by Gerard Emershaw
On the morning of December
7, 1941, 353 Japanese fighter jets attacked the United
States naval base in Pearl
Harbor, Hawaii. When the smoke
cleared, over 2,400 Americans were dead and over 1,200 more were wounded. As a
result of the Japanese attack, the United States
declared war and became involved in World War II. Over 418,000 Americans would
die in World War II.
Pearl Harbor is typically cited as a
paradigm case of a sneak attack. But was it such a surprise? There is some
evidence that President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew
that the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor was going to
take place. However, this is not the issue that will be discussed here. The
issue in question is whether the bombing of Pearl Harbor and World War II in
general were so inevitable as to come as no surprise.
Hindsight is always 20/20, but this should never be used as
an excuse to give historical leaders a pass when it comes to missing signs of
trouble. Japan
was a growing industrial empire with fascistic designs on territorial
expansion. Such a nation requires fuel to power its ambition and aggression.
The September 1940 embargo on Japan
by the United States
prevented the export of steel, scrap iron, and aviation fuel to Japan.
Following Japan’s
occupation of southern Indochina, the United
States, United
Kingdom, and the Netherlands
froze Japanese assets, and the United States
blocked all Japanese purchases of American oil. With no source of oil, the
Japanese decided to seize oil fields of the Indies. The
only thing standing between Japan
and that oil was the United States
fleet at Pearl Harbor. With crippling sanctions and a
desperate and belligerent empire, blowback was inevitable. Knowing about
Japanese culture and giving the empire no way to save face, FDR and his
advisors should have known that an attack was inevitable.
The blowback which ignited in a global war, the Holocaust,
the Cold War, and countless geopolitical tinderboxes such as the Middle
East should have been obvious from the very beginning. When
Woodrow Wilson engineered the entry of the United
States into the Great War, there was no risk
that Germany
and her allies would conquer the United Kingdom,
France, Russia,
and their allies. Without American involvement, peace would have been brokered.
Perhaps Germany
would have won some new colonies and a bit of territory, but a peaceful status
quo would have followed soon thereafter. How could Wilson
not see that American intervention would throw Europe
out of balance? How could Clemenceau and George not see that forcing a broken Germany
to pay crippling reparations and humiliating the nation and its people in so
many ways would lead to problems? Sanctions and humiliation create the most
destructive blowback. It was obvious then. And it is obvious now.
Even if one were to grant that Wilson and FDR could not see
how their actions would inevitably create blowback, one cannot grant that the
Obama administration and the Congress are unaware of the blowback that their
actions and policies could create. Knowing what American intervention in World
War I did, it is shocking that President Obama had wished to intervene in Syria.
A decisive victory for the Jihadist rebels over Assad’s oppressive Stalinist
Ba’athist regime simply had no upside and plenty of downside and plenty of
potential blowback. Knowing what sanctions and humiliation caused Germany
to do following World War I, why are so many Republicans in Congress unwilling
to give diplomacy with Iran
a chance? If and when the United States
creates more blowback which results in yet more terrorism and war, American
leadership will have no excuse for not seeing it coming.
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