How should the United States have responded to Pearl Harbor?

[XT]

[QUOTE=Ravenman]
I would love to hear someone offer a better explanation for the Professor’s weakest argument: that the U.S. entry into the war somehow led to Mao taking over China. He strongly implies that if we had opted for containment, Mao wouldn’t have murdered all those people. Which, to me, sounds like arguing that if Teddy Roosevelt hadn’t built the Panama Canal, Castro wouldn’t have taken all that American property in Cuba.
[/QUOTE]

Plus, if Mao hadn’t killed them then the Japanese probably would have, as they seemed to have no reservations about killing Chinese in job lots (or performing ‘medical experiments’ on them a la the Nazis with the Jews). This sort of revisionist history that this guy is doing really underscores how little he seemingly knows about the actual history of the region before, during and after the war.

Personally, I think those are pretty compelling interests all around.

Pretty much, yes. From every angle there just doesn’t seem to be a compelling reason for the US to have basically surrendered after Pearl Harbor, since this is what we are really talking about. Ok, so we lost 350K+ men and women during the war, and yes, that’s a lot (though minor compared to the losses of most of the other major combatants), but I don’t see any way for that not to have happened and for the results to be superior in our own terms (which is I guess what the OP and professor dude are getting at…what’s in it for America I guess, why should we have fought and died, etc etc). We would have been in a much less favorable position all around, we would have been seen as a weak nation that can be picked on and exploited at will and one that wouldn’t stand up for ourselves and that any show of force would get an automatic surrender, it would have been a further body blow to the economy and one we probably wouldn’t have recovered from (which means we wouldn’t have been able to build back up our military, since basically no one would have been on board with the economic sacrifices we did, especially not if FDR and the Congress had actually done this…something fantasy in itself), and we’d have basically allowed the Japanese to brutally take over the entire region and given them carte blanche to do so (including most likely New Zealand and Australia).

The only upside I see is we wouldn’t have had 350k people die, though I’m not seeing this as a guarantee that they wouldn’t have died sooner or later down the road (and I see a LOT more death for Chinese, other Asians, Australians and NZers, etc etc). I guess they don’t count though in the larger scheme of what’s in it for America, but I think even from that very narrow view there aren’t a lot of upsides for us.

[Donald_Rump]

@XT

Ok, but the Soviet Union lasted for over 70 years. If those are the time tables we are looking at then why do anything at all? I mean, eventually, every country will fall, so if you want to take the long view there is no point in ever doing anything…just sit back and wait for whichever country is threatening you or taking your stuff to fail then, um, something.

Well, I don’t think Mueller is saying that you never do anything to any country that threatens you–any more than you’re saying that every time two countries have conflicting interests, they should wage war to the point of annihilation and unconditional surrender by one to the other.

Mueller is saying it might not have been the end of the world, actually (for the US, anyway) if we had waited for time to do its work on the Japanese imperial project. In making that claim, he places a high degree of likelihood on the Japanese failing (and much faster than 70 years) for endogenous reasons, AND he places a very high premium evidently on any expenditure of American blood and treasure. He also applies a very high premium to what he perceives to be unintended consequences of action, as implied by his suggestion that removing the Japanese from China invited a Communist victory in that country.

My guess is that if we were describing a country threatening outright invasion (say, Germany from the perspective of France), Mueller would be all in favor of fighting back as fiercely as possible. But I don’t know this.

In short, he has a higher bar than you do for what constitutes a vital national interest. Perhaps a preposterously high one. It’s safe to say he’s something of a pacifist. I think that Mueller’s response to your points regarding our trading interests (which are well-taken, btw) would be that he wouldn’t want his son dying face down in the muck in some far-off place to secure America’s rubber supply. Clearly, his whole argument presupposes that the US did *not *urgently have to safeguard those interests at all costs. If you think that statement is wrong, his argument is obviously a non-starter.

[Malden_Capell]

Although, I can kind of see what the Professor is saying. Churchill himself argued similarly with regard to Nazi Germany, that they were permitted to commit historical outrages and destroy Europe because France and Britain were incapable of making it quite clear that they would only accept changes to the status quo which respected the rights of smaller nations. Churchill always felt that the Second World War should be known as the Unnecessary War, as if the British and French, and perhaps the Italians, had acted more resolutely in 1936, 1937 or 1938, war could have been averted, or at least would have dropped significantly in scale.

I can’t see that working in the Pacific, though, as Japan was already merrily tearing chunks out of China since 1931.

[Donald_Rump]

@Ravenman

I’m thinking quite hard to think of another historical example of a country’s major interests being under either a sudden surprise attack, or under prolonged occupation with significant atrocities (see for example the Rape of Nanking, to say nothing of those learned about later) without resorting to an armed defense of those interests. Can you think of examples?

I cannot think of examples, but Mueller’s position is that more countries ought to behave with such restraint (not always, but more often than they do). Bear in mind that the common theme in a lot of Mueller’s work (from what I can tell from his CV) is that countries more often than not overreact to national security threats. (The only book of his I’ve actually read is Overblown, which deals with terrorism but also touches on some historical episodes including Pearl Harbor.) I think that the general principle has lots of support in episodes like Vietnam, Iraq, and (IMHO) the current tensions with Iran.

Lest you start to think that Donald Rump is Mueller, speaking of himself in the third person, I’ll say here that what this thread is demonstrating quite forcefully is that to a man with a hammer everything can start to look like a nail. Applying his aversion against national overreactions to the war against Japan, Mueller may be on pretty shaky ground. That, or any real policy of “containment” would end up looking pretty close to what the US actually did (maybe short of insisting on unconditional surrender). I think you guys have made compelling arguments that as much as US casualties sucked, a more restrained response to Japanese aggression could have made matters much worse and that Mueller’s recommended policy might not have worked anyway, even if–big if–it had been politically viable.

So what, you say? I think civilized countries have a reasonable duty to counter naked aggression.

I’m sympathetic to that point of view. But if I ask myself honestly if I would like to die or send my son to die horribly mainly on behalf of other people’s national security–for example, to fight ISIS today–I must answer in the negative. It’s a tougher question to ask personally and prospectively than impersonally and retrospectively.

I would love to hear someone offer a better explanation for the Professor’s weakest argument: that the U.S. entry into the war somehow led to Mao taking over China. He strongly implies that if we had opted for containment, Mao wouldn’t have murdered all those people. Which, to me, sounds like arguing that if Teddy Roosevelt hadn’t built the Panama Canal, Castro wouldn’t have taken all that American property in Cuba.

He doesn’t elaborate on this in his paper. His idea seems to be that as long as the Communists were fighting the Japanese they weren’t taking over China. I don’t know if there’s a deeper argument than that, and how historically sensible that assessment is.

[Alessan]

I don’t see how the invasion of China was doomed to fail, anyway. It’s not as if the Chinese had never been conquered before; in fact, its latest foreign occupiers, the Manchus, had only been driven out a few decades earlier. The Chinese weren’t the Russians, they had no Russian winter, and by the end of 1941 they were losing. The Japanese not having to divert resources to face the U.S. would have made their position even more precarious.

Besides, China wasn’t even a unified country - its two major armies hated each other almost as much as they hated the Japanese. Without the promise of American support, I’d say there was a good chance that Chiang Kai-Sheck would have cut a deal with the Empire, and then joined up with them to take the Communists out.

[marshmallow]

I’m not sure if Cold War containment against the Soviets was such a stellar success it can be used as an analogy for why it’d be good to use against imperial Japan vs. what actually happened. Even ignoring the chance of nuclear war (a factor not relevant to Japanese containment, at least for awhile) you got millions dead from famine and proxy wars, trillions spent on defense, and decades of lost productivity across dozens of countries from inefficient economic models. Do those factors translate in the analogy?

He points out how desperate the Japanese were and advises economic war, but said economic war is what helped make them so aggressive in the first place. America wasn’t exactly trying to make peace.

This thread is focused on the most efficient military strategy for taking out Japan, but to me speaking of what America should have done brings to mind morality. For me that brings to mind radical anti-war notions like pacifism, or at least isolationism. In which case the answer would be to jettison imperial interests in Asia (a good idea anyway) and prepare for a defensive war. That means if Japan attacks again America should defend its territory, but it doesn’t mean flying thousands of miles away and firebombing Japanese cities. That’s aggressive war. The millions of Japanese dead were wildly out of proportion to their attacks on the U.S. Japan and China were great powers and East Asia was their sphere of influence. Let them hash it out.

[mlees]

To sum up:

• The attack on Pearl Harbor was an incredibly lucky and well-landed blow by the Japanese, but not a harbinger of invasion of the United States. The US was unprepared for Pearl Harbor per se but exceeded Japan in overall industrial capability by almost comical proportions, and the Japanese posed virtually no threat to the US homeland.

Is it the professor’s opinion that the US should only wage war against an opponent that actually stands a chance of seriously damaging or occupying the Continental U.S.?

It seems that the “proof” that Japan was NOT a threat was: The Pearl Harbor attack showed that that was the best Japan could do, and that “best” did not win them the war.

Must such an opponent be allowed to demonstrate it’s ability to more seriously damage the US homeland in order to prove that it is actually a threat? If not, how are such threats to be measured?
It seems to me that the USN losing the core of it’s Pacific Fleet battle-line (for decades, the battleship was the yard stick used to measure both Naval might, as well as technical/engineering prowess) might just come close to being such a tool to measure threat.

Lastly, does Japan (or any other potential opponent) have any say in whether a state of war exists between them, and the US? After all, they seemed to shoot at anything flying Old Glory on sight.

• Japan was in fairly desperate straits at the time of the attack, a situation that only worsened thereafter

Which only proves, IMO, that Japan overestimated it’s chances of winning a war. It does NOT prove that full war footing on the part of the U.S. was not necessary.

• The end of the Japanese empire could have been brought about at much lower cost to the United States through a more patient policy of aggressive containment.

Could you describe, as best you can, what the professor means/envisions by “aggressive containment”?

How does he calculate costs? Is he only considering American lives & dollars?

• Had such a policy failed, it’s not clear that Asia in general, and China in particular, would have been much worse off than they were in the actual postwar 20th century

I have a hunch more Chinese, Filipinos, Malaysians, Koreans, etc., might have died under Japanese occupation. But I have no proof.

• In any event, it is questionable whether the US gains in the region merited the enormous loss of life and treasure on our side

The US cannot defeat the world all on it’s own, whether we are talking about military operations, or economic ones. It needs allies, if it wants to achieve various goals beyond it’s own borders. To groom allies, they have to know that we will support them when the stuff hits the fan, whether it’s disaster relief, or man made disasters (which war can be classified as ). How many American lives does the professor feel is worth defending France against the Nazis? (Or Australia v. Japan.) Zero? More? How much is too much?

(to say nothing of the collateral damage to the region and to the Japanese people)

I don’t wish to defend the policy of mass bombing civilian targets, if that is what you mean by that statement. It seems to me that there were both political (hence subjective) reasons, as well as technical ones, that eventually lead to such actions. I can somewhat understand how they came about, but the whole thing is beyond tragic, and I wish we were a better species.

[XT]

[QUOTE=marshmallow]
This thread is focused on the most efficient military strategy for taking out Japan, but to me speaking of what America should have done brings to mind morality. For me that brings to mind radical anti-war notions like pacifism, or at least isolationism. In which case the answer would be to jettison imperial interests in Asia (a good idea anyway) and prepare for a defensive war. That means if Japan attacks again America should defend its territory, but it doesn’t mean flying thousands of miles away and firebombing Japanese cities. That’s aggressive war. The millions of Japanese dead were wildly out of proportion to their attacks on the U.S. Japan and China were great powers and East Asia was their sphere of influence. Let them hash it out.
[/QUOTE]

You don’t mind that millions of Chinese died at the hands of the Japanese?? Are Japanese and American lives worth more that millions of dead Chinese make it ‘wildly out of proportion’??? Firebombing Japanese cities is unacceptable but firebombing Chinese cities, which happened as well, was ok?

As to your thoughts on defensive war and only retaliating if we were attacked, well…that’s kind of what happened, unless you want to say that Hawaii wasn’t part of the US or that the US troops attacked in the PI or other places don’t count for some reason. This leaves aside whether America and Americans would be willing to make the same levels of sacrifice they actually did in a purely defensive war where we basically surrendered the Pacific and our allies there to the Japanese…something I highly doubt would happen in this reality.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@marshmallow

That means if Japan attacks again America should defend its territory, but it doesn’t mean flying thousands of miles away and firebombing Japanese cities. That’s aggressive war.

That’s what Japan did: flyers traveled thousands of miles to firebomb Americans in an act of aggressive war. America responded accordingly.

The millions of Japanese dead were wildly out of proportion to their attacks on the U.S.

The American deaths at Pearl Harbor: a wildly-out-of-proportion response to…?

[Donald_Rump]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

That’s what Japan did: flyers traveled thousands of miles to firebomb Americans in an act of aggressive war. America responded accordingly.

The American deaths at Pearl Harbor: a wildly-out-of-proportion response to…?

The professor’s argument is that an armed response to Japan’s attack was not necessary to prevent further attacks on US soil. Pearl Harbor would have been impossible without the element of surprise. His premise may be wrong, but he thinks the Japanese had essentially one shot at hitting US soil, they used it well, but the direct threat to the homeland ended there. That’s why he can advocate a restrained response.

His take is: to avenge 2,400 deaths, we sacrificed 100,000 more, which only hastened what might well have been the eventual outcome for Japan and safeguarded US interests in the Pacific that we could have gotten along without.

[buddy431]

I don’t dismiss it out of hand as some of you do. The U.S. could have, while still being “at war”, taken a much less aggressive stance towards the Japanese than they did. Yeah, they would have lost many of their possessions in the Pacific (though not likely Hawaii). They could have not built planes and ships that were required to take back their possessions in the Pacific. The U.S. could have let the Japanese have Midway and the Solomon islands unopposed. If they wanted to engage in merchant traffic through the Pacific (which they wouldn’t necessarily want to), they could convoy their ships, just as they did across the Atlantic even before war was declared on Germany.

Would it have been worth it? It’s hard to say. It seems risky: what if the Japanese do take most of China? What if they take India? That’s a lot of resources. Seems unlikely, but there is a risk there.

[XT]

[QUOTE=Donald Rump]
His take is: to avenge 2,400 deaths, we sacrificed 100,000 more, which only hastened what might well have been the eventual outcome for Japan and safeguarded US interests in the Pacific that we could have gotten along without.
[/QUOTE]

Well, except leaving aside the fact that he doesn’t have a time machine or alternative universe simulator (and, based on what you’ve said doesn’t seem qualified to even speculate on this stuff coherently), his math would be off. Many more Americans died in the Philippine’s (over 5000 IIRC, and like 20,000 Philippine soldiers and well over a hundred thousand civilians). I know you are going to say that somehow these guys don’t count because they weren’t on US soil, but they were still Americans and our allies and they still died. And Americans and our allies were dying in other places at the same time. This was a Japanese full court press, as another poster up thread noted.

The professor’s argument is that an armed response to Japan’s attack was not necessary to prevent further attacks on US soil. Pearl Harbor would have been impossible without the element of surprise. His premise may be wrong, but he thinks the Japanese had essentially one shot at hitting US soil, they used it well, but the direct threat to the homeland ended there. That’s why he can advocate a restrained response.

Ok, but since you are speaking for him can you explain why this would have prevented future attacks? I get that we should have just surrendered, but why would the Japanese accept that? What if the price for our surrender was to give up Hawaii or other US possessions in the Pacific?

Certainly the Japanese as they were in December of 1941 weren’t able to invade the main land US. But they could and did cripple our trade in the region and I don’t see how that would change if we’d have taken the non-violent approach…all I see that doing is simultaneously encouraging the Japanese to push for more AND demoralizing the US citizenry and crippling our economy, not just in the short term which actually happened but in the medium and maybe even long term. And I don’t see where the big pay off is from our point of view. Ok, so we don’t lose 100’s of thousands of soldiers, but instead only 10’s of thousands killed or captured (and subsequently killed anyway through various means). For that we basically give the Japanese a free hand in the Pacific and in Asia, betray many allies, condemn many more people to a nasty death at the hands of the Japanese, stifle our economy and trade and basically swallow someone attacking us while doing little to nothing in return and essentially show how weak we are for future nations (probably Japan first of all) to do what they want with us. What am I missing here for the up side for us as a nation??

[silenus]

@Donald_Rump

The professor’s argument is that an armed response to Japan’s attack was not necessary to prevent further attacks on US soil. Pearl Harbor would have been impossible without the element of surprise. His premise may be wrong, but he thinks the Japanese had essentially one shot at hitting US soil, they used it well, but the direct threat to the homeland ended there. That’s why he can advocate a restrained response.

His take is: to avenge 2,400 deaths, we sacrificed 100,000 more, which only hastened what might well have been the eventual outcome for Japan and safeguarded US interests in the Pacific that we could have gotten along without.

Which is, IMO, total and complete bullshit. Restrained response my ass. The “Chicago Way” is the only way to deal with naked aggression. They had more than one shot and they took all of them. The Philippines were a US protectorate and they conquered them completely. They continued to attack US allies, territories and interests. The only way to respond to such actions is with total war, pursued to the hilt. Halsey had the right idea, not some professor pontificating from 70 years in the future.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@Donald_Rump

The professor’s argument is that an armed response to Japan’s attack was not necessary to prevent further attacks on US soil.

And my argument is that, if we had communicated that we’d hit back with an armed response for the ages, they wouldn’t have launched that attack on US soil.

We apparently failed to make that clear before Pearl Harbor, so we made damn sure to make it clear after Pearl Harbor – to dissuade further attacks, by any and all, by advertising our catchy slogan: “If you launch a war on us by killing Americans, we will sink your ships and shoot down your planes and set fire to your cities and try new weapons the like of which the world has never seen; if you think we’re bluffing, if you’re doing a balance-of-power-is-irrelevant-without-balance-of-threat calculation or whatever, please understand that you’re making the tragic mistake of holding a gun to your own temple and slowly pulling the trigger.”

[Lemmytheseal2]

@XT

You misunderstand. The Japan in our universe, the one we all live in never had the chance to become that sort of threat, and never had the ability to invade the US. Neither did Germany. A Japan allowed to run rampant through the region and snap up the territories they were targeting, as well as one that, having those resources could expand further (also part of the Japanese overall and long term strategy) into, say, India and all of Asia, WOULD be such a threat to the US. You don’t need to invade the US to pose an existential threat btw…cutting off our trade would be a serious blow.

I’m not necessarily agreeing with the hypothesis, and I haven’t read the entire thread, but remember that expansion and empire make a country weaker, not stronger.

@Scumpup

Murderous regimes have to be beaten down hard into the dirt and the society rebuilt in a more acceptable form. This is what happened, with great success, in our dealings with Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. The Cold War collapsed the USSR, but there was no enforced restructuring, with the result that Russia is still an aggressive, authoritarian nation that is ready to get up to their old tricks the moment they feel strong. When have Japan or Germany invaded anybody since 1945?

Russia is not particularly aggressive, and while certainly authoritarian, it is far less so than numerous US allies and clients. Moscow has responded quite understandably to US-backed subversive movements in neighboring countries, such as the reactionaries installed in Kiev. How would the US government (and public) respond to such events happening in Canada or Mexico?

@Donald_Rump

The US suffered 350,000 casualties in the Pacific theater and, had it not been for the A-bomb, presumably would have been prepared to suffer hundreds of thousands more, perhaps millions. So I think the US interests at stake deserve to be spelled out with some precision.

That’s the myth we’re fed to justify the use of nuclear weapons. It’s not really true, though that doesn’t invalidate the rest of what you’re saying.

[XT]

[QUOTE=Lemmytheseal2]
I’m not necessarily agreeing with the hypothesis, and I haven’t read the entire thread, but remember that expansion and empire make a country weaker, not stronger.
[/QUOTE]

Right, just ask the British, the French and the Romans!

That’s the myth we’re fed to justify the use of nuclear weapons. It’s not really true, though that doesn’t invalidate the rest of what you’re saying.

Perhaps you are the professor in disguise.

[Lemmytheseal2]

@XT

Right, just ask the British, the French and the Romans!

I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic. A British economist named Hobson published a book called Imperialism, written and researched while the Empire was at its height, in which he demonstrated how empires create a net loss for those who hold them (or, to be precise, those who are tasked with paying for and defending them). He was right, along with the rest of the original “Little Englanders.” They were considered gadflies at best, but they ended up being quite correct. It was true for the British and the French, but at least they managed to walk away from their empires before they were dragged down by them. The Portuguese tried to hang on even longer, but their own military got sick of it, came home from Africa, and overthrew the government. The Soviets, in contrast, did get dragged down. The USSR’s influence expanded after the Vietnam War, and they promptly went broke.

The story for the Romans was different, but still similar.

Perhaps you are the professor in disguise.

No, as it happens.

[Zakalwe]

@Lemmytheseal2

Moscow has responded quite understandably to US-backed subversive movements in neighboring countries, such as the reactionaries installed in Kiev.

By invading a neighboring country. Really? By that measure, Hitler was justified in invading Czechoslovakia.

[Donald_Rump]

@XT

Ok, but since you are speaking for him can you explain why this would have prevented future attacks? I get that we should have just surrendered, but why would the Japanese accept that? What if the price for our surrender was to give up Hawaii or other US possessions in the Pacific?

There’s a rather vast middle area in between pursuing Japan’s unconditional surrender on one side and “just surrendering” on the other. The middle area includes building a proper navy that can rival or outmatch Japan’s, defending the shit out of Hawaii, and continuing and intensifying the pre-war US policy of containment along with harassing Japan (sinking ships etc) opportunistically. Yes, the US would have given up some things. But there’s obviously another side of the ledger, namely the resources the US had to expend in order to decisively defeat the Japanese.

As for our possessions in the Pacific, our exchanges keep coming back to a basic question: what was it worth to the US to keep those possessions? I don’t know. Maybe I’m too much a product of the Long Peace, but I cannot think of many causes other than direct threat of invasion that I would deem to be worth hundreds of thousands of casualties, which causes me to emphasize one side of the ledger way more than you do. That may be a gulf between our perspectives that can’t be bridged. I do appreciate your posts on this thread though.

[Lemmytheseal2]

@Zakalwe

By invading a neighboring country. Really? By that measure, Hitler was justified in invading Czechoslovakia.

Not so. The people of Crimea and some other nearby areas are more Russian than they are Ukrainian, and that has become particularly relevant recently, since the government in Kiev was toppled and replaced with a reactionary regime including some fascist elements. Over the past ten years there have been many “color-code” pseudo-revolutions in countries that border Russia, and do you think that Moscow hasn’t noticed all the anti-Russia rhetoric from American Cold Warriors, old and new?

Hitler may have claimed to be acting on behalf of the Sudeten Germans, but that was revealed to be a lie pretty quickly, and it was probably no surprise. There was no other plausible justification. Putin is many things, but he is no Hitler.

How would you expect the US to respond if the shoe was on the other foot?