Replies

PeterPrinciple: "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."

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.

We will have to agree to disagree. All the appeasement and perceived weakness you propose would only have made Japan more aggressive. When they were done with Russia, we were next on the list. What you proposed would not have avoided war, only changed when and how in my opinion. If the axis powers had won, we would have had to deal with NAZI socialism instead Communist socialism. Lots of ifs presented here that we will never know, history is what it is. I guess my point is that war and conflict are the norm through the history of man, we will not create utopia here on this earth because of the nature of man. In many ways I wish we had dealt earlier with the crap storm we are now in and confronted it on our terms, but now is the time.

War with Japan could easily have been avoided, if that was President Roosevelt's intention.

I can't agree with this statement either. The best case scenario would have only made the war start later.

Taking the Neville Chamberlain approach would have only emboldened the Japanese towards their next conquest. Likely if they wanted to avoid immediate war with the United States it would have been by joining their Axis partner by attacking the British. This would mean an attack on Singapore.

With Singapore gone, it would have opened the doors to the Dutch East Indies.

Eventually, the United States would have had to respond to this expansionism and the only way to stop it would have been war.

I think the prospect of Japan ever joining the Germans in an attack on the Soviets was never a realistic prospect. If it was they probably would have done so from the moment they reaffirmed the Tripartite Pact. I think the battle of Nomonhan really set the stage for that and Japan (and the Kwantung Army) wanted no part in fighting Soviet Siberian Divisions.