a backdrop of decades of mistreatment of the Japanese by Western countries.
I find this a bit difficult to take seriously. The WW2 in the Pacific didn’t start with well-treatment of China and other countries by Japan, either. Naturally Japanese didn’t care about that part of the story, but hey had plenty of other options how they could have responded their the UK or the US trade policy instead of invading Manchuria.
making Ukraine a country with a similar international status to Austria or Finland during the Cold War would be one immediate solution.
This is not a simple task, but rather a tall order. Austria was “made neutral” after it was occupied. Finland signed a peace treaty that put it into effectively similar position. Why would any country submit to such a deal voluntarily? The answer is, they often don’t. Finland didn’t receive significant assistance from the Allies in 1939, yet they decided to defend themselves against the USSR anyway when Stalin attacked.
However, if one side in these disputes had refused to play the game of ratcheting up tensions, the eventual wars would simply not have happened. In this context it takes two to dance.
Sure, but the game theoretic implication is that this kind of strategy favors the first party to take the first step and say “I have an army and a map where this neighboring country belongs to us”.
NATO would have refrained from sending lethal arms to Ukraine and stationing thousands of foreign military advisors in Ukrainian territory after Maidan.
What a weird way to present the causality of events. I am quite confident NATO didn’t have time to send any weapons and certainly not thousands of advisors between Maidan and the war starting. Yanukovich fled 22 February. Antimaidan protests started in Donetsk 1 March and shooting war started in April.
I find this a bit difficult to take seriously. The WW2 in the Pacific didn’t start with well-treatment of China and other countries by Japan, either.
I never said that it did. As I said, “in this context it takes two to dance”.
Naturally Japanese didn’t care about that part of the story, but hey had plenty of other options how they could have responded their the UK or the US trade policy instead of invading Manchuria.
I don’t know why it’s hard for you to believe. In 1918, Fumimaro Konoe (then part of the Japanese delegation to the Paris Peace Conference) wrote an essay titled “Against a Pacifism Centered on England and America” in which he stated the following:
“Japan is limited in territory, poor in natural resources, and has a small population and thus a meager market for manufactured products. If England closed off its colonies, how would we be able to assure the nation’s secure survival? In such a case, the need to ensure its survival would compel Japan to attempt to overthrow the status quo as Germany did before the war.”
Konoe was Prime Minister for most of 1941, resigning in October only after his attempts to negotiate a last-minute settlement with the United States came to nothing. There’s no evidence to suggest he changed his mind, though in 1941 he opposed the war with the United States on pragmatic grounds since he believed Japan would lose.
The question is not about whether Japan could have done something different. Of course they could have. The question is whether decades of animosity contributed to the outbreak of war, and it’s clear the answer is affirmative here. Even the Japanese invasion of China is hard to imagine if Japan had been better treated by the United Kingdom and the United States.
Japan had two key concerns: physical and economic security. They felt their physical security was threatened because they faced two potentially hostile powers in China and the USSR. In the 1920s Japan had cooperated with Western countries within the framework of the Washington Order, in which China was to remain under an “open door policy” with respect to trade and all powers in the Pacific would cooperate to limit the size of their navies. This order, established when China was weak due to internal strife, caused resentment in China and the terms of this order prevented Japan from ensuring their security by striking China when they were weak, so it was quite reasonable for the Japanese to worry about the future.
If war with China or the USSR broke out in the depths of a depression, the US and the UK could have cut their losses and left Japan to fight alone in a ruinous total war. This, more than anything, Japan wished to avoid at all costs.
The concern about economic security is no less important, since the turn to protectionism all around the world following the Great Depression was exactly what Konoe had feared. Its effect on domestic politics in Japan was also pronounced. Since Japan is an island country that relies heavily on trade, the unilateral tariffs and quotas imposed by the US and the UK on Japanese exports right at the depth of the depression came at the worst possible time. This strengthened the hand of militarists who wished to construct the notorious “Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere”.
This is not a simple task, but rather a tall order. Austria was “made neutral” after it was occupied. Finland signed a peace treaty that put it into effectively similar position. Why would any country submit to such a deal voluntarily? The answer is, they often don’t. Finland didn’t receive significant assistance from the Allies in 1939, yet they decided to defend themselves against the USSR anyway when Stalin attacked.
All it takes is for NATO to stop selling weapons and sending military advisors into Ukraine. It has nothing to do with what Ukraine wants; if NATO says they won’t do it then the problem would be solved.
Sure, but the game theoretic implication is that this kind of strategy favors the first party to take the first step and say “I have an army and a map where this neighboring country belongs to us”.
My whole point is that there are competing effects in this situation and not considering the resentment that a hostile policy will cause in Russia (or Japan) is a big mistake. I’m not denying that a more lenient policy has this effect, I’m saying it has an offsetting effect which could (and I think does, in the current case with Russia) lower the expected number of war deaths over the next 50 years, say.
What a weird way to present the causality of events. I am quite confident NATO didn’t have time to send any weapons and certainly not thousands of advisors between Maidan and the war starting. Yanukovich fled 22 February. Antimaidan protests started in Donetsk 1 March and shooting war started in April.
How is that weird? NATO supports a movement of regime change in Ukraine. Russia sees it as an act against them and ratchets up tensions by taking over Crimea and supporting separatists in Donetsk & Luhansk. NATO sees it as an act of aggression and starts sending arms & military advisors to Ukraine. Russia sees this as a provocation and responds by full-scale invasion of the country.
I don’t understand what you find weird about this way to present the causality of events. Have I left something out or inaccurately represented anything that happened?
I find this a bit difficult to take seriously. The WW2 in the Pacific didn’t start with well-treatment of China and other countries by Japan, either. Naturally Japanese didn’t care about that part of the story, but hey had plenty of other options how they could have responded their the UK or the US trade policy instead of invading Manchuria.
This is not a simple task, but rather a tall order. Austria was “made neutral” after it was occupied. Finland signed a peace treaty that put it into effectively similar position. Why would any country submit to such a deal voluntarily? The answer is, they often don’t. Finland didn’t receive significant assistance from the Allies in 1939, yet they decided to defend themselves against the USSR anyway when Stalin attacked.
Sure, but the game theoretic implication is that this kind of strategy favors the first party to take the first step and say “I have an army and a map where this neighboring country belongs to us”.
What a weird way to present the causality of events. I am quite confident NATO didn’t have time to send any weapons and certainly not thousands of advisors between Maidan and the war starting. Yanukovich fled 22 February. Antimaidan protests started in Donetsk 1 March and shooting war started in April.
I never said that it did. As I said, “in this context it takes two to dance”.
I don’t know why it’s hard for you to believe. In 1918, Fumimaro Konoe (then part of the Japanese delegation to the Paris Peace Conference) wrote an essay titled “Against a Pacifism Centered on England and America” in which he stated the following:
“Japan is limited in territory, poor in natural resources, and has a small population and thus a meager market for manufactured products. If England closed off its colonies, how would we be able to assure the nation’s secure survival? In such a case, the need to ensure its survival would compel Japan to attempt to overthrow the status quo as Germany did before the war.”
Konoe was Prime Minister for most of 1941, resigning in October only after his attempts to negotiate a last-minute settlement with the United States came to nothing. There’s no evidence to suggest he changed his mind, though in 1941 he opposed the war with the United States on pragmatic grounds since he believed Japan would lose.
The question is not about whether Japan could have done something different. Of course they could have. The question is whether decades of animosity contributed to the outbreak of war, and it’s clear the answer is affirmative here. Even the Japanese invasion of China is hard to imagine if Japan had been better treated by the United Kingdom and the United States.
Japan had two key concerns: physical and economic security. They felt their physical security was threatened because they faced two potentially hostile powers in China and the USSR. In the 1920s Japan had cooperated with Western countries within the framework of the Washington Order, in which China was to remain under an “open door policy” with respect to trade and all powers in the Pacific would cooperate to limit the size of their navies. This order, established when China was weak due to internal strife, caused resentment in China and the terms of this order prevented Japan from ensuring their security by striking China when they were weak, so it was quite reasonable for the Japanese to worry about the future.
If war with China or the USSR broke out in the depths of a depression, the US and the UK could have cut their losses and left Japan to fight alone in a ruinous total war. This, more than anything, Japan wished to avoid at all costs.
The concern about economic security is no less important, since the turn to protectionism all around the world following the Great Depression was exactly what Konoe had feared. Its effect on domestic politics in Japan was also pronounced. Since Japan is an island country that relies heavily on trade, the unilateral tariffs and quotas imposed by the US and the UK on Japanese exports right at the depth of the depression came at the worst possible time. This strengthened the hand of militarists who wished to construct the notorious “Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere”.
All it takes is for NATO to stop selling weapons and sending military advisors into Ukraine. It has nothing to do with what Ukraine wants; if NATO says they won’t do it then the problem would be solved.
My whole point is that there are competing effects in this situation and not considering the resentment that a hostile policy will cause in Russia (or Japan) is a big mistake. I’m not denying that a more lenient policy has this effect, I’m saying it has an offsetting effect which could (and I think does, in the current case with Russia) lower the expected number of war deaths over the next 50 years, say.
How is that weird? NATO supports a movement of regime change in Ukraine. Russia sees it as an act against them and ratchets up tensions by taking over Crimea and supporting separatists in Donetsk & Luhansk. NATO sees it as an act of aggression and starts sending arms & military advisors to Ukraine. Russia sees this as a provocation and responds by full-scale invasion of the country.
I don’t understand what you find weird about this way to present the causality of events. Have I left something out or inaccurately represented anything that happened?