If Japan hadn’t attacked Pearl Harbor we still would have gone to war when they attacked and invaded the Philippines, Guam, and Wake. Japan wanted the Southern Resource Area (Dutch East Indies and Malaya) and was not about to let the US sit aside the East flank of their supply lines.
“If Japan hadn’t attacked Pearl Harbor we still would have gone to war when they attacked and invaded the Philippines, Guam, and Wake.”
I was reading somewhere, and can’t find it again, that DC was ready to give up the Philippines to avoid war with Japan. Maybe just one of the “maybe we can...” conversations going on at the time.
But Japan attacked Pearl and that was it.