ABSTRACT
The Soviet Union exploited the Pacific War's endgame to make itself a major regional player and position itself to challenge US preeminence during the subsequent Cold War. Stalin had succeeded in positioning the Soviet Union to play a major role in postwar East Asia. In the early stages of the Pacific War, American military strategists hoped to induce Chiang to launch a major ground offensive against the Japanese in China to complement the US naval drive across the Pacific. The US Army began the liberation of the Philippines with a landing on Leyte Island in the center of the archipelago. The Japanese responded by throwing their battleships against the US invasion fleet, coming close to crippling it before they were annihilated in the war's only major engagement of capital ships. Japanese planners assumed that an attack on British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies would require a simultaneous strike against the American Pacific Fleet based at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
