By James R. Holmes
It’s a lot easier to take an island than it is to hold on to it.
So the Naval Diplomat spent last weekend discussing Asian security with glitterati from our fair Ocean State, the West Coast, and Japan. I hosted them at my cottage off Newport’s Bellevue Avenue and my gracious seaside estate overlooking the Narragansett Bay. Verily, it’s good to number among the Four Hundred.
It was a tad jarring, amid such genteel surroundings, that everyone wanted to talk about war in the Pacific. But maybe it shouldn’t be: New Englanders’ fascination with Japan dates to Commodore Matthew Perry’s celebrated voyages to the archipelago in the 1850s. Yep, the good commodore was a Newporter. And of course it was in Newport that naval thinkers gamed out the Pacific War during the 1920s and 1930s. Admiral Chester Nimitz lavished praise on local boys for their foresight. New England may jut into the Atlantic, but we have a long tradition of thinking about Asia.
The question on everyone’s lips is, how should Japan and America respond if China’s People’s Liberation Army seizes one or more of the Senkaku Islands? A flip answer: rather than rush in, they should read their Thucydides. Why? Because alongside all his insights into the nature of war and diplomacy, the wise old Athenian delves into the rigors and perils of island warfare. One lesson: taking an island isn’t the same as holding it. A successful landing force can find itself stranded and isolated if the opponent commands the sea and sky around the island — severing ties between the occupiers and their parent force.
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