oil. Japan calculated that it would be out of oil in two years. This put Japan in the position of having to choose
between backing down and attacking the US.
As with all wars the unknowns about what will happen in a war are far greater than the knowns a) because
rival powers go into wars only when their powers are roughly comparable (because otherwise it would be
stupidly suicidal for the obviously weaker power to go to war) and b) because there are way too many possible
actions and reactions to anticipate. The only thing that is known at the outset of war is that it will probably be
extremely painful and possibly ruinous. As a result, smart leaders typically only go into hot wars if there is no
choice because the other side pushes them into the position of either fighting or losing by backing down. That is
how World War II began.
On December 7 and 8, 1941, Japan launched coordinated attacks on US military forces in the Philippines and at
Pearl Harbor. That marked the beginning of World War II in the Pacific which brought the US into the war in
Europe too.
While Japan didn’t have a widely recognized plan to win the war, it appears that those Japanese leaders who were
optimistic planned to destroy the US Pacific Fleet and believed that the US would lose because it was fighting a
war on two fronts (Europe and Asia) and because its individualistic/capitalist political system was inferior to
Japan’s and Germany’s authoritarian, fascist systems and their command military-industrial complexes. They also
believed that they had the greater willingness to endure pain and die for their country, which is a big driver of
which side wins.
Before going on to describe the hot war known as World War II I want to reiterate the most common economic
warfare techniques. They have been and still are:
1. Asset Freezes/Seizures: Preventing an enemy/rival from using or selling foreign assets they rely on. These
measures can range from asset freezes for targeted groups in a country (e.g., the current US sanctions of the
Iranian Revolutionary Guard or the initial US asset freeze against Japan in World War II) to more severe
measures like unilateral debt repudiation or outright seizures of a country’s assets (some top US policy
makers are now talking about not paying our debts to China).
2. Blocking Capital Market Access: Preventing a country from accessing their own or another country’s
capital markets (e.g., in 1887 Germany banned the purchase of Russian securities and debt to impede Russia’s
military buildup, the US now issuing threats of doing this to China).
3. Embargoes/Blockades: Blocking trade in goods and/or services either in one’s own country, or in some cases
with neutral third parties, for the purpose of weakening the targeted country or preventing it from getting
essential items (e.g., the US oil embargo of Japan and cutting off its ability to ship through the Panama Canal)
or blocking exports from the targeted country to other countries thus cutting off their income (e.g., France’s
blockade of the UK in the Napoleonic Wars).
If you’re interested in seeing some of the specifics and variations that have taken place in these from 1600 until
now, they are set out in a table in Appendix I.
1939/41 to 1945: The Hot War
In 1940, after the war began in Europe and prior to the US entering, Germany, like Japan, looked unstoppable; it
captured Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France, and formed a stronger alliance
with Japan and Italy, who had common enemies and were ideologically aligned. By seizing territory rapidly,
Hitler’s army was able to conserve oil and gain resources quickly (e.g., it gained access to oil by annexing
Romania). Its roll seemed unstoppable. Its thirst for, and acquisition of, natural resources remained a major driver
of the Nazi war machine pushing its campaigns into Russia and the Middle East. The war with the communist
Soviet power was inevitable as Germany’s conquests in Western Europe put these two big and ideologically
opposed powers on a collision course. The only question was when. While the Soviet Union and Germany had
signed a non-aggression pact to postpone it, the Soviet Union invaded several Eastern European states, including
the Baltic states, and took control of them. Germany invaded Russia in June 1941, which put Germany in an
extremely costly war for both the Western European and Russian/Soviet sides.