Asian Waters by Humphrey Hawksley

Author:Humphrey Hawksley [HAWKSLEY, HUMPHREY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POL062000, POL054000, POL011000, HIS037030
ISBN: 9781468314793
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Published: 2018-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

THE UNITED STATES: WAR GAMES AND BLACK SWANS

IN 1890 THE UNITED STATES REALIZED THAT IF IT WAS TO PROTECT THE homeland and its national interests it would have to become a Pacific power. This was eight years before it got an Asian foothold by taking the Philippines off Spain and a generation before it sent troops across the Atlantic to fight in a European war. The Atlantic Ocean acts as a bridge that links America and Europe with the shared values of Western democracy and many Americans—particularly on the East Coast—see their country through that prism, keeping Russia at bay through NATO and sharing so much heritage with Europe. The view from the newer cities on the West Coast runs across the Pacific, where the heritage of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle is as much entwined with China, Japan and Korea as the heritage of Boston and New York is with Dublin and Naples.

The 1890 threat from the Pacific percolated when Japanese ships were spotted near Hawaii, which was not yet US territory but run by American businessmen. The United States annexed Hawaii in 1898 with its victory in the Spanish-American War, but that did not end the Japanese threat, and US war planners began looking at how to contain a rising Japan. Five years later, Japan stunned the world with the victory over Russia at Port Arthur in northwest China. It was then that the US Naval War College initiated War Plan Orange, examining both containment scenarios and, if necessary, a strategy to defeat Japan.92

In barely fifty years, this once backward Asian country had listened, watched, and learned and molded itself into a European style industrial and military power, putting itself head-to-head first with Russia and then with the United States. It is little wonder that President Theodore Roosevelt was anxious.

Since its foundation in the late nineteenth century, the US Naval War College has designed and advised on America’s long-term military strategy war gaming in which scenarios are played out between imaginary combatants. The outcome is fed back to the Pentagon, which draws on it for naval contingency plans and strategies.

The war college students are midcareer officers on the way up the ladder; most are from the United States, but dozens come from other countries that train and exercise with the American military. The words of its founder, Commodore Stephen B. Luce, are recited during the convocation of new students, often by an actor decked out with bushy sideburns, a deep blue uniform, and a gravelly voice, offering unpalatable truths. Luce described war as a “dreadful scourge,” then went on to say, “But after all has been said no student of history however superficial can deny that through that same dreadful scourge ultimate good has been brought about.” He finished his argument by explaining how war could be averted: “In one way and one way only, and that way is to be fully prepared for it. That is the meaning of this college.”93

To underpin how layered both

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