dexter
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Admiral Yamamoto: "In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success."
Why did Japan decide to fight the United States? This video traces the progress of Japanese grand strategy from the end of WWI to the beginning of WWII. The key strategic question Japan sought to address during this period was the challenge of total war - how to militarily survive in a world dominated by industrial behemoths. From internationalism to traditionalism to totalism, from the Manchurian Incident to the US oil embargo, Japanese strategymakers attempted to find solutions amid a deteriorating international environment, ultimately resulting in Pearl Harbor.
I should add that while it's not the point of this video to bring this up, Japan's totalist strategy did/would have created tremendous regional suffering. Apart from the totalitarian control, exploitation and racism, totalists also argued that one way that Japan could achieve victory with a smaller economy was through chemical and, most notoriously, biological weapons.
