if anything, the riches of the DEI were making a profit for the Dutch government. There were a lot of concerns that the country would become impoverished after the Indonesian independence.
They probably were
before World War Two but things changed rapidly. A significant proportion of that wealth came from oil sales but DEI is not a market for oil, its a source. The oil has got to be shifted from source to market and therein lies the problem.
The oil problem from the allies point of view wasn't one of quantity, it was moving it around. The allies had more oil than they knew what to do with, they (almost) literally had it flowing out their years, These were the great years of American oil production, more was flowing in from Venezuela, yet more from Iran and Iraq. The allies were awash with the stuff. Their problem was they had to move it in tankers and tankers were in very short supply (and getting shorter as more and more were torpedoed and sunk in the North Atlantic. What oil tanker tonnage there was had to be used most efficiently and that meant the American fields came first, the Venezuelan ones second, the Middle East third. Note who doesn't figure on that list
So, the allies were short of tanker tonnage due to losses in the Atlantic and most of what was available there was concentrated on the North Atlantic and intra-American oil routes. There simply wasn't much left over for anywhere else. That meant the DEI was suddenly unable to get most of its oil to a market and the stuff was just sitting there. There is only a limited amount of storage available so unless somebody buys it, pumping will slow down and cease because there's nowhere to put the oil that's being drilled. So, facing the virtual close-down of the DEI oil industry (their primary source of hard currency) the DEI authorities are quite likely to start working out ways they can discretely sell the stuff.
Sure the loss of the Motherland made life alot harder but that was more in terms of industrial base and manpower. Not in financial way. At least not more then mobilisation does to any country.
That may be true in a direct economic sense (although I suspect it applies to the pre-war rather than the wartime situation) but its not true in a political sense. The reality of the situation is that by 1941, the Dutch Government is gone. As the government of an occupied country it has zero authority. That means the DEI are left on their own, no fresh-faced young Dutchmen getting off the boat to take part on the DEI administration and bringing the latest Hague thinking with them. Losing the homeland is an enormous political impact, not least because it severely impacts the authority and credibility of the DEI government and removes much of tehir legitimacy. If that is compounded by an economic crisis due to their inability to sell oil, then the pro-independence movement inherits the credibility that the DEI government has lost. So there is a strong political push to get the oil flowing again. The question is, where to?
My point is that if Japan has a sudden attack of common sense and starts playing the economic warfare game instead of jumping straight to the "who do we attack" meme, they might have some significant success. They go to the DEI (or rather the oil-trading subsidiary of a Chinese company that is partially owned by a consortium of Chinese banks who in turn are all owned by a group of private Chinese businessmen whose names sound suspiciously Japanese) goes to the DEI and says that they want to buy DEI oil at significantly over world prices, paying for it in (whatever the DEI is short of). The oil is to be shipped in Liberian tankers belonging to (well, you get the message) to ports in unoccupied China. Only, the tankers never arrive at those ports, instead they go to ports in Korea or even Japan itself.
If the Japanese wanted to be really slick, they could even bribe port officials in the fake destination ports to create false unloading manifests that suggest the ships did arrive, the oil was unloaded and shipped inland. "What! It never arrived! Surely you jest. Look, here are our departure manifests, it left here on trains for Chungking on the 26th and 27th. There's no record of such trains? Those treacherous swine, they must have stolen it and sold it on the black market. The depths some people will sink to......"
The real point I'm trying to make though is that Japan wasn't trapped into a situation where it had to go to war; it trapped itself into that situation by assuming going to war with everybody was its only solution. In fact, Japan could have staggered on and with some imagination (and a little judicious mendacity on the trading front) probably had a better time of it than it seemed. After all, everybody knew that FDR was determined to get the US into the war with Germany sooner or sooner still (later wasn't an option) and all an astute Japan had to do was hang on until that happened. Then, with US attention focussed on the North Atlantic, Japan and China become forgotten issues and Japan's trade problems are more or less over. That's assuming Japan stays a neutral in the war. If they were really slick and declared war on Germany, the diplomatic complications are delicious to imagine.
"From His Imperial Majesty to the President of the United States and the American People Greetings.
We read with great horror and distress of the sinking of the cruiser Northampton by a German U-boat and the tragic loss of life amongst its crew. Our armed forces are, from the highest officer to the lowest enlisted man, deeply angered by this brutal and unprovoked attack on a neutral warship. Who, they ask will be next to suffer from these outrages? Will our sailors going about their lawful business on the high seas be suddenly attacked without warning and left to drown? Such a situation cannot be tolerated by any peaceloving people.
For that reason, it is Our Imperial Will that the Japanese nation will join with the United States in its declaration of War against Nazi Germany. We are shamed by the extent to which we were misled by these brutal agressors who exploited our unawareness of European affairs to lead us down the wrong path. We therefore repudiate any and all agreements made between the Empire of Japan and Nazi Germany. Our armed forces will be commencing hostilities against Nazi Germany effective as from midnight tonight GMT.
We also suggest that a top-level meeting be held between the leading military authorities of our two countries and the United Kingdom in order to coordinate military strategy.
By the way, we have lots of destroyers that aren't doing much at the moment, would you like us to send them over to help escort convoys off your Atlantic coast? If so, would you send us the oil for them please, we're a bit short over here.
Signed, your faithfull Ally
Hirohito"
Now, you must admit, that would really set the political cat amongst the diplomatic pigeons.
