[lbo-talk] Bush invaded Iraq because...

[N P Childs]

At 12/04/2004,, you wrote:
>For all I know, war between the US and Japan was coming sooner or
>later, but from the point of view of the Japanese elite, the oil
>embargo must have made them more motivated to "strike the first blow":
>
>*****   VJ Day: Remembering the Pacific War
>Stephen R. Shalom
>
>The United States, along with Britain and the Netherlands, placed a
>total embargo on oil to Japan, leaving it with no alternative
>sources. To Japanese leaders war to seize its own supplies of oil
>seemed essential. But Japanese officials calculated that an attack on
>the oil- rich East Indies would necessarily involve them in a war
>with the United States. In this estimation they were correct, for
>U.S. officials had determined to go to Congress for a declaration of
>war not just if U.S. colonies were attacked, but if those of Britain
>or the Netherlands were either.45 In these circumstances Tokyo
>concluded that it made sense to try to strike the first blow.

Fair enough, and I'm aware of this history, however the Japanese didn't 
arrive at the decision to invade the East Indies for their oil (and a slave 
population to extract it) in a vacuum, they were working their way around 
the Pacific Rim building a series of colonies.

It makes no sense to say that Japan was pushed into a war with the US, 
given what they were doing in the Pacific, it was an inevitably. While 
under the right conditions the US probably could have reached an 
accommodation with Nazi Germany (ie to get rid of the USSR), the Japanese 
were not included to consider accommodation. In my mind, the extract above 
confirms that.

PC

N Paul Childs
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