How U.S. Economic Warfare Provoked Japan's Attack on Pearl Harbor | Robert Higgs

The Arthur M. Krolman lecture, presented at the 2012 Mises Institute Supporters Summit: "The Truth About War: A Revisionist Approach". Recorded at Callaway Gardens, Georgia, on 27 October 2012.

Music by Kevin MacLeod.

[bandwagon]

That Roosevelt and his chieftains did not ring the tocsin makes perfect sense: after all, the impending attack constituted precisely what they had been seeking for a long time. As Stimson confided to his diary after a meeting of the War Cabinet on November 25, "The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves." After the attack, Stimson confessed that "my first feeling was of relief . . . that a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people."

[GooglyEyedJoe]

I love how many Americans here are going "What? America start a war? Impossible!" if you people believe America is a "saint" and that your country has done no wrong you seriously need to read up on real history.

[KittieGeorge]

1) The US started first such war conducts as volunteer soldier dispatch and embargo which are regarded as war.
2) There was 3 way battle in China, Manchurian whom Japan was supporting, ROC and Communist whom the US was supporting. The wife of the Pres of ROC was born in NY and her lobby was successful.
3) Roman Pope said, "Japan was fighting against communism and so the US should leave them."
4) American strategy, 'The enemy of our enemy is our friend', always bears monster such as USSR against Germany, China against Japan, Hussein against Iran and Bin-Ladin against USSR.
5) The Chinese began telling, "Nanking massacre was done by ROC soldiers." Justification of A-bomb would disappear near future.

[trangaroo]

The history should be honest then. Right now popular history is basically a fairy tale.

[wittgensteinedface]

“Economic warfare” was like a jail without foods for Japanese people living in isolated islands on pacific.

First of all, before talking over Pearl Harbor, we have to realize the reason why Flying Tigers cooperated with Chiang Kai Shek's airforce, who wasn't liberator for Chinese but just a rival against Mao.
It was no doubt about that the United States didn't fight for the liberation of China.

[aoklkonaka]

Before the Japanese-Chinese War, China had a “Shanghai International Settlement”.
It was an area where Westerners and Japanese lived, protecting the Jews who escaped the persecution of Nazi Germany. The Japanese army was mainly defending the land, Westerners benefited from it, and Chinese targeted the Japanese as a grudge. The Japanese-Chinese War was started because of repeated Chinese terrorism against this land. What the United States and Britain did at this time was to help China, not Japan.
They wanted more profits than repayments.The United States attempted not only financial support but also direct military support. If you want to know more about "Flying Tigers", check this out.


Finally, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

[MGsven]

seeing lectures like this make me happy to learn, but sad since they show me how much i was lied to in school
haha

[しょーちゅーこーるい]

At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference after WW1, Japan submitted a bill to eliminate racism, but that was crushed by Chairman US President Woodrow Wilson. For Japan, WW2 was aimed at “releasing the colony of the white nation”, but that is not the history that the victorious nation recognizes.

If you are interested in different aspects of WW2, please add this book to your reading list.
[Race War !: White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire 2006/3/1 Gerald Horne]

[goma]

It is not well known that the Soviets led both countries to war.
Since the birth of the Soviet Union, many members of the League of Nations have been stationed in northern China since around 1910 to guard and watching them.
They gradually returned to them countries, but Japan fearing repeated Soviet invasions south, continued to be stationed to defend itself.
And it was only a obstacle of them invasions to south.
by that reason, The Soviets were sending spies to Japan and the United States.
In Japan, that spies used newspaper reporters to incite masses to invade Southeast Asia, a colony of European countries. This spy was executed by Japan, but he has become the hero of the country as a Soviet hero.
Also in the United States those spies operate in the White House, making strict requirements that Japan rejects.
The United States has imposed sanctions on Japan on the issue that Japan will not withdraw from northern China,
however that reason It was a not well known that the demands of USA on Japan, and was to return to Japan after abandoning those tanks & other military weapons.
The request was something Japan definitely refuse.
And that was made by Soviet spies operating in the White House, were send to Japan without US Congress approval.
The result was a Pearl Harbor attack.
which allowed the Soviets to focus on the German war by that.
They were revealed in a postwar US national Soviets spies research project.

[freddietz]

This is an excellent lecture. I read it online while watching the 1970 version of “Tora! Tora! Tora!”. There are some details I’d like to add; should anyone desire to question/comment on any of these they are certainly free to respond to my post.

Everything about our battles against Hitler in WWII boils down to 2 things: banking and oil. Our Anglo-aristocratic leaders wanted to reinstall the BIS bankers in Germany so they could go back to bilking Germany of WWI reparations (if not also puppetting a major developed country); meanwhile, Hitler wanted to establish German control over the oil fields of the Ural-Volga and the Mideast. The BIS bankers had no interest in Japan at the time—which had only recently pulled itself out of an agrarian lifestyle—however, every big businessman in the west was eyeballing China, as that nation had yet to turn communist, and still had considerable potential for western investment. Therefore, we were going to use Japan—which was China’s historic enemy—as a springboard for warring against Germany. 

The reason it was likely to work (and did) is also twofold. First, in 1939, imperialistic Japan (“Empire of Japan”) had taken it upon itself to push into Siberia through Manchuria, incurring the wrath of Stalin (who was barely able to repel their advance). Secondly, in the summer of 1941, Hitler broke his own treaty with the brutish Stalin and invaded the USSR. Had Hitler done this a little more tactfully he could have immediately won the support of the western Russians to his side—ethnic Slavs who had already grown sick of Stalin’s political purges. Hitler could have then recruited the Slavs in his war against Britain, putting that nation entirely under his control. Instead, Hitler and his fellow Nazis stuck to their racial supremacy, mistreating and murdering the ethnic Slavs on their way to Moscow. In Russia, he turned his would-be Slavic recruits into his newfound enemies; however, because he diverted the Soviet army away from the Japanese front, the Japanese now considered Hitler their ally.

Such is how our American leadership could now argue, “Imperialistic Japan, an ally of Hitler, attacked one of our Pacific outposts—therefore, we are going to war against Germany”. All that remained to be done was to goad Japan into attacking one of our outposts—the method of which Robert Higgs effectively answers in this 2012 lecture. 

To me, the whole thing is sickening. It’s sickening the way the politicians, international bankers, aristocrats and big businessmen concertedly pushed this population-destroying conflict into existence, and just as sickening to consider the unthinking masses in each respective nation who themselves were fevered with hatred and loveless materialism. Once you start to look at it that way, “The Good War” seems like a very ugly canker on human history (one that ended with a nuclear attack, no less).

Incidentally, the term “The Good War” comes from an eponymous book by longtime American historian Studs Terkel. In spite of naming it such, Terkel (who died in 2008) was not a promoter of wars; the title “The Good War” appears in quotations on the book’s cover. Following 9/11 Terkel likened the war on terror to the Salem, Massachusetts “war on witchcraft”, then declared America to be suffering from a national Alzheimer’s disease in which its citizens forget everything. Nonetheless, our corporate media—which does everything possible to support the war on terror—frequently coins the the phrase “The Good War”, omitting the fact WWII has never been promoted as “good” by Terkel or any of his contemporaries.

And let me also say this. In spite of WWII basically being a war over “money creation” and “energy creation”, should you ask Americans today what they know of either money creation or energy creation, they are likely to say, “We know only what our leaders tell us.” And should you then ask if any of these leaders—Democrats or Republicans—have proposed any alternatives to our current money creation system (the US Federal Reserve), or to our primary means of mechanical energy (oil), they will probably say “no”. Again, yet another generation of Americans find themselves strangely synonymous with the Tennyson poem, “Theirs is not to reason why, theirs is but to do or die.” 

[MGsven]

how many wars did the germans and japanese start after ww2, ok 0, and how many did the usa start? haha, good luck counting bro

[iDYPilms]

That explains why the Carriers weren't at Pearl Harbor at the time of the attack. US knew of the attack so they used the old and out dated battle ships as bait coz they know that the Carriers are the new Naval powers thats why they saved it. I know coz I saw it in the movie MIDWAY.

[danpeitange]

At the Yalta Conference, US/UK encouraged Soviet Union to invade and occupy Manchuria. Why did US/UK allow Soviet Union to do what is intolerable for Japan?

[danpeitange]

At 1945 Yalta Conference, US and UK agreed that Stalin’s Soviet Union shall have the exclusive controlling right over Manchuria, encouraged its invasion into Manchukuo in total violation of Nine-Power Treaty of 1922.
Nine-Power Treaty of 1922 was the basis of US accusation of Japan such as Henry Stimson’s non-recognition policy toward Manchukuo and FDR’s Quarantine Speech of 1937.
It is a dastardly double-standard on the part of US and UK that they did not allow for Japan what is allowable for Soviet Union.

[r.williamcomm]

WW2 was about prohibiting rising powers from gaining resources outside their borders in the same methods that the allied nations except for the USSR had undertaken in the previous 100 years while also preparing borders for the upcoming conflict against communism.

[Tasadaru]

I am almost speechless. James Madison was right about the lost of liberties due to war.

[YoshiNishio]

Robert Higgs said "Northern China"? That is wrong. At that time Manchuria was a separate country which was north of the Great Wall of China, just like Mongolia was. Chinese (Han) were not allowed to go to Manchuria, although Manchurians were allowed to come to Beijing. Manchurians invaded and conquered the mainland China and established Chin Dynasty in 1600. The same way British could come to the US, but the Americans could not go to Great Britain.

[michael]

Why did you think the US had to react to Stalin to establish the 38 parallel when the soviets invaded the Japanese army on August 9 after the Nagasaki atomic bomb? Why was Korea important? Because it provided the great opportunities to wars and lots of business profits. The same with NATO forces in Europe. Then the Middle East and finally Vietnam. Then Middle East again. 70 years of war, 70 years of profits.

[dnnable]

Or all the innocent people who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

[PatrickMcCarthy]

Playing the unwashed masses like a fiddle. Amazing how easy it is.