Reviews

The Pacific War and Contingent Victory: Why Japanese Defeat Was Not Inevitable by Michael W. Myers

tsharris's review

2.0

I wanted to like this book more but the more I read it the more I thought that Myers was beating a dead straw horse (to mix metaphors). And for all that I don't think he made a strong case for why Allied victory in the Pacific wasn't inevitable. I think his discussion would have been better informed by a discussion of the US home front and war weariness - since he concedes that the only way Japan could "win" was by forcing the US to negotiate - and a discussion of "unconditional surrender" in US strategic culture. When making counterfactuals, one needs to do better than say "well, this happened but it wasn't guaranteed to happen." it is necessary to sort between plausible and implausible counterfactuals. Myers really needed to grapple with how the US mobilized for and innovated during total wars in its past, the civil war for example. While the civil war was a different sort of war than the Pacific war, the US nevertheless mobilized in similarly creative ways, invented new technology, harnessed logistical and financial innovation, etc. Given this legacy, arguably it is incumbent Myers to explain why the Pacific war was different.