Everything old is new again. The world is gripped by a pandemic, people believe the Earth is flat, and the United States is trying to suppress the appetite of an expansionist Asian superpower. While China’s rise is undoubtedly less savage than Japan’s conquest of Southeast Asia, the feeling that America has been here before seems unshakeable. Analyzing the U.S. failure to deter Japan from conquering Southeast Asia using a modern deterrence theory framework reveals opportunities to improve contemporary deterrence strategies.

Historic examples of states attempting to deter unprofitable conflict with their peers are found as far back as 5th century B.C. in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, when Athens and Sparta exchanged a series of envoys to convince each other that continued violations of a tenuous peace agreement would inevitably lead to war.[1] Today, theories for convincing adversaries to voluntarily limit their pursuit of strategic interests line bookshelves globally. Alexander George’s work on The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy takes an abstract model, reliant on the assumption of a rational opponent, and details how policy makers can transform it into a specific strategy for predicting the effects of a deterrence action.[2] In his “Understanding Deterrence” primer, RAND senior political scientist Michael Mazarr emphasizes that successful deterrence comes from effectively influencing adversaries’ perceptions of the situation. Three critical factors play an outsized role in shaping these perceptions and framing adversary calculations about deterrence: the level of aggressor motivation to act in the specified territory, defender clarity about the object of deterrence and threatened response actions, and aggressor confidence in deterring state capacity and credibility to carry out threats.[3] American failed in its efforts to deter Japanese aggression because it failed to perceive the Japanese empire as a legitimate world power, did not communicate clear objectives or specific responses, and lacked local military capacity to deny a Japanese fait accompli.[4]

Level of Aggressor Motivation

Analyzing challenger motivation is the first step in evaluating the success or failure of deterrence campaigns.[5] “When the motives and tensions of war are slight we can imagine that the faintest prospect of defeat might be enough to cause one side to yield.”[6] Conversely, states can find themselves bound to pursue increasingly risky actions if they perceive the benefits of acting outweigh the consequences of compliance. Policy makers need to examine potential deterrent actions through the mental model of an adversary actor. Flaws in this model, like those stemming from embedded cultural racism, can skew predictions of deterrent success or failure. Racism prevented the Roosevelt administration from acknowledging Japan’s great power status, making the prospect of a Japanese-initiated war appear unlikely.[7]

Racism towards non-whites amounted to a level of cognitive bias in the minds of American leaders. As early as 1906, California began passing local and state laws segregating Japanese students and forbidding land ownership.[8] In 1922, The U.S. Supreme Court barred immigrants from the Orient from obtaining citizenship and, in 1924, Congress banned all Japanese immigration.[9] Perhaps most famously, President Woodrow Wilson single handedly overturned a Japanese amendment to the League of Nations preamble granting equal status to all participant nations regardless of race.[10] Comparing President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s executive order to incarcerate Japanese Americans following the attacks on Pearl Harbor to the liberal treatment of actual German prisoners of war highlights his low opinion of non-whites.[11] Unable to conceive of the Japanese as peer competitors, Roosevelt and his team grossly miscalculated Japan’s willingness to progressively defy American sanctions on activity in Manchuria, China, and then Indochina, leading both aggressor and defender to a point of no return.[12] American leadership could not perceive the expanding Japanese empire as a legitimate world power, while Japan’s sphere of influence achieved critical mass.

Fueling the war machine had the perverse effect of actually deepening Japanese reliance on American exports…

Japan’s burgeoning empire was quickly becoming what Dan Carlin has aptly called a “Supernova in the East,” consuming everything around it to fuel an unstoppable chain of events.[13] Japan was exquisitely poised to seize colonial territory in the turbulent years following World War I, but its subsequent conquests fueled a rise in Chinese Nationalism, rapidly turning a fertile field into an inescapable quagmire.[14] Funding the second Sino-Japanese War increased Japan’s defense expenditures from 69.2% in 1937 to 75.6% in 1941 and decreased consumer goods production from 43.2% to 28.3%, severely straining the domestic economy and driving national leaders to call for further military conquest to offset expenses.[15] Fueling the war machine had the perverse effect of actually deepening Japanese reliance on American exports, even as the noose of economic sanctions tightened.[16]

The complete economic embargo of Japan and ultimatum to withdraw from China created an existential threat to the Japanese empire and solidified their commitment to war with America. Anti-Japanese hardliners, including Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau, conspired to transform Roosevelt’s final olive branch, the limited oil embargo, into a complete economic embargo, denying Japanese businesses export licenses and exchange permits required by the Departments of State and Treasury for purchases. “They believed Japan was a paper tiger that would collapse in response to strong U.S. pressure.”[17] The Japanese perceived the ultimatum as a declaration of war and set plans in motion to win it, all while continuing the pretense of negotiations over stated objectives and desired outcomes.

Clarity in the Object of Deterrence Tied to Specified Actions

Did the U.S. clearly articulate what they wanted Japan to do regarding southeast Asia and how much it mattered to them? Chief of Naval Operations Harold Stark may have put it best while discussing the orders to keep the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor in May 1940: “Just remember that the Japanese don’t know what we are going to do, and so long as they don’t know, they may hesitate or be deterred.”[18] Deterrence occurs in the minds of adversary actors, minds that are always calculating risks and rewards, opportunities, and limitations. When a deterrent threat is ambiguous, adversaries are left to their own devices and biases to determine its scope, intention, and credibility. In this case, American messaging and actions left Japan no clear understanding of when the U.S. would use force to back up its threats, and convinced that compliance with U.S. demands would not guarantee the lifting of sanctions.[19]

Deterrence occurs in the minds of adversary actors, minds that are always calculating risks and rewards, opportunities, and limitations.

Early U.S. responses to Japanese expansionism left much to be desired regarding objects, intent, and specified actions. In response to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, President Roosevelt ordered the Scouting Fleet to remain in California.[20] Secretary of State Stimson began circulating his note detailing the U.S. non-recognition of the Manchukuo government and calling on all nations to adhere to the Open-Door policy with China, expressly forbidding any nation impeding the free trade rights of others with the Middle Kingdom.[21] As the Sino-Japanese war unfolded with its attendant atrocities, America responded primarily with public condemnation and rhetoric, and a steady dribble of supplies to Chiang Kai-Shek.[22] In response to the Japanese sinking the USS Panay during the seizure of Nanking, Roosevelt developed aggressive plans to blockade the Japanese Empire from the Aleutian Islands to Hong Kong; however, he kept these plans secret, choosing to accept a Christmas apology over the incident.[23] U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, America’s principal negotiator with Japan, admitted that while the Japanese understood the U.S. would continue applying economic pressure to enforce Far East policy, they were never informed under what circumstances the U.S. would employ force.[24] Absent stationing his limited naval assets within a 6,000 mile striking distance of Manchuria, Roosevelt deliberately avoided any allusion to employing force against Japan, and for good reason.

All eyes were focused east in May 1940, when General George Marshall presented President Roosevelt with a memorandum explicitly stating the U.S. should defend no assets west of Hawaii and must not become involved in a war with Japan.[25] The growing conflict in Europe, however, required the U.S. to help keep eastern sea lanes open for its British allies to draw on their colonial resources. Roosevelt ordered the U.S. Navy to remain forward deployed at Pearl Harbor, where they would be within range to respond to Japanese aggression, but American isolationist sentiment prevented him from stating so publicly. The Imperial Japanese Navy quickly perceived the threat but also an opportunity for a fait accompli where none had existed before.[26]

The Cordell note, delivered far too late on 26 November 1941, is the clearest effort by the U.S. to communicate detailed deterrence objectives to the Japanese.[27] The complete oil embargo fulfilled its purpose of bringing the Japanese to the negotiating table but under conditions of extreme duress and skepticism over America’s ultimate intentions. Mistakenly believing that American support for China was primarily an excuse to pursue general anti-Japanese policies, Prime Minister Tojo saw the negotiations as an ultimatum, the first step in the complete dismantling of the Japanese empire and all the hard-fought gains of the Meiji generation.[28] The Japanese decided to resolve the embargo problem by attacking to secure those resources locally, gambling on the assessment that the U.S. lacked willingness to wage a Pacific war.[29]

Aggressor Confidence in Deterring State Capacity and Threat Credibility

The U.S. was not the only state trying to dissuade an adversary to protect their own interests. The Japanese deterrence campaign focused on presenting the U.S. with a strategic dilemma. By signing the Tripartite Pact, “The big hope was that the Americans, confronted by a German victory in Europe and weary of the war in the Pacific, would agree to a negotiated peace in which Japan would be recognized as the dominant power in Eastern Asia.”[30] With the U.S. now confronted with the possibility of a two-ocean war, the Japanese planned to deter the Americans by denial, hinged on the ability to seize mutually-supporting islands and construct a defense in depth along concentric rings all the way back to Japan.[31] Pre-assessing the credibility of their own defenses, the Japanese believed the U.S. would grudgingly accept the new order, just as Europe accepted American hemispheric hegemony in the 1800s.[32] Efforts to bolster the otherwise haphazard posture of American forces in the region convinced Imperial military planners of the need to strike.[33]

Deterrence strategies focus on either denial or punishment.[34] Deterrence by denial requires sufficient forces in immediate proximity to the adversary's objective to blunt their attack and prevent a fait accompli.[35] Deterrence by punishment requires sufficient forces to impose costs after the fact to eliminate any benefit from the attack.[36] The Japanese island defense in depth is an example of denial. The American buildup of forces in the Philippines was a botched attempt at the same.

Overturning the long-held position that the Philippines were indefensible, Roosevelt’s defense team pinned their hopes on a hasty deployment of B-17 bombers, the illustrious General Douglas MacArthur, and a better late than never troop build-up.[37] The Americans thought they had more time to bolster Far East defenses. The Japanese knew time was running out. Resolved to their quest for oil, the Japanese debated the possibility of attacking only the Dutch East Indies, but concluded the U.S. and U.K. were guaranteed to intervene and the loss of strategic surprise would be too costly.[38] The U.S. failed to deter Japan because its leaders failed to perceive Japanese motivations as legitimate, failed to articulate its deterrent objectives until the last possible moment, and failed to present a credible threat to Japan’s immediate objectives, thus prompting a fait accompli attack.

Conclusion

Today, the U.S. confronts a powerful China that continues to expand and secure its dominance over Southeast Asia. China, like 1940s Japan, needs resources to sustain and grow the world’s second largest economy, and is willing to use force and coercion to take them.[39] The U.S. promotes a Free and Open Indo-Pacific, challenging Chinese claims to international waters and airspace, but hesitates to take sides in the regional disputes China is exploiting for its benefit.[40] By focusing its military modernization on Anti-access / Area Denial technology, China already holds the advantage in a South China Sea conflict, while USINDOPACOM—the American Combatant Command responsible for overseeing U.S. military interests in the region—still negotiates for better access to the region with partner nations.[41] The U.S. competition with China is strikingly similar to the competition with 1940s Japan, and America appears to be making the same mistakes. Reviewing the current U.S. deterrence strategy towards China through a modern deterrence theory framework would reveal these weaknesses and highlight opportunities for improvement.

Andrew T. Shattuck is an officer in the U.S. Army and a student at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

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Header Image: The USS Shaw explodes during the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. (National Archives)

Notes:

[1] Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War. trans. Rex Warner (Suffolk, UK. Penguin Books, 1954), 78.

[2] Alexander George, “Theory and Practice,” in The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy, ed. Alexander L. George and William E. Simons (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1994), 13-14..

[3] Michael J. Mazarr, "Understanding Deterrence," RAND Arroyo Center, 2018, 7-11. Accessed 21 January 2020, https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE295.html.

[4] Mazarr “Understanding Deterrence,” 7-11.

[5] Mazarr, “Understanding Deterrence,” 8.

[6] Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, ed Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1976), 91.

[7] Record, Always Going to Lose, 20.

[8] Record, Always Going to Lose, 18.

[9] Record, Always Going to Lose, 19.

[10] Record, Always Going to Lose, 18.

[11] J. Malcolm Garcia, “German POWS on the American Homefront,” SmithsonianMag.com, Sept. 15 2009, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/german-pows-on-the-american-homefront-141009996/

[12] Record, Always going to lose. 18-20

[13] Supernova in the East. (Dan Carlin, Hardcore History, 2018) https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-62-Supernova-in-the-East-i/ (accessed 24 Jan 2020).

[14] S.C.M. Paine, The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War, (Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 2017), 183.

[15] Paine, The Japanese Empire, 137-138.

[16] Record, Always Going To Lose, 50.

[17] Record, Always Going to Lose, 50.

[18] Sagan, “From Deterrence to Coercion,” 61.

[19] Sagan, “From Deterrence to Coercion,” 76-77.

[20] Paine, The Japanese Empire, 145.

[21] Ibid

[22] Record, Always Going to Lose, 32

[23] Paine, The Japanese Empire, 146

[24] Record, Always Going to Lose. 103

[25] Sagan, “From Deterrence to Coercion,” 66.

[26] Record, Always Going to Lose, 99.

[27] Cordell Hull, Outline of Proposed Basis For Agreement Between The United States and Japan, (Washington, D.C., 26 Nov 1941) https://www.ibiblio.org/pha/timeline/411126bpw.html (accessed 28 Jan 2020).

[28] Record, Always Going to Lose. 33.

[29] Sagan, “From Deterrence to Coercion,” 73.

[30] Record, Always Going to Lose, 66.

[31] Record, Always Going to Lose, 71

[32] “Monroe Doctrine (1823)” Milestone Documents [Washington, DC: The National Archives and Records Administration, 1995] pp. 26–29 https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=23 accessed 19 Feb 2020.

[33] Sagan, “From Deterrence to Coercion,” 79.

[34] Mazarr, “Understanding Deterrence,” 1

[35] Ibid

[36] Ibid

[37] Record, Always Going to Lose, 100-101

[38] Sagan, “From Deterrence to Coercion,” 78

[39] U.S. Department of State. 2019a. A Free and Open Indo Pacific: Advancing a Shared Vision, 4 November. Accessed 15 April 2020. https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019 /11/Free-and-Open-Indo-Pacific- 4Nov2019.pdf, 23.

[40] Thuy, Tran Truong. 2018. "Tempering the South China Sea Slow Boil: Expanding Options for Evolving Disputes." National Institute for Defense Studies. Accessed 07 March 2020. http://www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/publication/ joint_research/series16/ pdf/chapter08.pdf. 98.

[41] Beech, Hannah. 2018. “Chinaʼs Sea Control Is a Done Deal, ʻShort of War With the U.S.” New York Times, 20 September. Accessed 18 April 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/world/asia/south-china-sea-navy.html