Ways of war and the American experience in the China-Burma-India theater, 1942--1945

In 1973 Russell Weigley advanced one of the most prominent and controversial interpretations of U.S. military history. In his book The American Way of War Weigley argues that up to the Civil War the United States utilized a strategy of attrition and exhaustion when threatened by a foreign enemy with greater economic resources. During the Civil War Union commanders, backed by the impressive economic power of Northern industries and a numerically superior Union Army, embraced a strategy of annihilation. Since the Civil War the strategy of annihilation has, according to Weigley, typified the American approach to war. Weigley's thesis, however, does not provide an entirely satisfactory interpretation of U.S. activities in the China-Burma-Indian Theater (CBI) during the Second World War. In sharp contract to U.S. forces stationed in Europe and the Pacific, American forces in the CBI operated in relative logistical poverty. Efforts by American forces to build India into a viable base from which to project Allied power and support China had some of the logistical hallmarks of the American way of war described by Weigley. American efforts to exploit local resources and the logistical austerity that characterized much of the American experience in the theater, however, are not consistent with Weigley's thesis. The U.S. Army's experience in the CBI suggests that the American experience in the CBI is perhaps best described as a fusion between the "American way of war" posited by Weigley and other, alternative "ways of war" American forces have utilized in instances where they did not enjoy overwhelming material support. The American experience in the CBI also suggests that American forces were highly pragmatic, innovative, and capable of adapting their methods to the less than ideal logistical circumstances that characterized the American experience in the CBI.