sent not involved in the European War or in the
Sino-Japanese Conflict’. That article (three)
pointed to the US. What was the purpose of the
alliance? Both the Japanese and the Germans at
the time hoped it would act as a deterrent against
the US involving itself in a war over Asian issues.
Hitler, furthermore, hoped Japan would attack
Singapore, thus increasing the pressure on Britain
to make peace with Germany or to face even worse
military complications in defence of its empire. In
Tokyo, in all probability without Berlin having
any knowledge of it, the German ambassador in
an additional exchange of notes with Matsuoka
conceded to the Japanese a good deal of flexibility
in the honouring of their obligations to help
Germany militarily if, in fact, the US went to war
with Germany alone and not with Japan.
The existence of the treaty made a deep impres-
sion on Roosevelt, who saw it as confirmation that
all the aggressors in Europe and Asia were linked
in one world conspiracy of aggression. Roosevelt
discovered that this was not, in fact, so when the
Japanese–American confrontation had reached the
point in September 1941 at which war was seen by
the Japanese as the only way out. But the prime
cause of US–Japanese tension was not the
German–Japanese alliance. That lacked all sub-
stance on the Japanese side. Konoe instructed the
Japanese Embassy in Washington in September
1941 to tell the US that if it went to war with
Germany in Europe, Japan would not feel itself
bound to declare war on the US in the Pacific but
that the ‘execution of the Tripartite Pact shall be
independently decided’.
The account of how the US and Japan came
to be engaged in the Pacific War is a twisted and
tangled one. Roosevelt did not want a war in the
Pacific, believing that the defeat of Nazi Germany
should take priority. Hitler urged the Japanese to
strike at the British Empire in Asia, thereby weak-
ening Britain’s capacity to oppose him in Europe
and the Mediterranean. If the Japanese decided
they had to attack the US simultaneously, they
were assured of Germany’s alliance. What the
Japanese wanted was to finish the war in China,
not to have to take on America as well.
In Britain both Chamberlain before May 1940
and Churchill afterwards wished to avoid the
extension of war in the Pacific. In 1940 and 1941
Britain was engaged in fighting in the Medi-
terranean and the Middle East to preserve its
power there. The Dominions of New Zealand and
Australia, moreover, clamoured for adequate
defence in eastern Asia; that defence would best
be served by peace and deterrence. But Churchill
believed that for deterrence to have credibility the
US and Britain would need to form a counterpart
to the Triple Alliance of Japan, Germany and Italy,
so that Japan would realise that its expansion
beyond the limits which Britain and the US were
prepared to accept in south-east Asia would result
in war. Thus both Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s
thinking was based on the theory of deterrence.
The mutual policies of deterrence – of the
Japanese on the one hand, and of the US and
Britain on the other – failed. The US was not
deterred by Japan’s alliance with Germany and
Italy from continuing to play a role as an eastern
Asian power. Indeed, it stepped up its support for
Chiang Kai-shek. Without Nationalist Chinese
resistance, the ever-growing pretensions of Japan’s
co-prosperity sphere would become a reality,
placing Western interests completely at Japan’s
mercy. For Britain, the vital regions were those
bordering on the British Empire in Malaya,
Burma and India. In this way the French colonies
of Indo-China, the Dutch East Indies, independ-
ent Thailand and the American Philippines came
to be seen as the key areas to be defended against
Japan. But the ‘firm’ policy towards Japan even-
tually adopted by the US to impede Japanese
expansion triggered off among Japan’s leaders an
almost fatalistic response that war with the US
and Britain was preferable to the kind of peace, a
return to the Washington peace structure of the
1920s, which the two Western powers sought.
The crux was China. Britain and the US were not
prepared to accept Japanese domination over
China. Roosevelt held to the simple truth that
China was for the Chinese. Furthermore, if the
Japanese were allowed to achieve their aims in
China no Western interests in eastern Asia would
be safe.
The course of US policy from 1940 to 1941
was nevertheless not clear or consistent. It is
sometimes difficult to fathom precisely what was
1
THE CHINA WAR AND THE ORIGINS OF THE PACIFIC WAR, 1937–41 259
