[PEN-L:1663] Re: Re: Very Strange Argument

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

     Well, the usual story that I have heard about the US 
and Japan and oil in WW II is not that the US needed it 
because we had it then.  We were the Saudi Arabia of the 
world at that time, the great Saudi fields only having just 
begun to be developed in 1936.  It was the 1950s when we 
became a net importer.
     Rather the story was that FDR wanted to get into the 
war but knew that he could only do so if it involved a 
conflict with Japan.  Cutting off oil exports to Japan 
would force the Japanese to attack the then-Dutch East 
Indies, now Indonesia, the only source of oil in the 
vicinity of any significance at that time.  FDR figured 
that this would involve an initial attack on the then-US 
colony of the Philippines and that that would trigger US 
entry into the war.  That was indeed the goal that Japan 
pursued, but adopted the strategy of attempting to knock 
out the main US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor in advance of 
doing so, which did not work out as a bunch of it happened 
to be out floating around in the ocean when they hit.
     BTW, over 30 years ago, the late William Appleman 
Williams wrote a book (forget the title now) arguing that 
the US was in Vietnam to secure Southeast Asian tin 
supplies.  That seemed farfetched to me then and still does 
today.  Think general ant-communism had more to do with it.
Barkley Rosser 
On Thu, 17 Dec 1998 14:14:24 -0500 Louis Proyect 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> >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)
> 

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]