With a POD after the Paris Peace Conference but before the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, what would be a plausible scenario for a naval conflict (likely on a much smaller scale/lower stakes than the OTL Pacific War) between the United States and Imperial Japan (not as part of a greater conflict)? How would Britain respond in such a conflict?
Interwar US-Japanese War
- Thread starter Snowstalker
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Britain probably stays neutral, especially if said war occurs after the end of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. There was a close call when the Japanese attacked an American ship in China. The United States had made several attempts to reach out to the USSR for an alliance against the Japanese, and if the incident in China led to war with Japan, you'd have the US, USSR, and China Vs. Japan. The US chases Japan back to the Home Islands and the US and USSR together chase Japan out of Korea (Taiwan and Penghu are surrendered to the KMT as OTL). This may lead to an earlier CCP victory during the Chinese Civil War and earlier Korean War. There's also the possibility of Britain interceding diplomatically, disturbed by growing Soviet influence in Asia, and seeking Japan to serve as a buffer against the USSR.
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If i remember correctly, @David T mentioned the likelihood of a Japanese-American War over the Panay Incident in 1937, and judged it as implausible considering OTL factors, as the US public did not have the appetite at the time for yet another war over a sunken ship, as had happened against Spain and, later Germany.
Specifically, what I wrote was this:
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The actual effect of the Panay incident in OTL was to strengthen isolationism in the US.
As David M. Kennedy writes in Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, p. 402: "But the Panay was not to be a modern Maine, nor even a Lusitania. Its sinking produced a cry for withdrawal, not for war. 'We should learn that it is about time for us to mind our own business,' Texas Democrat Maury Maverick declared in the House. A few months later, a Fortune magazine poll showed that a majority of Americans favored getting the United States out of China altogether. When Japan tendered an official apology for the Panay incident and paid some $2 million in reparations, the crisis swiftly blew over.
"The principal residue of the Panay affair in Congress was not more bellicosity but more pacifism [citing the boost the incident gave to the proposed Ludlow Amendment]... https://books.google.com/books?id=UQlEq9GILRgC&pg=PR111
Britain will be pro-American at any time in the period, even it is not an actual anti-Japanese belligerent (which would depend on the Japanese threatening or engaging British territories and interests)
Even if the Anglo-Japanese alliance were still in effect, Britain would not support Japan against the US. London had explicitly told Tokyo it would exercise an escape clause in such an event.
In the big war you describe of US, USSR and China versus Japan, Britain will not try to be any nicer to Japan than Britain thinks the US will accept. It willtryto minimize Soviet influence by strengthening relations with the Americans and maybe the ChiNats.
Even if the Anglo-Japanese alliance were still in effect, Britain would not support Japan against the US. London had explicitly told Tokyo it would exercise an escape clause in such an event.
In the big war you describe of US, USSR and China versus Japan, Britain will not try to be any nicer to Japan than Britain thinks the US will accept. It willtryto minimize Soviet influence by strengthening relations with the Americans and maybe the ChiNats.
After the peace conference is over in 1919, but while US and Japanese forces are both in the Russian Far East, US forces get into a shooting match with some reckless clients of the the Japanese, through some bad luck, this turns into a skirmish between some Americans and Japanese started before they even recognize each other for certain. The Japanese overcome the American force, and some American prisoners assault some Japanese guards leading to somebody getting killed and the local Japanese commander making the snap judgment that they should kill the remaining American witnesses.
But the word somehow gets out and the US gets hopping mad and makes a bunch of demands and ends up declaring war on the Japanese. This turns into a naval conflict. The British drop the Japanese like a hot potato.
Excellent summary.
The key here being the Japanese government doing the sensible thing. Aside from paying reparations the government made a effort to get control of the field commanders. That a US diplomat was assaulted by a Japanese soldier a few months later suggests the necessity of this. The Panay incident was not isolated but, symptomatic of a underlying lack of discipline and attitude within the Japanese Army. Exactly how far that had gone is opaque to me, but there dis a question here of if the government had not attempted to reign in the field commanders, allowing more such incidents?
A US Marine, Lt Krulak described witnessing the Japanese beheading Chinese on a river bank in full view of the US district in Shanghai. These executions were done during the peak business hours when the maximum number of people were on the waterfront streets. In 1937-38 the Japanese Army leaders in China were full of themselves and increasingly arrogant vs the 'Europeans'. They clearly regarded the foreign concessions as past their expiration date. I'm not a expert on Japanese politics of those years, but it does not seem ASB for the Army to start a war vs the intruders as they started the China Incident in 1937. Dragging the government along as it were. A few years later the Isolationists were defeated by nazi blundering & aggression. It may be long odds but this seems possible, with the Isolationists position left irrelevant as the Japanese attack the US Asiatic fleet and round up the US citizens in China for internment.
The key here being the Japanese government doing the sensible thing. Aside from paying reparations the government made a effort to get control of the field commanders. That a US diplomat was assaulted by a Japanese soldier a few months later suggests the necessity of this. The Panay incident was not isolated but, symptomatic of a underlying lack of discipline and attitude within the Japanese Army. Exactly how far that had gone is opaque to me, but there dis a question here of if the government had not attempted to reign in the field commanders, allowing more such incidents?
A US Marine, Lt Krulak described witnessing the Japanese beheading Chinese on a river bank in full view of the US district in Shanghai. These executions were done during the peak business hours when the maximum number of people were on the waterfront streets. In 1937-38 the Japanese Army leaders in China were full of themselves and increasingly arrogant vs the 'Europeans'. They clearly regarded the foreign concessions as past their expiration date. I'm not a expert on Japanese politics of those years, but it does not seem ASB for the Army to start a war vs the intruders as they started the China Incident in 1937. Dragging the government along as it were. A few years later the Isolationists were defeated by nazi blundering & aggression. It may be long odds but this seems possible, with the Isolationists position left irrelevant as the Japanese attack the US Asiatic fleet and round up the US citizens in China for internment.