Santa Cruz as a fight for the initiative

In this interpretation, the Guadalcanal campaign was a struggle to control the initiative and pace of the war. Japan's decisive-battle doctrine required an approaching American fleet to suffer attrition before meeting the main Japanese force at a disadvantage. The model drew on the Russo-Japanese War, where geography weakened the approaching Russians before the defeat at Tsushima helped Japan secure a settlement. Japan was a technological peer of the United States in World War II, but lacked comparable strength and industrial resources. The interwar British Empire and United States both possessed infrastructure and resources for war on a scale Japan could not sustain. American replacement capacity and the difficulty of inducing the required American mistakes made Japan's preferred sequence much less plausible. The engagement is also called the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, the Third Battle of the Solomon Sea, and the Battle of the South Pacific Sea, names that refer to the same battle.