Your points are valid, but as I look through history, you can almost see the “invisible hand”. War with Japan was going to happen no matter what FDR did. I maybe wrong, at best it could be deferred or changed to a degree. It appears to me FDR saw it coming and prepared for it. I am not an FDR fan in any respect but just like today, we can see the crap storm coming and at best we can prepare for it but we can’t avoid it.
If at first you don’t succeed [starting a war with the Germans], try, try again[start a war with Japan].
Roosevelt’s actions in destroyers for bases, escorting British shipping, dividing the Atlantic into “defense” zones, trailing, radioing U-boat positions to the Brits,providing the co-pilot on the PBY that found the BISMARCK, constitute co-belligerency under international law. But Adolf didn’t bite.
SOOOO, you embargo Japan, a naval power with no oil of its own, from petroleum acquisitions, leaving it with one potential source, Indonesia [the raison d’etre for WW II in the Pacific], or withdrawing from not only Indochina, but China as well. Then you send that nation’s largest potential adversary, the U.S Pacific Fleet, from the West Coast to Pearl Harbor, despite the Navy’s reticence to do so.
There’s a difference between preparing for a war, and actively seeking one.
But at least old Franklin managed to hand the Japanese Navy all the trump cards in their argument with the Japanese Army over whether to go north [Siberia], or south [Indonesia], allowing the Soviets to pull their Far East armies west to face the Germans.So FDR quite possibly affected the outcome of WW II.
War with Japan could easily have been avoided, if that was President Roosevelt's intention.
All he needed to do was agree with Japan's aims and goals.
If FDR had just maintained normal trade relations with Japan, supplied them all the oil they wanted, agreed to their conquest of China and take-over of Indo-China, then there need never have been a Japanese "mistake" putting the US into the war.
If FDR had even kept the US fleet in Los Angeles, as all his naval commanders advised him to, the Japanese would feel no need (and have no ability) to secure their flanks by attacking the US fleet, when Japan invaded towards raw materials in South Asia.
Indeed, if the US had remained friendly to Japan, the Japanese may well have seen that their first strategic interest was in helping their ally Hitler defeat Stalin's Soviet Union by attacking Soviet forces in Siberia.
Then the Axis powers would have won the war and forced Britain to accept peace on their terms.
But avoiding war was not FDR's goal.
Instead, his goal was to come to Britain's aid, just as the US did back when a handsome young FDR was President Woodrow Wilson's Assistant Secretary of the Navy, responsible for naval intelligence.
Now President, his basic problem was: Adolf Hitler's determination to avoid giving Roosevelt the same excuse Wilson had to declare war on Germany -- unlimited U-boat sinkings of US ships.
So what was FDR to do?
Well, if he could poke the Japanese hard enough, maybe they would solve his problem?
And that's what he did.
And that's what they did.