The Emergence of American Amphibious Warfare, 1898–1945. David S. Nasca
military operations in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Mexico. The various missions required the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps to work together in occupations, police actions, and interventions.122
With small wars raging throughout the Caribbean, Central America, and other parts of the world, the American, as well as European, military leadership used these campaigns as a virtual testing ground for new weapons, equipment, and tactics.123 In addition, naval patrols and police actions in the Caribbean required having to land American ground forces ashore again, forcing ad hoc amphibious assaults on hostile beaches. The conditions of these operations resulted in forced innovation and experimentation in fighting not just small wars, but large ones as well. However, just as in the Philippines, the American military and political leadership faced continued hardship and frustrations.
Interestingly, the long-term implications of America’s relationship with the major powers in the international system were a result of the Spanish-American War. The United States’ success in that conflict essentially defined the diplomatic relationships with the other major powers and hardened its geopolitical strategy for the first half of the twentieth century. In Howard Jones’ assessment of the United States during that period, he argues that the United States’ demeanor dramatically changed as it became involved in the Caribbean, Pacific, and Asia in a surge of a new Manifest Destiny. While the United States grew in political, economic, and military strength, it used its surplus of energy toward expanding its “Empire of Liberty” and therefore spread American influence and domination to distant shores. Through this context, expansion was inevitable and relentless for the American republic.124
While relations with France and Great Britain dramatically improved and established growing cooperation, the United States found itself at cross-purposes with Germany and Japan. Both nations were frustrated with America’s almost bloodless victory against Spain and desperately sought an opportunity to possibly capitalize on it by snatching away a few Spanish colonial possessions in the ensuing collapse of its colonial authority. Unfortunately for Germany and Japan, America’s rudimentary amphibious capabilities were able to beat both expansionistic empires in their Spanish territorial land grab in the Asia-Pacific Region.
Germany and Japan wanted to possess a global empire just like the British and the French, but were late arrivals in the new wave of imperialism that swept the major powers in the late nineteenth century. To make matters worse, Germany was also intruding in the Caribbean and other parts of the world in a race to gather colonies and construct military bases in order to secure access to markets and resources. Germany’s actions therefore stood as a potential threat to the American canal zone and its interests in the region, thereby creating tensions and influencing American political and military leaders to seek closer relations with Great Britain. According to Otto Pflanze, since the late nineteenth century, Germany’s chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, sought to protect his country’s overseas trade: “During the following decades of Germany’s industrialization, the search for markets and materials, the expansion of overseas trade, and the exodus of German emigrants to foreign lands gave weight…. For nearly two decades the foreign office received a steady flow of proposals for colonial ventures in various parts of the world.”125
Meanwhile, the United States faced tensions with Japan. The United States’ expansion across the Pacific with the Alaskan Purchase, as well as the annexation of Hawaii, Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippines, put American power and influence into the heart of the Asia-Pacific Region. Not only did the United States deprive the Japanese of these Pacific possessions, but it also put itself in a geopolitical position to become embroiled in Japan’s relationship with China. Japan’s victory over China during the First Sino-Japanese War, when they took control of the Liaodong Peninsula, Taiwan, and the Penghu Islands, and the Chinese government recognized that Korea now belonged under the Japanese sphere of influence, made it apparent that the Japanese had territorial ambitions in the Asia-Pacific.126 In addition, Japanese warships off the Philippines during the Spanish-American War also hinted to the United States that, like Germany, Japan also had territorial ambitions to seize control of part or all of the islands for its own colonial empire.
To mitigate potential friction with Japan, the United States worked an agreement in which, in exchange for the Japanese government recognizing the American occupation of the Philippines, the United States would in turn recognize Japan’s domination over Korea by conveniently forgetting America’s 1882 pledge of Korean independence. While this might have the short-term gain of smoothing over ruffled diplomatic feathers with Japan, it essentially established spheres of influence for both the United States and Japan in how parts of the Asia-Pacific Region would be divided between the two nations. In the case of the United States, it allowed the Americans to consolidate control over the newly acquired colonial possessions from Spain, while Japan was given a free hand to pursue its expansionist policies in Northeast Asia.127
While Japan saw American intrusion in the Asia-Pacific Region as another potential state challenger to its core interests, its wariness of the United States was surpassed by its hostility toward the Russians, who were encroaching on Japanese interests in the North Pacific as well as in China. Since Russia’s occupation of China’s Maritime Provinces in 1858, Japan had seen the Russians as a major threat to its interests in the region, especially when Russian control extended beyond Siberia into Sakhalin Island and into Manchuria. With a large military presence in Siberia and Manchuria, as well as powerful naval forces in Vladivostok and Port Arthur, Japan could not afford to confront both the Americans and Russians.128 With China removed as a potential threat and now proven to be a weak nation ready for conquest, Japan sought to shift the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific by entertaining the possibility of an alliance with Great Britain. With a history of hostility with both Russia and the United States, Japan saw Great Britain, the most powerful empire on the planet, as an ideal candidate to assist with Japan’s ambitions.
In understanding the power dynamics in the Asia-Pacific Region, both France and Germany had significant colonial possessions and influence in the area as well. France’s occupation and influence in Indochina was already recognized when the French allied with the British to defeat China during the Second Opium War. With China growing increasingly weak from its recent defeat against the European powers and in the Taiping Rebellion, as well as its significant decline in political and economic influence in the region, the French moved quickly against China’s client states in Indochina by quickly incorporating the region into its imperial holdings and looking at possibly carving out a sphere of influence within China’s southern provinces. Meanwhile, Germany had occupied the islands of the Central Pacific, as well as parts of Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific and the Shandong Peninsula in China. Germany’s ability to intimidate the Chinese with its powerful naval and ground forces enabled it to receive additional special trading privileges, and also allowed German capital and investments to shape China’s undeveloped economy.
France and Germany’s movements in the Asia-Pacific made Japan view them as additional potential rivals. Japan’s acceptance of French and German domination in Southeast Asia and the Pacific convinced the Japanese political and military leadership that the focus should essentially be against Russia, China, and the United States. France and Germany saw Russia and the United States as powerful state actors in the international system who also posed the most immediate danger to Japan, while France and Germany could easily be played against each other due to their bitter past antagonism during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). In addition, unlike Russia and the United States, neither France nor Germany were proven to have amphibious capabilities. Russia’s expansion into the North Pacific by landing troops to occupy Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands, as well as the United States launching amphibious assaults against Spanish colonial possessions, caused concern in Japan. While Japanese political and military leaders were impressed by Russian and American amphibious capabilities in the Pacific, they were fearful that those capabilities could also be used in a potential invasion of Japan’s home islands. Baron Hayashi believed, “Japan must keep calm and sit tight, so as to lull suspicions nurtured against her; during this time the foundations of national power must be consolidated; and we must watch and wait for the opportunity in the Orient that will surely come one day. When this day arrives, Japan will decide her own fate.”129
While