On 38 North Jeff Baron interviews Eri Hotta, author of Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy, looking for parallels to the North Korean situation. I found this description of how Japan ended up in a war it could not win fascinating:
In questions of war and peace, the common view is, a country goes to war because they think they’ll win the war. For Japan, that wasn’t the case at all. The chance of success seemed terribly small, especially to the people making the calculations, and ultimately, the decisions. But they did it anyway.
Fear was a big factor. The leaders were fundamentally people who were afraid of losing credibility, of not appearing tough enough before others in the room who were themselves arguing for a tough approach. The fear was that if they moved to put the brakes on preparations for war, it would open the way for harder line usurpers to come in and take over. That fear of usurpers pushed the leaders to champion the most aggressive policies.
Some of the answer, too, can be found in the nature of bureaucracies. For the military leaders, for the Army and the Navy, taking the tough line was the way to argue for a larger share of the budget and to defend the legitimacy of their institutions against outcomes that would have weakened them, their influence, their leadership roles in society.
It’s always hard to put the greater good ahead of your own good – or your own little tribe’s good. While Baron is wondering if North Korea is going down the same icy slope as did Japan, I wonder if it occurred to anyone to ask the same about the American leadership. After all, Trump has a big mouth and has insulted Kim on multiple occasions. Given his recent political reversals, one might expect that he can’t really afford to look soft with regard to North Korea. Then add in a military establishment that expects to be well-fed, but must occasionally demonstrate its utility, and it’s a dangerous situation.
We may end up in a war brought on by someone mainly concerned about his own prestige.
