I don't think anyone here has suggested the Roosevelt Administration was an "innocent party". They were absolutely guilty. Guilty of trying to stop Japan's war against China. Guilty of exerting all measure of diplomatic pressure available to them, including military blustering, threatening, and all forms of sabre-rattling, in an effort to do that.
>>>>> Why do you suppose Roosevelt was so concerned about the welfare of China?
>>>>> Why do you suppose the Roosevelt administration was exerting all these efforts?
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But this is rather different than the suggestion that the US was trying to get into a war with Japan. There were well developed case scenarios of war with Japan. These included appreciations of how war was likely to start -- almost all of which focused on Japanese military expansion into areas that would be considered threatening to US interests. There is no suggestion in any of the administration planning scenarios I have ever seen of "let's figure out how / this is how we can start a war with Japan".
>>>>> Why do you assume that warfare is only conducted by force of military arms?
>>>>> Why do you suppose the United States government decided between 1938 and 1940 (read the Navy Acts) to authorize eighteen new fleet carriers (five of which were already under construction by 7 Dec 41), not to mention eight brand new battleships? Please don't tell me that it was a precautionary "self defense" measure.
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It's really hard to organize a large governmental undertaking, including multiple cabinet level departments and multiple (at that time separate) military organizations, involving tens or hundreds of thousands of individuals, without writing things down and circulating them. And in the US, those written documents, numbering in untold thousands, are mostly preserved in the national archives, which are open to almost anyone who is willing to learn how to become an authorized researcher. Look at a few hundred, or even a few dozen, and they present a pretty clear overall picture … if you want to read them and see the pattern.
>>>>> Those parts of government archives accessible to the public represent the "official story", not the whole story or even the true story. That's why governments have secret agreements, secret treaties, secrecy classifications and "hundred year rules". The "pretty clear overall picture" is the one that the authorities wish the public to see.
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But if you prefer you can instead start with your own conclusion, and then go looking for 3 or 4 out of the thousands of documents to support what you want. Name your preconceived conclusion, I guarantee you can find 3 or 4 documents that will draw a line to it. Ancient aliens? Sure. Nazis on the moon? Got it. A guy with an umbrella on a grassy knoll? No problem. No Unicorns on Noah's Arc? I can find you 3 or 4 docs, pick out some key wording, and draw a line to your theory. It's particularly easy if I get just a bit unclear on how I quote or characterize my source material.
>>>>> Forgive me for declining to respond to the above blustery and irrelevant rhetoric.
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All the Japanese had to do was stop their war, and all of the US measures would be released.
>>>>> Translation – "All the Japanese had to do was surrender all their national ambitions, leave East Asia within the sphere of western influence and become a pliant vassal state". What do you suppose a brave patriotic American leader would do in the face of such a challenge?
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So you seem to have a problem with the basic construction of logical reasoning.
>>>>> No question there is a failure of logical reasoning in play here. I just do not think it resides on my side of this argument.
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A more correct construction of statement would be:
… Japan's insistence on pursuing their war regardless of the costs was leaving Japan with no options but war.
>>>>> Translation – "Japan's unwillingness to succumb to American pressures to consign it to the status of a vassal state left Japan with no option but war."
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The US was not (yet) engaged in any hostilities against Japan. There wasn't even a suggestion of a blockade … all the US government was doing was withdrawing US economic support of Japan's war effort.
>>>>> Once again, the question is why the United States was so suddenly concerned about Japan's expansion on the Asian continent in 1937. After all, Japan and China had carried on a great rivalry for a millenium' Japan had been attacked twice by China when it had been under Mongol rule and had fought a long war against Korea and China in the late 16th century over its attempt to seize the Korean peninsula – plenty of historical precedent existed l-o-n-g before the Japanese militarists of the 30's came to power. After the appearance of the US on the diplomatic scene, why had The US had not been forcefully concerned about the sanctity of Chinese governmental and territorial integrity during the Opium Wars? Or during the French and German seizures of the notorious "trade concessions" later in the 19th century? Neither did the US intervene in the first Sino-Japanese War. As a matter of ironically retrospective comic relief, the US actually was a full participant alongside a number of wesern powers (and ally Japan!) in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion and consequent overthrow of the Chinese government at the turn of the century. The US didn't seem to care much at all about Japan's seizure of Korea in 1910 or Manchuria in the 20's. Evreything suddenly changed in 1937 ….. one short year after Japan signed its pact with Germany and Italy. It's all in the history books.
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The war was purely a war of Japanese conquest. China posed no threat to Japan. They had every ability to stop the fighting at any time, as China was in no position to pursue any punitive military measures against Japan.
>>>>> You're absolutely correct, in the very same sense that a helpless China had previously fallen victim to those Western powers that preceded Japan in feeding upon it. There were no noble measures in play here; it was simply the big US carnivore jostling the smaller Japanese hyena away from the China's tasty carcass.
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So the only way to get to the conclusion you state above, is to start with the premise that the Japanese were not going to stop their war. If you start from there, then yes, the increasing US measures left them no options but to expand the war.
>>>>> Japan's was committed to become, like Great Britain, a great independent world power (thanks to those nations who chose to screw the Japanese when the spoils of WW1 were divided up at Versailles). Japan had become a major economic power in East Asia; they read history books as well and Great Britain showed Japan the way to great power status. Perhaps you find it offensive for a "non-Western" nation to harbor such ambitions, but my opinion sa an impartial historian is "good for the goose, good for the gander".
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It was the Japanese who created the lack of Japanese options. They initiated a war, totally of their own choosing, that they could not win without US economic support. When you have a single critical supplier, you don't ignore that party's interests, concerns and protestations. If you do, you fail. It's that simple. They painted themselves into a corner of their own choosing, their own making, and they were deliberately blind to the almost inevitable results of their actions, or the alternatives available to them.
>>>>> It was indeed a problem for Japan that its economy was so dependent upon the US. Perhaps that is why, after being rebuffed and insulted by the western powers whom it had so assiduously courted since first opening itself to the world, Japan sought to carve out its own independent economic and industrial base in east Asia. The west couldn't have that.. Hence the "big squeeze" to intimidate Japan and the huge precautionary arms build-up in case matters required a more "forceful intervention". Pearl Harbor was necessary to tilt popular sentiment among an isolationist American public toward entry into a war.
Do you really believe that our nation does not partake of its full share of ugly and amoral dog-eat-dog international power politics?