ABSTRACT
By geography Japan was a maritime power, protected by an oceanic moat but dependent on overseas commerce for survival and the ability to secure sea lines of communication to reach foreign military theaters. It followed the security paradigm of a maritime power in its two successful modern wars, the First-Sino Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, when it defeated the two greatest continental powers in Asia to secure limited territorial objectives in Korea and Manchuria respectively. In the 1930s Japanese civil and military leaders shifted to a continental security paradigm emphasizing empire and autarky, ultimately through the unlimited objective of transforming China into a Japanese colony. These objectives threatened the interests of all of Japan’s trading partners, who formed the coalition that led to the stalemate of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the destruction of the Japanese Empire in the Second World War Pacific. Japan lacked the resource independence necessary to fight the total war that it provoked.
