>Ummm... The U.S. embargoes exports of oil to Japan (because Japan continues >its campaign to conquer China, and prepares to send its armies north into >Siberia). A Japanese attack on the U.S. is a "logical defensive movement" >in response? > >A very, very strange argument... > > >Brad DeLong ---- To Have and Have Not Southeast Asian Raw Materials and the Origins of the Pacific War by Jonathan Marshall University of California Press, 1995 "An outstanding contribution to understanding the road to World War II in the Far East . . . an excellent historical narrative, with enough interesting detail to move even the strongest skeptic." --Laurence H. Shoup, author of The Carter Presidency and Beyond "Marshall deftly argues that the decisive turn in U.S. policy toward war with Japan came because Japan pressed upon raw materials vital to America. .. . . This work will be the definitive study of materials policy and the coming of the war." --Bruce Cumings, Northwestern University "Marshall moves the oil and mineral resources of Southeast Asia to the center stage. . . Both specialists and general readers will be very interested in the book's argument." --Leonard Liggio, George Mason University Jonathan Marshall makes a provocative statement: it was not ideological or national security considerations that led the United States into war with Japan in 1941. Instead, he argues, it was a struggle for access to Southeast Asia's vast storehouse of commodities--rubber, oil, and tin--that drew the U.S. into the conflict. Boldly departing from conventional wisdom, Marshall reexamines the political landscape of the time and recreates the mounting tension and fear that gripped U.S. officials in the months before the war. Unusual in its extensive use of previously ignored documents and studies, this work records the dilemmas of the Roosevelt administration: it initially hoped to avoid conflict with Japan and, after many diplomatic overtures, it came to see war as inevitable. Marshall also explores the ways that international conflicts often stem from rivalries over land, food, energy, and industry. His insights into "resource war," the competition for essential commodities, will shed new light on U.S. involvement in other conflicts--notably in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. Jonathan Marshall is the economics editor for the San Francisco Chronicle and coauthor (with Peter Dale Scott) of Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (California, 1991). | Published: JANUARY 1995 | 296 pages, 6 x 9" | Subject: HISTORY | Rights: World | ISBN (cloth): 0-520-08823-9 | Buy Book: $32.50 Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
