More Lessons From Pearl Harbor

December 7, 1941 has been called a "date that will live in infamy." And so it will.

What are the lessons to be learned from U.S. involvement in World War II, why it began and why it ended as it did?

Could it happen again?

If so, are we better prepared this time?

And if not, what should we be doing about it?

A Reluctant Enemy begins as follows:

"ON a bright Hawaiian Sunday morning 70 years ago today, hundreds of Japanese warplanes appeared suddenly over Pearl Harbor and laid waste to the United States Pacific Fleet. The American people boiled over in righteous fury, and America plunged into World War II. The “date which will live in infamy” was the real turning point of the war, which had been raging for more than two years, and it opened an era of American internationalism and global security commitments that continues to this day.

By a peculiar twist of fate, the Japanese admiral who masterminded the attack had persistently warned his government not to fight the United States. Had his countrymen listened, the history of the 20th century might have turned out much differently.

Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto foresaw that the struggle would become a prolonged war of attrition that Japan could not hope to win. For a year or so, he said, Japan might overrun locally weak Allied forces — but after that, its war economy would stagger and its densely built wood-and-paper cities would suffer ruinous air raids. Against such odds, Yamamoto could “see little hope of success in any ordinary strategy.” His Pearl Harbor operation, he confessed, was “conceived in desperation.” It would be an all-or-nothing gambit, a throw of the dice: “We should do our best to decide the fate of the war on the very first day.”"

Admiral Yamamoto believed it wrongheaded to start a prolonged fight with the industrially superior U.S. For one thing, the Japanese imported too much oil and steel from America and its allies to wage a long war.

Due in large part to America's superior strength, the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was an attempted first round knockout punch:

"Yamamoto continued to warn against joining with the Nazis. He reminded his government that Japan imported around four-fifths of its oil and steel from areas controlled by the Allies. To risk conflict, he wrote, was foolhardy, because “there is no chance of winning a war with the United States for some time to come.”

But Japan’s confused and divided government drifted toward war while refusing to face the strategic problems it posed. It signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in Berlin in September 1940. As Yamamoto had predicted, the American government quickly restricted and finally cut off exports of oil and other vital materials. The sanctions brought events to a head, because Japan had no domestic oil production to speak of, and would exhaust its stockpiles in about a year.

Yamamoto realized he had lost the fight to keep Japan out of war, and he fell in line with the planning process. But he continued to ask critical questions. Two decades of strategic planning for a war with the United States had envisioned a clash of battleships in the western Pacific — a decisive battle like that at Tsushima. But Yamamoto now asked: What if the American fleet declined to play its part? What if the Americans instead chose to bide their time and build up their strength?

IN 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the fleet to Pearl Harbor. He had intended to signal that the United States Navy was in striking distance of Japan — but “conversely,” Yamamoto observed, “we’re within striking distance, too. In trying to intimidate us, America has put itself in a vulnerable position. If you ask me, they’re just that bit too confident.” Therein lay the germ of his plan to launch a sudden carrier air attack on the Hawaiian stronghold."

So Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. That proved to be a big mistake. The rest is history, as they say.

Could anything like this happen again? Well, yes, as a matter of fact. Read on.

Pearl Harbor, Iran and North Korea argues convincingly that the U.S. is now in a similar situation to that period immediately prior to entering World War II:

"Just as the lessons of Vietnam shaped today's U.S. military, the lessons of Pearl Harbor shaped our armed services through the 1960s. In 1942, only months after the attack, then-Colonel Curtis LeMay was forced to take ill-trained troops into combat and watched hundreds of them die. He never wanted to see the U.S. in that position again, a goal that guided his creation of the Strategic Air Command—America's nuclear punch—during the earliest years of the Cold War.

LeMay understood that in a nuclear war the U.S. wouldn't have the luxury of two years to build the Army, Navy and Air Force that it needed in World War II but didn't yet have in December 1941. LeMay drilled into his crews the idea that their first mission might well be their only mission, which is why they had to be constantly prepared. Partly because of that strength, there was never a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

Seventy years after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. finds itself in much the same situation that it was in prior to World War II. There is a great effort to cut military spending, bring troops home from abroad, and scale back our international exposure. The country's critical financial situation is one reason. Yet a nuclear-obsessed Iran, an emerging China and Russia, along with smaller rogue actors are enough of a threat to justify a vigilant and even aggressive guard. Add to this the weariness of two prolonged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the comparison is complete."

We clearly need to maintain our military capability and strengthen America's financial condition at the same time. And we need to begin that financial strengthening in earnest now.

If we don't act to get our financial house in order, our military readiness may be weakened, thereby making the U.S. vulnerable to crazies throughout the world making serious miscalculations about our resolve and courage, just as the Japanese did seventy years ago.

Let's make every reasonable effort to avoid another Pearl Harbor by always acting based on strength, both militarily and financially.

Thanks. Bob.