“AN EPIDEMIC OF PLANNING”: ANTI-JAPANESE RESISTANCE AND THE SEARCH FOR GRAND STRATEGY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA, 1940-1945

Abstract

This thesis examines the intersection between Allied grand strategy for the defeat of Japan and the role of organized anti-Japanese resistance forces within that strategy. The Japanese offensive in late 1941 and early 1942 ejected Allied power from Southeast Asia—the battlespace between the Philippines and Burma—which resulted in a situation where resistance forces could have played a significant role in degrading Japanese power and prestige. That role went largely unfulfilled despite Allied support to resistance force across the region. This thesis argues that the reason for this lacuna in Allied means is Southeast Asia’s place in Allied grand strategy. In the end, centrifugal forces of logistics, geography, competing Allied priorities, different levels of Allied capability, the Japanese, and the war writ-large created a strategic vacuum in Southeast Asia.