Joint Force Quarterly 113 July 19, 2024
Defending an Achilles’ Heel Evolving Warfare in the Philippines, 1941–1945
As Alfred Thayer Mahan stated, “The study of history lies at the foundation of all sound military conclusions and practice.”1 When we consider maritime strategy today, analysis of the Pacific War offers substantial lessons. For centuries, the Pacific has proved crucial to the global economy and as a stage for Great Power competition. In the late 19th century, European powers vied for control over rubber, oil, and minerals, as well as external markets for their domestically produced consumer goods. Mimicking the foreign policy of other imperial nations, Japan sought to revise the European-dominated regional order to better serve its own national interests. The Japanese Imperial Army began conquests in China in the 1930s and then—after Japan proposed the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in 1940—set its sights on Southeast Asia in the 1940s. Sea lines of communication between the Japanese home islands and their territorial expansions became imperative. In the geographic center of this ambitious Japanese strategy lay the U.S.-controlled Philippine Islands.