AH Challenge: Americo-Japanese Alliance

Challenge:
1) Keep Japan as a considerate power(not like the current Security Treaty, which was put in place after the defeat of Japan)

2) With a POD no earlier than 1900, and no later than 1941

I always wondered if the two non-European powers could ally with each other due to concerns of the big bad European powers.
 
Have Russia be more expansionist in East Asia and threaten the USA's trade system in China as well as Japanese designs for Korea.
 
After a posting here by Ed Stalker https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=107514, I tried an America Japan alliance over on Axis History http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=146190. My basic idea was for better relations because the IJA decided to encourage American investment in Manchuria. This opens the possibility that American companies will worry about the Russian threat to their investments. When Hitler and Stalin sign a pact, Japan feels threatened by the USSR and gives up on Germany. Finally around June 1940, America is willing to promise help if Japan is willing to declare war against Germany. One peculiar feature is that this works best if the Americans believe that the British might make peace with Hitler and the Japanese assume a long war and that Hitler cannot attack the USSR!

The criticism was that America did not have much money for investments in the Thirties. Thus it goes best if Manchuria is very tempting, for example, because oil is discovered https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=70329&highlight=daqing. It would also be good if there was no 1937 war between Japan and China. It has been suggested that an accident killing Chiang could avoid that problem http://www.geocities.com/misterralls/ishiwara.html .
 
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