American-British-Dutch-Australian Command

The American-British-Dutch-Australian (ABDA) Command, or ABDACOM, was the short-lived supreme command for all Allied forces in South East Asia in early 1942, during the Pacific War in World War II. It consisted of the forces of Australia, the Netherlands, United Kingdom and the United States.

Led by General Sir Archibald Wavell, the command's objective was to maintain control of the "Malay Barrier" (or "East Indies Barrier"), a notional line running down the Malay Peninsula through Singapore and the southernmost islands of the Dutch East Indies. ABDACOM was also known within the British military as the "South West Pacific Command" (not to be confused with the later South West Pacific Area command established in March 1942).

Although ABDACOM collapsed only in eight weeks without achieving its aims, it provided some useful lessons for combined Allied commands later in the war and is still studied by contemporary military analysts.

Formation

Efforts to organise the ABDA Command began soon after war between the Allies and Japan commenced, on 7 December 1941. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson were anxious to establish unity of command over the Allied forces in all theatres after observing Allied defeats in the Battle of France, the Mediterranean and Middle East theatre, and the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Despite objections from the British military establishment, the scheme was finalized at the Arcadia Conference in Washington. On December 27 Marshall and Admiral Ernest King proposed an ABDA Command led by Archibald Wavell to Charles Portal, Dudley Pound, and John Dill. The British were skeptical and believed the Pacific theatre was too geographically large to be controlled by a single commander. Winston Churchill warned Marshall about the difficulties faced by Ferdinand Foch as Supreme Allied Commander while simply trying to coordinate operations across the Western Front of World War I. Marshall rebuffed this and other historical analogies from Churchill, telling him that he "was not interested in Drake and Frobisher, but I was interested in having a united front against Japan." Churchill reluctantly telephoned his War Cabinet in London advising them to accept the arrangement despite their concerns.