<6. "Let a thousand flowers bloom".....Shower Tojo, Hitler, and Stalin with love.....>
After Pearl Harbor, the only solutions involved killing millions of people. Which my Blueprint would allow (Strict Reciprocity and Self-Defense).
But, as with most problems, prevention is the best cure. There were a number of plausible choices, in the years before Pearl Harbor, that might (just might) have prevented WW2:
1. If the U.S. had not fought in WW1, it is likely Germany would have won, or perhaps there might have been a negotiated settlement (serious negotiations were done in 1917, but failed). WW2 happened because of the unfinished business of WW1.
2. If the U.S. had insisted, as a condition of our entry into WW1, that the war goals would be Wilson's "peace without victors", instead of the punitive humiliating treaty that was imposed on Germany, WW2 might not have happened.
3. If the U.S. had not responded to the Depression, with a beggar-thy-neighbor tariff war, the Depression might have been over, before Hitler was elected. The Nazi party was a tiny nuisance, no more, until the global Depression caused massive suffering.
4. If French, American, and British troops had done Regime Change in Germany, when Hitler first violated treaties, it could have been done for 1/100th the actual cost.
5. If the U.S., Britain, France, and the USSR, in 1938, had jointly guaranteed the sovereignty of Czechoslovakia and Poland, Hitler might not have started his war. Stalin tried to arrange this, and only did his deal with Hitler, when he became convinced the West wouldn't fight. In these negotiations, the Poles refused to allow Soviet troops onto their soil, even if Germany attacked. This stupidity, vacillation, division, and cowardice greatly encouraged Hitler. He thought England and America would never fight for Poland.
6. If the U.S. had not orchestrated an oil embargo against Japan, they wouldn't have attacked us.
Similarly, in the years before 9/11, there were RoadsNotTaken.....preventive cures.....
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn |
