FDR would never have allowed that...
His whole strategy for 3-years had been to maneuver the U.S. into the war in support of England
That required an excuse...
One aspect this article leaves out is the effect of American public opinion. Americans did not want a war. Additionally Americans historically were not well inclined towards imperialism and so felt very little sympathy with the colonial powers in SE Asia.
Without PH FDR would’ve then been faced with the prospect of striking the first blow in a Pacific war. Something he most certainly did not want to do.
What if the dog didn’t stop to take a crap. He would have caught the rabbit.
One thing that I always respected FDR for (and the list is one thing long) is hie refusal to answer hypotheticals.
Until science can prove multiple timelines, these types of hypothetical situations are useless. Japan attacked. They attacked Pearl Harbor because that’s where the ships were docked. A first year midshipman could have made that prediction.
The question that should be asked is, “ Where is the next Pearl Harbor?”
Netflix has a good series called the Man in the Hightower where Germany and Japan won WWII and occupied America. It got a little weird as the series went on - something about newsreels and alternative universes - but it was pretty good. The Japs were actually the good guys compared to the Nazis.
Doesn’t matter, because they sunk two British destoryers shortly after.
Yamamoto knew Japan could not defeat the US. However, he calculated that destroying the American Pacific fleet could give Japan a year or possibly two to complete its conquests and set up a defense perimeter in the Pacific. And maybe, just maybe, the US as an isolationist power might make peace allowing Japan to keep most of its conquests. It was their only shot and they took it.
Asking what if they never attacked is pointless. They had to.
They wanted the Pacific as a Japanese lake and that included the west coast of the Americas.
A far more interesting question is what would have happened if Germany had not decided to declare war on the US thereby dragging us into the war in Europe.
Which was someplace that we really did not want to go.
Some alternate histories aren't worth any attention. Japan's WW2 was so nutso that parsing out elements of it are silly.
FDR really had put the Japanese in a hard bind. I am sure much of US policy was in Asia was pressure from the UK that feared for its own possessions on Asia.
Sooner or later the US would have been drawn into the war even if Pearl Harbor had not happened. What Pearl Harbor accomplished was galvanizing the American people into supporting the war and almost immediately killing the large isolationist movement.
I’ll just state the obvious, if things were different, they wouldn’t be the same.
If Granma had balls she’d be Grandpa.
Hitler would have slept better at nite...