The idea is so staggeringly idiotic that it’s hard for me to believe it was serious.
For one, Japan did not attack the United States at Pearl Harbor. They attacked the USA throughout the Pacific Ocean. They invaded the Philippines and engaged the USA in a major land war, attacked various other bases, and would presumably have continued doing so. The USA did not choose to engage in a war, they were IN a war.
A policy of not engaging Japan in a war isn’t even a coherent train of thought as of December 8, 1941, because Japanese troops are actively engaging and fighting American troops in a number of places. Pearl Harbor was a fraction of what was going on.
They attacked PH, and then attacked US possessions in the Pacific ocean. Total war was the best response because total war gives us the best chance to win. Without an overwhelming victory, further attacks (especially on possessions and allies in the Pacific ocean) may continue ad nauseam.
And so Mueller’s argument is . . . that we should have been so stunned? Nope, can’t reward their gamble that way. To the extent that the Japanese began a war from the air at Pearl Harbor, they must be repaid manyfold: by harnessing the basic power of the universe, and loosing it against those who brought war to the Far East.
FDR would have been impeached if he didn’t seek a declaration of war. It was politically impossible not to fight this war. If someone declares war on you and attacks you, you have to go to war against them.
And by asking that question he would, again, show he doesn’t actually know much about this subject and shouldn’t be writing papers on something he’s clueless on. The short answer is that trade is vital to the US, that the region was and is strategically vital to our interests, that a Japanese empire that encompassed China, South East Asia and the entire Pacific rim would be an existential threat to the US, and that no country that wanted to be taken seriously could allow the Japanese to do all of that AND to have attacked our fleet and our troops throughout the region as well as attacked our allies.
Yes, because there’s no reason to assume Japan would have stopped with only those possessions, and if we don’t respond with overwhelming force to invasions of our overseas possessions, then it won’t be long before we have no overseas possessions.
If we don’t make war hurt for those who make war, then they will continue to make war.
AFAICT, Mueller’s point is that, if Japan had known how we’d respond, they wouldn’t have attacked us in the first place. If we’d done a better job of communicating our policy beforehand – we will hit back so hard as to turn your cities to glass – we wouldn’t have lost all those lives and all that money to begin with; we may as well pay the price to communicate it afterwards, because who knows what attacks will come our way next if we don’t?
I see that Professor Mueller has also written a book which appears to have as its thesis, “Nuclear weapons: what’s all the fuss about? They’re way overrated.”
For someone who claims to be one of the top international relations academics in the country, he has some pretty stupid ideas.
ETA: I should not have said stupid. His ideas belong in academia and nowhere else, especially not in government.
Yeah, all those correlations of forces showing that Japan was in much worse shape to fight a war than the United States? And the conclusion to that is–we shouldn’t have fought a war with them? Or maybe the answer was, they’re screwed, and while they may land a few blows on us in the meantime, the outcome of the war is already decided: the United States will win decisively.
Like the Sun Tsu saying: “Defeated warriors go to war and then hope to win. Victorious warriors win first and then go to war.”
The day after Pearl Harbor we already had all the ingredients for victory over Japan, it was just a matter of time and effort.
His argument is that the Japanese empire–under sustained pressure from the US oil embargo, further sanctions and harassment by the US and other Western countries, and resistance by conquered peoples–was inherently unstable and would not have withstood a policy of containment.
Again, Mueller is not arguing for doing nothing. He’s arguing for measures that fall short of the most maximally aggressive response imaginable, which is the route the US pursued.
Also, what do you mean by “existential threat?” I don’t believe the Japanese ever had the intention or the ability to pull off an amphibious invasion of the United States.
