ABSTRACT
The military theorist Julian Corbett once observed that: So vital indeed is financial vigour in war than more often than not the maintenance of the flow of trade has been a paramount consideration'. In deciding the outcome of the conflicts of both 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 the protagonists' capacity to procure, process and distribute sufficient raw materials to satisfy their burgeoning needs was indubitably a fundamental factor. On entering the Second World War, first Italy and then Japan followed Germany in coming under blockade from Allied naval forces. Whereas the economic infrastructure of the USA the arsenal of democracy' lay at a distance from enemy territory to be vulnerable to attack by land-based aircraft, the Axis powers fell victim to strategic bombing offensives that steadily grew in scale and effectiveness. Around the time of the Paris Protocols the USA set up a Caribbean Defense Command (CDC) to oversee the sprawling network of outposts within the basin and to harmonize their activities.
