tacit or explicit adoption of a long-war strategy to counter Soviet capabilities in a short war should be considered.