Soldiers preparing for ritual suicide. On the 23rd, Ushijima gathered his two colleagues in a small command cave perched just above the cliffs that defined the connection between the absolute end of the island and the emerald-green sea to the south. Yahara watched with resignation as Ushijima and Cho changed into white kimonos and exchanged poetic remembrances of their homeland and past campaigns. In this surreal setting, Yahara noted, he was excluded from the ritual. Ushijima bent forward and spoke in hushed tunes as he gave last instructions to his brilliant and faithful staff officer: “Colonel, the Homeland must be defended next. You have shown us both how Japan must prepare to defend the Emperor. Leave us before it’s too late and return to Japan.”
The next three days would haunt Yahara for the remainder of his life. Even an officer with such great intellectual gifts believed that in such circumstances continuing to live was a cowardly act. His shame increased unbearably when the U.S. Army captured him only three days after his escape from the funereal cave of Ushijima and Cho. His dead seniors had expected him to convey the secrets learned fighting the Americans back to the defenders of the Japanese home islands. Both had been convinced that in spite of their overwhelming firepower, the Americans could be defeated if only enough of them died.
U.S. command knew it as well. Deep in the bowels of the National Archives rests a set of yellowed papers—only recently declassified—that is the operational plan for the invasion of Japan.2 Operation Downfall was finalized in Washington as the battle for Okinawa reached its bloody zenith. The preliminary invasion, Operation Olympic, was scheduled to begin on October 25, with an invasion of the Japanese southern island of Kyushu. The invasion would include almost 1.5 million men, thousands of aircraft and ships—the greatest armada the world had ever seen. However, confidence in the Olympic plan continued to wane as stories about Japanese fighting effectiveness began to circulate among the Pacific planning staffs. Only after the war would the Americans learn about the enormously complex defense of the home islands the Japanese had planned.
More than fourteen Japanese divisions as well as seven independent and two tank brigades awaited the invasion. This force was composed of the hard core of Japan’s army, well equipped and fed and anxious to die for the homeland. Today a visitor can still walk along the beach defenses on Kyushu: thousands of concrete bunkers and artillery positions. U.S. command learned later that the Japanese had been able to collect more than 14,000 aircraft to support the defense. Clearly, Adm. William Leahy’s prediction of 250,000 American dead on Kyushu alone was understated. Okinawa and the strategic genius of men like Yahara had put paid to the optimistic plans of U.S. forces. Yahara’s ideas would kill many, many more. Fortunately, for millions of GIs (including my father) Yahara’s genius would become irrelevant the day the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
THE AMERICAN ERA OF WAR
Yahara lived until 1972, long enough to see his strategic wisdom played out as the last U.S. fighting units left South Vietnam. By then, he knew that he had charted a conceptual template that subsequent enemies of the United States would apply with deadly consequence. History would make Yahara’s revelations in the death cave the enduring template for challenging the global might of the U.S. military in a new epoch that historians term the “American era of warfare.”
Japan’s bloody defeat on Okinawa, followed three weeks later by the bombing of Hiroshima, ended a three-hundred-year run of European dominance in war. Virtually all historically significant wars fought between the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay were shaped by the colonial and state-on-state actions of Western European armies. Of course, not all major wars of this period were fought by European militaries, but the shadow of European military skill, technology, and global reach affected most. Prior to Okinawa every military on the planet either fought using European methods or, in the case of anticolonial forces, sought means to defeat European militaries. After Okinawa, European militaries became witnesses, bystanders, aggressive mimickers of or allies to the new dominant actor so powerful that it displaced the European, in the American era of war.
The foundational element in the epochal shift from the European to American era was the U.S. development of and willingness to use nuclear weapons. The global fear engendered by the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki took off the table any prospect of a third world war fought between great powers. Of course all of the traditional elements of military competition—greed, envy, hegemonic ambitions, and ethnic and religious hatred—remained and flourished after World War II. Yet the prospects of mutual destruction triggered by escalation to a nuclear response served to eliminate total, apocalyptic war as a reasonable option for competition among the great powers, principally the United States and the Soviet Union.
Since the invention of expensive bronze artillery, the power of a military system has been dependent on the economic power of the state. U.S. economic dominance emerged when the horribly destructive bombings and invasions in Europe and Asia left the United States the last untouched great power. The disappearance of global prewar competition was the second factor that served to usher in the American era. U.S. nuclear dominance has led to two generations of “limited” conflicts fought for limited strategic ends, often in the most distant and inhospitable corners of the globe. Often these wars have pitted a Western military (that of Israel, Britain, or France) against a non-Western military, often acting as a surrogate for a competing nuclear-armed adversary.
Not all wars in the American era have been fought by Americans. Nevertheless, the long shadow of U.S. technology, doctrine, and tactical methods can be found in all of them, regardless of opponent or level of war, from preinsurgency in places like the Philippines to something approaching general war in the Middle East and East Asia. We know from many years of observed behavior that aggression in the American era is practiced by an assortment of healthy conventional states, rogue states, and transnational entities. It works for enemies at many places along the spectrum of warfare—from, again, preinsurgency in places like the Philippines to full-blown insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, to what amounts nearly to conventional war in Lebanon and Korea.
At the strategic level, wars in the American era generally have started through mutual miscalculation. The enemy, usually a regional potentate with limited hegemonic ambitions, seeks to achieve his aggressive ends while dissuading a Western power from interfering. From Lin Biao to Ho Chi Minh to Osama bin Laden, our enemies’ leaders have embraced a consistent operational and tactical pattern of behavior to confront the militaries of first-world states. Their intent has not been to win in battle so much as to avoid losing. They have sought to stretch out warfare and to kill intruders, not as a means to an end but as an end in itself. They are able to match Western firepower with iron will, familiarity with terrain and culture, willingness to die, and selection of battlefields in very far and inhospitable places.
As Colonel Yahara predicted on Okinawa, none of the United States’ more recent enemies have succeeded in winning conventional fights. All of these regional hegemonic leaders have telegraphed their intentions, in unambiguously clear language and actions. They also have established a remarkably straightforward pattern of response based on common sense, a keen sense of U.S. military capabilities, and will to persevere. This collection of bad actors has demonstrated a remarkably refined ability to learn from their mistakes and the mistakes of their malevolent fellow travelers.
In a curious twist of conventional wisdom, enemies in the American era have been remarkably open and forthright about their aggressive intent. Kim Il Sung stated his military objective as the reunification of Korea, and the North Koreans have held to this aim for seventy years. Ho Chi Minh never strayed from his dream of reunifying Vietnam under his rule. Saddam and bin Laden never wavered from their aggressive intentions. Unfortunately, a succession of U.S. leaders has shifted strategic objectives based on momentary perceptions of popular support. If the enemy’s past behavior has been so open and consistent, we should treat his declarations as truthful, sincere, and consequently worthy of our attention. We should add the enemy’s confidence, fidelity, and winning style into our calculation of future challenges.
The wisdom
