Blame Alfred Thayer Mahan for Pearl Harbor (and Thank Him for Its Failure)
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By James Holmes
December 07, 2018
Skip parts of a treatise and you garner only part of its wisdom—and maybe not the part most relevant to your cause.
Americans have Alfred Thayer Mahan to blame for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. They also have Mahan to thank for the attack’s failure. The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) could have landed a crippling strategic blow against the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet, demolishing infrastructure indispensable to fleet operations in the distant Western Pacific. Instead, Japanese aviators concentrated their bombs, torpedoes and gunfire on U.S. battleships moored at Ford Island.
The results were spectacular but ephemeral. The raid accomplished little apart from delaying an American counteroffensive a few months and firing popular resolve in the United States to unleash that counteroffensive. If you decide to smite a sleeping giant, you had better kill him.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2018/12/07/blame_alfred_thayer_mahan_for_pearl_harbor_and_thank_him_for_its_failure_114010.html
