At 10:36 AM 12/17/98 -0800, Brad de Long wrote: >>I reply (WS): I am not a historian, but was not the Japanese attack on >>Pearl Harbour a response to the US militarism in the region, specifically >>the threat of cutting off the Japanese oil supply lines? A decision to >>destroy the US navy was was a logical defensive movement on the part of >>Japan's military. > >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... What is so strange about it? Imagine an industrialized country with no fuel supply, and facing two imperial powers, proven to use "gunboat diplomacy" in the past and threatening to use their navies again to cut off that country's oil supply lines. The only _logical_ response in that situation is to incapacitate your enemy's navy, no? Otherwise, you may as well turn the lights off and go home to watch your entire industry coming to a halt. That, of course, does not mean it is a morally justified response, but that is an entirely different story. Japan's imperial project is rather difficult to defend on moral grounds, but so are the imperial projects of the European powers or the US. That was the essence of my argument. You can defend each country's position by the logic of imperial expansion, but you cannot defend them on moral grounds as we commonly understand them, unless we assume some sort of tribal mentality of the we-good, them-bad variety. regards Wojtek
