I fully concur with Martin Armstrong, the parallel with the period before World War 2 are surreal, almost uncanny. The big difference is that we now have nuclear weapons. The consequences of war would be beyond horrendous!
Post by Martin Armstrong
The US government is treating Russia just as it treated Japan before World War II fully took hold.
President Roosevelt was inflicting embargos on the Japanese, freezing
their money, and cutting them off from all energy. When they turned to
buying fuel from other nations, Roosevelt threatened to blockade their
ships. Is it any wonder why the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor to
eliminate the US fleet after the threat of an embargo?
The neocon strategy is taken right out of the war book used during
the Roosevelt Administration. This is precisely what FDR did to get the
United States into World War II. He was frustrated because Congress
would not authorize joining the war. When FDR went to Boston, the Irish
lashed out at him, saying that the British starved the Irish and they
were now not going to go defend them. Many people who fled Europe to
America wanted to be free of the hatred and politics in Europe. So, it
was NOT a popular idea to come to the rescue of Europe, which they fled.
It may come as a surprise, but the US public was sympathetic toward
China during this period. America saw Japan’s actions during the Second
Sino-Japanese War as predatory. Similarly, many now view Russia as the
aggressor and believe it must be quelled. The hatred of the Japanese
later came to a head during the war as the US government imprisoned all
Japanese people, women and children, and those born in the US.
The Neocons, during the FDR Administration, followed a clever agenda
to circumvent Congress as they are doing right now. They were racists
and simply hated the Japanese, as is the case with Russians right now.
They started in 1938 with a series of escalating highly restrictive
trade restrictions imposed on Japan. The Neocons terminated the 1911
commercial treaty with Japan in 1939. They then tightened the Export
Control Act of 1940, which was intended to prevent the scarcity of
critical commodities in a likely prewar environment. In addition, this
act directly targeted Japan to restrict the exportation of material to
Imperial Japan.
This was followed by the United States embargoing scrap metal
shipments to Japan and closing the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping.
The Neocons were seeking to isolate Japan without engaging in a war that
only Congress could declare Japan, at the time, imported about 74% of
its scrap iron from the US and over 90% of its copper.
Then, on July 26, 1941, the US seized all Japanese assets in the
United States in retaliation for the Japanese occupation of French
Indo-China as they have done today with Russia’s reserves. This was
followed on August 1 with an oil embargo and gasoline exports to Japan
which also came from the United States. The oil embargo was the last
straw when 80% of its energy supply came from the USA. The US also was
proposing intervening to prevent Japan from getting oil from other
sources.
The complete US oil embargo was the last straw. The Japanese had to
then seize Southeast Asia for resources which expanded the war instead
of the old hatred between China and Japan. They needed to do that before
they ran out of resources. To secure themselves in the Pacific, they
attacked Pearl Harbor with no intention of actually invading the United
States.
What we are doing to Russia is exactly the same way Roosevelt treated
the Japanese. There will be only one resolution – World War III. I do
not believe that those in Washington and Brussels are this stupid. This
is a deliberate attempt to provoke Russia to attack. They will then
claim we wear the white hats and Russia is the aggressor with an
unprovoked attack. It worked before. There was even a Senate
investigation after the war into the fact that Roosevelt knew Pearl
Harbor was to be attacked and pulled out the important ships, all to
force Congress to enter the war.
