'Decadence' and Misperception in International Politics

It’s not true that the Japanese government “couldn’t believe” that the U.S. would fight.

Janan Ganesh has written an odd column about the willingness of Western nations to wage war:

How much carnage has this misperception of the west triggered? The Empire of Japan couldn’t believe the hermit republic that America then was would send armed multitudes 5,000 miles away in response to one day of infamy. (And, remember, never leave.) The Kaiser in 1914 and Saddam Hussein in 1990 made similar assessments of the liberal temper. It is not out of vanity or machismo that the west should insist on recognition of its fighting spunk, then. It is to avert the fighting.

Ganesh’s story might be interesting if it were true, but in important respects it is not. It’s not true that the Japanese government “couldn’t believe” that the U.S. would fight in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines. It was taken for granted that attacking U.S. territories would provoke a massive American response, but the Japanese leadership had convinced themselves that it was necessary for them to continue their war effort in Asia. Because they were desperate for resources to continue their war in China and Southeast Asia, they escalated disastrously.

The biggest miscalculation was arguably on the American side, as many supporters of the embargo never imagined that waging economic war on Japan would lead to such escalation. The sanctions were supposed to be intended to discourage further Japanese attacks, but instead created the conditions that led to more of them and a widening of the war. The Japanese attacks on U.S. territories did not come from believing in a “myth of Western decadence,” but came as a direct result of U.S. and other Western governments’ punitive measures in response to earlier Japanese aggression. They never believed the “myth” that Ganesh sets out to debunk.