A lot of American lethargy was based on the recognition of facts that the Japanese ignored vis-a-vis American economic strength and public opinion. The Navy did contemplate a Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in their pre-war planning, but rejected it because they thought it would have to be done with battleships (which was wrong) and because they thought it would enrage the American populace against Japan to the point the war could be unlimited (which was right) and the Japanese were rational enough to realize this (which again was wrong).
Did you mean to say "A lot of American lethargy was based on
failure to recognize that Japan was ignoring American public opinion" because that, I agree with. And that is consistent with the underlined portion of your statement. As originally written the two sentences are mutually contradictory.
Churchill once supposedly quipped that madness in war carries with it the benefit of surprise.
I heartily agree. And we had two major powers do something strategically mad in 1941 alone (Germany and then Japan), and two other powers who were caught by surprise in large part because they did not accept the degree of their potential attacker's madness (the USSR and USA)!
IDK about the army, but in the navies case it’s because they concluded the Phillipines and Guam were indefensible and any resources committed to their defense would invariably be lost so it would be better to retain those resources to help build up for the eventual counter-offensive. Absent a direct order from the President, they were never gonna commit more then the token forces they did historically. Given how the Pacific War, with the glaring exception of Pearl Harbour, went precisely as the navy planned it... they were probably right.
Imagine defense spending in the late 1930s, say after the Panay incident, at a higher level, like one of the "hollow army" periods of the Cold War period (FY1950 or FY1976 for example). Compare those resources against what Japan has. If that amount of resources goes to the Navy, Army, service aviation and things like fortification and the training of local forces, are the Philippines, Guam and Wake really being lost causes? I think that kind of resourcing means the Philippines survive until relief and Wake holds out. Or, even more likely, the Japanese do not dare attack at all.
While all of the powers that signed the Washington Naval Treaties of 1922/23 and subsequent treaties "cheated" a little bit on tonnage here and there (underreporting the tonnage of various ships), beginning in the late 20s/early 30s the Japanese began seriously cheating including building up the military capabilities of various Pacific Islands forbidden by the treaties. When the treaties were finally tossed aside, they had a significant lead in breaking the rules and building more/bigger ships. Could the USA have cheated - perhaps some on ship tonnage, but not on base buildup. The Japanese could lock up their islands, the USA could not. Furthermore the amount of GDP the Japanese were spending on the military was huge compared to the USA, even when the buildup started. Japan, because of their governmental/social system and also their standard of (expected) living could hold off on expenditures designed for the population. The American democracy could not do that.
The American democracy has sustained substantial expenditures for national security, to include power projection capability and forward bastions, since 1945. Even in times where all the other great powers were quiescent like in the 1990s.
Regarding cheating in the mandated islands - the Japanese had an advantage in that they could censor what they were doing there, and the spread of their islands was so vast and yet centrally located that it was a far better basing network for naval and air support than what the U.S. had in the Pacific.
But, the U.S. sphere did have at least one potential advantage over the Japanese Mandates in the "South Seas" - the large population of the Philippines, dwarfing the conscriptable manpower of the mandates. Seriously raising, training and arming Filipino troops in the interwar, especially once the U.S. put them on a timeline for independence, probably could have been a relatively inexpensive way to complicate the crap out of any Japanese Pacific aggression. It would not have the same amount of potential domestic pork-barrel benefit for U.S. politicians, but I'm sure that the aid program for the build-up could be structured so that several large firms, their employees, and the congressional districts they are based in could benefit and champion continuation of the build-up.
Also, this raises a larger question about the Naval Arms control treaties. It seems to me the non-fortification pledge of 1922 ill-served U.S. and probably also U.K. interests in a big way. No deal at all, and instead saying to the Japanese, "Hey, we will spend what we want and think we need on our Pacific defenses, and you are welcome to do the same" would have been superior to the OTL treaty. The inner monologue for the U.S. could be, "Who gives a rat's patootie if the Japanese build up to fleet parity, they'll just bankrupt themselves and if we then raise the ante ourselves Japan will be unable to repeat the process again."
Had the USA in 1935-36 when the treaties went away, and Japan was doing bad things in Manchuria and North China, realized that Japan was "crazy" enough to roll the dice and go to war with the USA should the USA not let Japan have free rein in China, things might have been different. Of course then if that sort of thinking was around the Americans, and more important the British, French, and others would have decided that Hitler meant what he said In Mein Kampf and not been so surprised. The "problem" with the democracies during the 30s was that the public saw "solving" the Depression as having absolute priority, and diversion of any funds for a military buildup/fortifications was seen to be working against recovery. As WWI, and subsequently WWII, and the Cold War showed, if the populace of the democracies accepted the existence of an external threat, sacrifices were quite acceptable - absent that belief in a serious external threat, especially with the massive internal problems of the depression, those were not happening.
Well, the above illustrates the huge mood swings or pendulum swings over the decades in public opinion in the democracies. Americans pre-WWII accepted an inexpensive, bare bones, military-naval "insurance policy" that Americans post-WWII would have seen as insanely inadequate. The U.S. then gambled with its own colonies and territories, but later adopted such a different view of what the necessary level national security "insurance coverage" is, that the U.S. has been routinely funding wars of choice, even in cases where the country has no explicit treaty commitment, for over 70 years now.
So, what I'm envisioning is, "what if we could somehow have U.S. defense spending in the 20th century, ''revert to the mean', and be kept on a more even keel throughout?"
Also, is it right to blame irresistible public opinion for the complacency, or should the blame not be shared with the country's legislative and executive leaders. I'm arguing there was insufficient legislative and even executive leadership on this score in the 1930s.
The reason why the US military was slow to build up Guam and the Philippines was because they were both lost causes until the 1944 fleet was in commission, and it had other priorities that were not lost causes. The SLOC were just not going to be there in 1941/42. Now, had the war not broken out by 1943, different story.
Well the two-ocean navy act really needed to be passed in 1938. The Rape of Nanking, Panay, Guernica and Anschluss could have been taken by the U.S. as wake-up calls.
Heck, in 1938, ramping up spending would have helped
alleviate rather than
worsen the Depression,in the United States at least (I cannot vouch for France or Britain). It also would have rendered raw materials and other inputs sold by the U.S. to the Anti-Comintern powers more expensive for them, as a side benefit.