China as an ancient and highly sophisticated civilization, many Americans viewed it as
a potential Asian America. They saw China as backward and corrupt, and therefore
vulnerable to exploitation by profit-seeking foreigners, although not Americans, of
course. The leading sources of this desire to improve China and save the Chinese were
the thousands of American Christian missionaries who toiled selflessly to bring the
Gospels and American values to what they found to be a medieval society. Of course,
eventually there came to be strategic reasons to oppose Japanese misbehaviour in China,
but behind the strategic rationales was always a profound American belief that
Washington had a unique moral responsibility to protect China from unscrupulous
predators. And by far the most unscrupulous predator in Asia in the 1930s and early
1940s was Imperial Japan.
If the events of 1940 in Europe created a strategic moment for those who wished to
give history a helping push, so those same events had a like consequence in East Asia.
The German victories over France, the Netherlands and soon, perhaps, even Britain
and its empire seemed to transform Japan’s strategic context. Opportunity appeared to
beckon.
The German victory and consequent European ascendancy in 1940 altered Japan’s
strategic situation radically, probably for the better. But Tokyo never forgot that it was
fundamentally isolated politically in its ambitions in East Asia, and that unless it were
careful it might find itself facing a coalition of such combined strength that it would stand
no realistic prospect of strategic success. Although Germany had defeated France and
the Netherlands, and was obliging Britain to focus its strategic effort upon Europe –
though Churchill did boldly reinforce the British garrison in Egypt – Japan’s strategic
situation was still heavily risk-prone in 1940. Notwithstanding the Tripartite Alliance of
27 September with Germany and Italy, Russia and Germany were still allies, Britain
remained undefeated and the United States, though formally neutral, had assumed the
role of coalition leader for those states that were seeking to arrest and reverse the
continuing Japanese effort to achieve dominion over China. One did not need to be an
overly paranoid Japanese leader to worry about the possibility of having to wage war
against an enemy coalition comprising the United States, China, the Soviet Union,
Britain and the Dutch East Indies. Tokyo harboured few illusions about the probable
fidelity of Berlin, should the Germans need to choose between the Soviet Union and their
new ally in Asia.
Domestic politics in Japan and the international diplomacy bearing on the issue of
war in 1940–1 were complex indeed. The Japanese were not of one mind about their
policy options; nor were they united in interpreting the meaning of the dynamic strategic
context in Europe after 22 June 1941, the date of the German invasion of Russia. Amid
the fine detail of policy conferences, proposals and counter-proposals, it is all too easy
to lose sight of the central thread of the plot of strategic history. In particular, it is possible
to be persuaded that since neither Japan nor the United States wanted war, a compro-
mise settlement somehow might have been arranged. Perhaps a concession here, a
compromise there, and the Asia–Pacific War might have been averted. That is not wholly
fanciful, but on balance the evidence does not support it. It is well to remember that
although Japan harboured antagonistic feelings towards the United States, feelings that
had been greatly fuelled by the successful US efforts at Versailles in 1919 and then in
Washington in 1921–2 to confine and limit Japanese power in China, war with the United
164 War, peace and international relations