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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 31, 3 August 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
By its embargo on oil and scrap metal proclaimed on July 25, the U.S. government served notice on Japan that it still had weapons to use in the Far East even if it can no longer contemplate use of its fleet to enforce American Far Eastern policies. It indicated that Washington is embarking upon a policy now designed primarily to improve its bargaining position with respect to coming Japanese moves in the Orient. The embargo was the first reply to the formation of the Konoye government, whose announced policy is the exploitation to the fullest of the prime opportunity presented to Japan by the development of the European war.
It is an illuminating commentary on imperialist international relations that such an embargo comes after years of a combined policy of diplomatic opposition to Japan and of economic aid in the form of virtually unlimited supplies of vital metals and fuels. Last year the U.S. supplied 65 percent of all of Japan’s oil imports and 85 percent of its scrap metal. In 1938 the percentages were similar. Business, after all, is business.
But now the prospect of early establishment of Japanese control over the vital rubber and tin supplies of the Dutch East Indies, at a time when the U.S. cannot offer forceful resistance to such a move, has led to the drastic embargo policy. As the New York Times frankly stated on July 26: “With power over petroleum and scrap exports now in executive control, the United States is in a position to bargain oil and scrap against rubber and tin should the Administration be so disposed.”
Some of the newspaper commentators have also seen in the embargo move a reflection of a changing attitude in Washington toward the perspectives of the war in Europe. It is claimed now that there is more confidence in British ability to hold off the German assault, that the war may last longer than was expected, and that therefore the U.S. can afford to take a stronger attitude toward Japan. This interpretation, at any rate, will soon be subjected to the test of events.
Even relatively more successful British resistance to the German attack, however, cannot greatly change Britain’s own situation in the Far East at the present time. The Konoye government is greatly increasing the pressure on British – even arresting leading British business men in Japan – and quite obviously does not intend to permit any stalling on the part of the British, to delay Japanese action in the vital British spheres in the Orient, in China particularly.
In this situation the U.S. interests there come equally under attack. The embargo forms part of the preparation, to meet that attack as best possible in the present circumstances. It may be quite significant in this regard that while blasting Moscow for the absorption of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, the State Department granted a permit for an oil shipment to Vladivostok right after refusing like permits for shipments to Japan and to Spain. Washington will more and more seek to preserve what it can of a U.S.-Soviet-Chinese tie-up in the face of further Japanese moves.
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