Offshore Engagement and the Battle of Java Sea
HNLMS De Ruyter (Wikipedia, Royal Netherlands Navy / Koninklijke Marine)
I have an extended feature at the Diplomat on American grand strategy and the Battle of Java Sea. This represents my effort to find some sort of happy ground between “offshore balancing” and “deep engagement,” by combining one word from each and connecting the argument to an obscure historical event.
America is in the throes of yet another debate about grand strategy, with terms like “deep engagement” and “offshore balancing” coming to characterize complex sets of policies towards allies and antagonists alike. Although the precise nature of the terms varies along with the preference of the author, Deep Engagement advocates tend to prefer robust, forward deployed U.S. military capability of the sort that we currently enjoy. Advocates of offshore balancing argue that the United States can significantly draw down its military and political commitments and rely on normal balance of power politics to ensure that no state gains complete control over the Eurasian landmass.
“Avoid another Pearl Harbor,” recently amended to “avoid another 9/11” has animated U.S. security strategy since World War II. It might be more useful to think of grand strategy as a way to avoid another Battle of Java Sea. Predominance is one way to accomplish this; if the United States can defeat any enemy without the assistance of a coalition, then the coalition becomes militarily superfluous. But predominance is expensive, and often convinces allies to shirk their own commitments.
Offshore balancing certainly may force U.S. allies to pick up the slack, increasing defense expenditures to match the perceived Chinese threat. Together, forces nominally allied with the United States could conceivably outmatch the PLAN and PLAAF in material terms. But offshore balancing runs the risk of creating conditions that would allow a repeat of the Battle of Java Sea, where a single committed opponent managed to outwit and outfight a coalition on strategic, operational, and tactical grounds. Despite its material advantage, the ABDA never worked out a strategic conception that could concentrate force and bring it to bear against the Imperial Japanese Navy.
Your thoughts are altogether welcome.
Would we really be in a “Java Sea” situation if we were forced to rely on a coalition to mount a materially equivalent force? We conduct frequent exercises with our potential coalition partners now, and we have treaties with them. In early 1942, we were organizing on the fly with almost no history of cooperation.
It strikes me that the Battle of the Java Sea had a number of factors present that today are somewhat mitigated. The need for Doorman’s coded orders to his American and British cohorts to first be decoded and then translated from Dutch did nothing to aid force coordination (and vice-versa for replies). Today, modern coding and communications systems would alleviate this problem to a much greater extent.
The lack of radar, air cover, and spotting aircraft for fire control made it impossible for the ABDA group to accurately reckon with the two forces they were facing. This caused Doorman to waste opportunities–especially once the sun started going down.
Finally, all of this came to a head as Doorman attempted to flee and first ordered (by blinker) the American destroyer group to attack the Japanese forces, then countermanded that order, then ordered them to cover his retirement.
Today, with much improved communications, command, control and intelligence, the chances of a Java Sea situation are almost negligible. This is especially so since, in the case of facing down China, we would likely be operating with the U.S. fleet as the largest (and leading) contingent, with British and Australian vessels making up the rest. No need to translated decoded messages from the original Dutch!
I think you need to allow for Japanese and Korean contingents in a postulated coalition.
Are advocates of offshore balancing really making the case that the US should significantly draw down it’s military commitments?
The links you provide seem to go to articles and interviews to people who advocate that we rely more on allies and coalitions, and also that we should expect and demand said allies to pull their own weight and not let them manipulate Uncle Sucker.
That’s significantly different from arguing that we should close Diego Garcia or meaningfully reduce our presences in Japan and South Korea.
It seems like they’re arguing we should be making our allies do more and expect less, rather than actually concretely saying “maybe we have too many supercarriers” or “you know what, Japan is capable of seeing to its own security needs now.”
Short answer is yes; I don’t remember what all of the links argue, but significant drawdown is part of the offshore balancing advocacy campaign.
Fair enough! You’re the expert. In that case, I am now more informed than I was yesterday, which means that LGM is once again more than worth the free price of admission.
Two things spring to mind for me.
First, did the ABDA really enjoy a material advantage? At least tactically as far as Java Sea itself is concerned, I don’t think one additional light cruiser possessed by the ABDA force offset the six extra IJN destroyers, especially considering their torpedo load.
Second, the Allies suffered several reverses in surface battles with the IJN later in 1942, even though the Allied forces were composed entirely of US units (Savo Island, Tassafaronga, etc.).
I would argue that, at least at the tactical surface battle level, Japanese doctrine and training were simply superior to that of the Allies at this stage of the war, making it essentially immaterial whether forces were of a single nation or a coalition.
even though the Allied forces were composed entirely of US units (Savo Island, Tassafaronga, etc.).
Savo Island was fought by a mixed US/Australian force, under tactical command of a Bristish admiral.
Agreed on the importance of training, joint exercises, joint planning and general interoperability with allies, but the USN seems well aware of this. We do a lot of joint exercises with everyone.
Doubtful that ADBA would have done much better even if everyone agreed on objectives and spoke the same language. ABDA’s fundamental problem was lack of airpower, which could not be remedied at that stage of the war; there just weren’t enough planes, especially fighters that could deal with the Zero (and we hadn’t really learned how to deal with the Zero yet, e.g., never ever dogfight it in a 1942 airplane).
Secondary cause alluded to above was that the Japanese had a whole lot better idea how to win a surface engagement, e.g., torpedoes > guns when you have long range long lances.
I wonder sometimes whether US/Allied tendency to steer straight courses to make gunnery easier made the long lance a better weapon than it was. E.g., South Dakota not getting hit by a single torpedo as Guadalcanal II even though a bunch were launched at her, possibly because she mostly couldn’t shoot back and changed course a whole bunch of times.
But given that the US/Allies were determined to steer straight courses to make shooting easier, the long lance gave the Japanese a tremendous advantage in any surface engagement, even with perfect Allied command and control.
The straight steerin’ of U.S. surface forces may have actually had more to do with the fact that Long Lance launches could not be detected (no muzzle flashes), the torpedoes were wakeless (no incoming bubble tracks), and the incredibly long range of the Long Lance (up to 21,000 yards) was so far outside anyone’s experience early in the war that no U.S. commander would expect torpedoes to be fired at such extreme ranges. (Hell, even late in the war a Long Lance was fired into an anchorage by a Japanese submarine from some 20,000 yards out and scored a sinking.)
I’d hit hard on the difference that the technological gap makes in improving the performance of any military force but particularly a naval force.
One of the most critical differences between the early 1942 engagements (which the IJN either won outright or came off the better of the two sides engaged) and the later ’42-’43 fights was the difference that the improvements in the USN’s use of fire control and search radars and air support made.
Any likely future USN/allied naval foe is unlikely to have a significant technical advantage; the likelihood is that the opposite will be true. So ISTM that the technical disadvantage in target acquisition and fire direction that was the fundamental root cause of the Allied defeat is highly improbable in that hypothetical engagement…
Something I found interesting was this article on how Israel influenced US security doctrine (although I don’t know how accurate it is or how respected Andrew Bacevich is on these topics)
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-we-became-israel/
Interesting article above thanks, it helped to clarify what these terms/strategies actually mean, how they’ve evolved etc
While Bacevich is sometimes very enjoyable to read, his points in that piece seem way off the mark. In fact American doctrine since its very inception 200 years ago, long before there was a state of Israel, has never substantially changed. There are plenty of historical examples refuting Bacevichs claim, some of which are brought up in the comments to his article.
What has changed, is the scope, as a function of increasingly free reign of American power projection capabilities over the past few decades, thanks to the demise of the USSR (preceded by the Spanish, the Empire, the Germans, Japanese, the list goes on).
Naturally, there will be an ending to all this. The only question is, will it arrive hard and fast or slowly, over decades of decline in hard and soft power?! Plenty of examples on both sides, which one provides the better learning experience for those concerned is very much open for discussion.