The British surrender of Singapore to the Japanese in 1942 should be instructive to U.S. policymakers eyeing China’s rise. War isn’t inevitable, but history is full of surprises.
Seventy years ago, on February 15, 1942, Lt. Gen. A.E. Percival, head of the United Kingdom’s Malaya Command, surrendered Singapore to the Japanese Imperial Army. The defeat of the so-called “Gibraltar of the East” was an even bigger shock to the British than Pearl Harbor was to the Americans just two months previously. Singapore was the cornerstone of the British Empire in Asia and its surrender, the largest in British history, marked the effective end of Britain’s colonial era there. The fall of Singapore still holds some lessons, even in a time of peace, and should serve as a cautionary tale for any power, such as the United States, playing a dominant role so far from home.
The first lesson is that a rising regional power will seek to displace an external status quo power. While intra-regional competition among established and new powers is common (as witnessed by centuries of European history), the position of a foreign status quo power in any given region is particularly vulnerable. It was relatively easy for the British to rule various divided territories in Asia since the East India Company first set up shop in Madras in 1639 and began spreading eastward. But the emergence of a cohesive, ambitious, and aggressive imperial Japan ultimately set up a clash between a Britain seeking to preserve its exposed position and a Japan bent on rewriting the regional security order. In fact, the British failure to renew its alliance with Tokyo in 1921 helped speed Japanese expansion in Asia, by ending cooperation between the two and removing restraints on Japanese ambitions. Ultimately, American sanctions on Tokyo threatened to derail its military strength, and Japan’s leaders decided to gamble on attacking all Western powers in Asia in a bid to secure vital raw materials and destroy European colonial holdings.
The second lesson is that miscalculating an adversary’s operational intentions (or misreading his doctrine) can lead to early and insurmountable reverses. Japan’s surprise attack on Singapore and its unorthodox strategy was crucial in knocking the British off balance and preventing them from effectively regrouping, even though they outnumbered the Japanese forces they faced. The British had long assumed that any Japanese attack, if it came, would be from the sea, and Singapore’s great guns were all emplaced facing out over the water. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, who would be executed for war crimes in 1946, devised a brilliant plan to neutralize Singapore by capturing British Malaya first, then invading the island fortress from the north. He launched his invasion on December 8, 1941 and his force of approximately 30,000 combat troops took just two months to reduce the peninsula, before advancing on Singapore in a pincer movement. Fighting in Singapore itself lasted just a week before the smaller Japanese force captured over 80,000 British, Australian, Indian, and Malayan troops.
The third lesson is that tyranny of distance helped doom the British. For generations, Singapore was assumed to be impregnable, the very symbol of British might overseas. Yet, as Percival knew all too well, it was also isolated, undersupplied, and unprepared for war. The British were simply too far from home to be able to effectively resupply the island in the short crisis before collapse. The Japanese dominated the air, and had been bombing the island since December, with only token British resistance. The Royal Navy was driven from the seas around Singapore when HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse had been sunk off Malaya just two days after Pearl Harbor. The British had difficulty maintaining communications with their regional commands on the island. The Japanese attacked the island’s water stations, and it was this, along with dwindling food supplies, that finally forced Percival to heed the entreaties of his subordinate commanders and surrender. The war in Asia would rage for three more years, and the British would play only a marginal role in defeating Japan.
Reddit
Digg
StumbleUpon
Delicious
Technorati
Yahoo
Google
Plurk
Khalid Arab
Nirvana also seems to have a fetish with the CCP of China. Is he the same person as DownRedChina and John X? These fanatics do nothing but mindless attacks on the Chinese. Dogs! Even I, as an Arab is shocked by such extremist. Unless of course, they are Pentagon recruits to do exactly just that. With the ultimate aim to topple the government of China through unrest. “CCP” being their code word for attacking China and stirring up the readers against the government of China.
Louis IV
Anyone has seen a Chinese’s Arab faking on the loose? He’s even faked his last name as Arab to fool people.
China is a country with an expansionist ambition (like Tibet, evil intention on the SCS, ECS, etc). CCP is a communist regime which is not only bad to its own people, but, very nasty its neighbours, and a cheater to other World trading partners (like currency manipulation, IP theft, making lots of fake products, own an infamous Huawei company who’s acting as PLA’s International spy organiztion front end, etc.)
JohnX
Et tu Brutus.
I must accept being slandered with my right of rebuttal removed.
Khalid Arab
The blog seems to be an American anti-China propaganda broadsheet written by full-time writers like nirvana, girish, John X, Louis Iv, Ling Viet, DownRedChina,… etc…
These internet terrorists and fanatics are paid to do what they do in preparation for a justification for America to attack China. It is so obvious. Their constant harping on “CCP” is but a campaign to destroy the good name of Chinese leaders first before they can justify an attack.
Dogs and curs. Why do the Diplomat encourage such provocative and instigative campaigns by not minimising them?
America – liar and manipulator of the world. A thousand curses upon you and your progenies, great satan!
JohnX
Wow, now I am a fanatic. It seems that universal truth still applies that one mans _________ is another mans __________.
If you know that the Pentagon is hiring then ask them to send me a message or maybe you can ask PLA General Staff Headquarters to send me an application form considering you think my presentation of facts is up for sale.
I focus on one issue and that is Chinas growing militarization and expansion in the South China Sea as that has the greatest chance of impacting my country in the future. If my harping on about that issue makes me a fanatic then so be it.
Though as some one who has an Arabic name and comments suspciously like a 50 center, I would be curious if it takes one to know one?
JohnX
Oh by the way, if Taiwan is part of China then CCP is not the Government of Chinese people, but rather a political party that leads one section of them.
The other Chinese people have chosen thier parties which doesn’t appear to be the case for those living on the ‘mainland’.
Chris
The point is not about weather china willl invade america or not.
The point is as much as zhongguo doesn’t have reason to being aggressive against american influence in the Asia, nothing will stop china from trying to eliminate american influence in the region like i was for japan in 1940s.
the article is all about American should prepare.
Of course, the article is self-contradict. after all like the article mentions, the vary reason of america’s fear of rising china is not only surge of china power but also america’s facing bankruptcy which willl underprepare america to prepare rising china.
so, david yu don’t give american people your piece of shit.
americans are not as stupid as you wan them to be.
of course, they are more stupid than I think, though…
with threat of bankcruptcy, only solution for america to balance against rising china is pull out from Korea, japan and let them defend themselves, even if they become nuclear power.
after all, America can save tones of money by let Korea and japan defend themselve and if Korea and japan become nuclear power, they can defend themselve against rising china without american force.
Will it reducing american influence? Yes, but it wil become impregnable fence against china.
consider it as sacrifice mov
ACT
For once, I’ll make a rather nationalistic and off-color statement that i might engender some thoughtful reply:
what i think everyone is forgetting regarding potential conflict was what the United States was able to pull off; while it only fought roughly 20% of the German Army in World War II, it also managed to take on a good chunk of the Japanese Army as well. (although, admittedly, most of Japan’s 3-million-man- army was bogged down in China just holding the front against the KMT and CPC combined force). What won the war for the United States in world war II was not the quality of its weapons (somewhat shoddy), but the fact that it managed to mobilize so much of its population; the Armed Forces of the United States employed at its maximum strength 16.1 MILLION soldiers across all services, less than a third of which were actually deployed overseas. That’s 16% of the population of the United States during that time period, and it does not count the millions more who went to work in the factories producing tanks and aircraft. I’m willing to wager that the United States could match if not exceed that kind of potential today if the need arose. For example, the Lima Tank Factory, Which produces M1 Abrams tanks could, at maximum rate of production, churn out four fully equipped tanks per day.
For those of you–John Chan–who advocate war with the United States in order to prove the cultural, racial, and global supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party, I invite you to imagine once again dozens, if not hundreds, of factories being converted for military use across the country staffed with well-trained electricians, software programmers and other required staff…..
What i am trying to say is that, John Chan and Ling1a, China should indeed stick to self-defense rather than advancing imperialistic claims on areas such as Tibet (originally incorporated into the Chinese Empire in the 18th century and then lost with then end of the Qing Dynasty in 1911) or Taiwan (first colonized by the Dutch in 1623, conquered by the Han Dynasty in 1661 [formally incorporated into the Qing government in 1885] and then lost to the Japanese at the end of the first Sino-Japanese War via the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895). I name these imperialist claims because they are based, of course, on the boundaries of an empire that wanted to ‘rule all under heaven’, that saw all other states and peoples as inferior, that demanded tribute from peoples it had never before seen under the assumption of military might and unquestionable military authority. I speak of the Qing, the empire the imploded after centuries of stagnation, defeated by the very technology it exported to those whom it deemed “inferior”. This is the very same empire that the PRC sought to eliminate all traces of during the Cultural Revolution, seeking to purge “old ways that the bourgeoisie might use to dominate the people of the PRC once again”. So why, I ask, is the PRC basing territorial claims on the boundaries of an empire it so loathed? To better phrase the question, i’ll quote the organization Students for a Free Tibet:
“Beijing is opposed to past Western and Japanese imperialism, but sees nothing wrong in claiming Tibet based on the Manchu Qing Empire…The Manchu rulers of China were Buddhists, and Tibet’s Dalai Lamas and the Manchu emperors had a special priest-patron relationship called Cho-Yon whereby China committed to providing protection to the largely demilitarized Tibetan state. Chinese nationalists may see this as sovereignty, but it wasn’t. As the relationship became strained, China at various times exercised influence and sent armies into Tibet – but so did Nepal during this time. China expanded its influence in Tibet after 1720, as a powerful country dealing with a weaker neighbor. It later tried to occupy Tibet by force, violating the Cho-Yon relationship, but with the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, Tibetans expelled the Chinese and the 13th Dalai Lama proclaimed Tibet’s complete independence” (http://www.studentsforafreetibet.org/article.php?id=422)
I’ll take a very large step outwards and theorize that the Chinese Empire never truly died; it just shifted gears, switching leaders and transforming its political methods, but never its end goals, namely the rule of all under heaven, a geographical term which–i might add–has expanded significantly over the past century.
John Chan
@ACT,
Vietnam War was the turning point of American patriotism, that’s why USA switched to mercenary force. Building more killing machines is possible because it fills the pockets of the American MIC, but filling the cannon fodders with American youth other than those mercenary is a fantasy, particular USA is a financial egoism and self centered society, so far there is no sign that Americans are willing to sacrifice their own interests for the nation.
China is not Japan, thinking USA’s production can surpass China is a fallacy. It is Chinese scared duty to protect its ancestor’s land. USA’s meddling China’s internal affairs in the western Pacific Ocean is a predicatory imperialist aggression, such aggression must be defeated at all costs.
The Dalai Lama is an CIA paid proxy, and a traitor of China.
Using your creative revisionist history cannot divert the focus on “What Singapore Teaches US.” that is a distant external status quo power is unsustainable when there is a rising regional power, and US must tune down its bellicose anti-China rhetoric and exit western Pacific gracefully,
M Gandhi
Just a thought .. Has he U.S. Military Industrial Complex ever considered there is another way to make money, if money is what’s its all about?
Why not just sell high tech weapons to China? China will be the biggest market in the world for the MIC .. worth trillions of dollars. Why worry about what the rest of Americans think? Their thoughts have never counted and should not, now.
These non productive assets will just sit and rust. Afteral with American and Russian nuke missiles, Beijing is not going to wage MAD with nay other nuclear armed nation.
The solution is so simple. You can stop all that smear campaign. You can achieve your goals without kiling anyone and make trillions in the process.
Peace .. brother, sisters ..
ramadurais
Rat is a lion in rat hole. No country can fight a war far away from home and win the war. The battles were won on surprise element and superiority of arms. Japan started losing after pearl harbor, Germany after Russian attack, USA has no victory in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.
British was the only exception in India because British made it clear and conducted themselves as a locals in India. When Canadians / Australians needed passport to visit Britain, Britain allowed both British Indians and Indians in princely states to visit Britain with no passport or VISA.
India was not colonial to British like Saudi or arabs to USA to day. There was no apartheid , but cultural differences were respected. When Hindus said beef fat could not used to lubricate guns, British banned use of beef fat. many instances can be given of British accommodation. British officers were not afraid Indians carrying a loaded gun , Can USA and China trust trust other nationals.
A world power will need lot of compromises to be accepted / loved as world power neither USA nor China has the quality.
USA can never win a war far from home that too against China.
nirvana
@ACT,
Indeed !! I may add:
In an all-out war, a strong economic foundation and technology superiority are important but the determining factor is always the mobilisation of your people (and today of the international public opinion as well). History shows plenty of examples.
But China is somewhat different. It is a nightmare for a Chinese emperor when his Mandate from the Heaven is questioned. There is nothing better for a Chinese emperor than when his tributary system works; that is when he can project an external image (even if it is only a façade) of a mighty China, so feared by all neighbours that he can rule inside, ruthlessly if needed. This is the mindset of all Chinese rulers that explains why the CPC considers Tibet, Taiwan and the SCS their “core interest”. If Tibetans, Taiwanese and the coastal countries of the SCS accept to pay tribute to China, even symbolically, they may avoid armed conflicts with China.
Unfortunately for the CPC, today we have the Internet. Teaching somebody a lesson can backfire if you face a resilient opponent. The PLA, which has NEVER fought a just war of any length, favour Blitzkriegs because if these ventures result in a flop, their propaganda machine may be able to masquerade their incompetence.