Dominoes #2: The Path to Pearl Harbour

In World War 2, Japan could have gone either way, with the Allies or with the Axis powers, says Nick Mulder in this interview. The story, he says, starts several years before World War 2 started – it starts when Japan invaded China in the 1930’s. The West didn’t want Japan to become the new colonizer (what if Japan decided to next fight European imperialists for other parts of Asia?).

 

The way the League of Nations imposed sanctions on Italy for invading Ethiopia, the US considers imposing sanctions on Japan. But there are Neutrality Acts in the US designed to avoid dragging the country into foreign wars.

“(Those acts) make it impossible for the US president to discriminate by cutting off trade with one country that’s party to a conflict and not with the other; the Neutrality Acts actually obliged the US government to break off arms trade with both parties to a conflict.”

 

Meanwhile, World War 2 breaks out, so Britain puts strict controls on its colonies – their trade are limited to what suits Britain. Japan is now cut off from Britain’s colonies in Asia. In turn, this increases Japan’s dependency on the US for trade. When France falls to Nazi Germany, Japan decides to take Indochina, a French colony. The US tightens the screws – it severely restricts all iron-ore and scrap metal trade with Japan. Not surprisingly, this is how Japan views it:

“(The US is) targeting Japan openly. He’s trying to throttle this key raw material, making sure they just cannot produce enough to sustain their war in East Asia.”

 

In addition, the US is getting ready for the possibility that they have to join World War 2. In Europe, against the Nazis. To this end, they prioritize their resources for their upcoming war effort. This further reduces the raw materials like oil they can sell to Japan.

 

Here is a counterfactual. The US could have tried to ally with Japan and have them attack the Soviet Union while the US declared war on Germany. Instead, the US froze all Japanese assets as a further tightening of the screws to try and help their European ally, France, retain Indochina.

 

Japan now (rightly) is increasingly feeling that the US has, for all practical purposes, declared war on them. They desperately need to secure oil supply – the closest source is the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). While they are negotiating an oil deal, the colonial master, Holland, falls to the Nazis. The Dutch government in exile shifts to Britain.

“That means, essentially, the Dutch don’t have a lot of independence anymore because they’re now hosted by Churchill — effectively, the Anglo-American leaders can determine what the Dutch do.”

The oil deal with Japan, therefore, never materializes.

 

Japan now feels encircled by ABCD (America, Britain, China and the Dutch). While there is no declaration of war by anyone against them, don’t these actions amount to the same thing? But Japan is still not sure it wants to declare war on America. Why not just seize the Dutch East Indies? That would secure the oil supply. But there’s a problem. The US naval bases in Philippines are in the way to the Dutch East Indies. Even if it kicked out the US navy from Philippines, what if their ally, Britain, unleashed its navy from its Asian colonies to fight Japan in the Dutch East Indies?

 

So what do the Japanese do? If the US is planning to enter the war in Europe, perhaps they won’t be keen to enter on another front, against Japan in Asia, reason the Japanese. Hence the decision to attack Pearl Harbour. As a kind of warning shot across America’s bows – leave Asia to Japan, you can’t fight on two fronts. The rest, as they say, is history.

 

As the interviewer puts it:

“The causes of World War II are multivariate.”

And yet we are taught history as if things have a single, clear cause…