[Debi]

mexihiperboreo,

it is very hard to re-write history with "IF".

Let's put us back in situation.

at the end of the XIXth, the imperialism is at its Zenith.

Every part of the world are colonized or almost.
At this time, Japan awake as the first asian industrialized country.

Japan begin an imperialist policy of expansion and win its war against China and Russia to get control of Taiwan, Korea and part of Manchuria. Japan is also on the winning side in WW1 and get control of german asian colonies.
A bit later, during the Showa period, Japan turned even more agressive and began the invasion of China.

An Empire have the capacity to expand until he meet a resistance large enough to stop it, which is most of the time another Empire. In Japan case, the 2 empires limiting it's expansion was USA on sea and Russia on land.

When Japan signed the tripartite in 1937, Germany and USSR didn't sign the non-agression pact yet, by the way. 1937 is the year Japan started to invade China again. Do you see the corelation ? Japan backed his ass with the tripartite pact to protect his Manchurian flank from USSR. Japan never wanted to expand in Far-east russia. It is only wasteland. The fact is that USSR were pressuring Japan on the Manchurians borders for it's own security.

Japan signed his own neutrality pact with USSR in 1941, just before Germany begin Barbarossa. In fact, Germany and Japan was allied only on paper and never really helped each others.

So, Japan decided to invade China in a very long war. It's not an easy task and it require a LOT of ressources.

When the western powers put an oil embargo to pressure Japan to stop it's invasion of China, what were the choices of Japan ?

1. Give up and get out of Japan (loser choice)
2. Find the ressources (winner choice)

So yeah, Japan thought about getting the ressources they needed to continue it's war in China. They figured that if they invaded the East Indies, the American would ripost right away and that would result in a war that couldnt be won.

So, their ultimate strategy was to strike the americans first, invade the places they had to invade and then defend against the americans on the pacifics islands until the americans get tired and negotiate peace.

And we know the result of this strategy, it just failed.

So that's it. Forget the "What if" questions and stick to the facts.