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Is anything in history as simple as "Action A CAUSED Outcome B"? What caused Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor? Was it wanton imperial ambitions? Or was it the US oil

Is anything in history as simple as "Action A CAUSED Outcome B"? What caused Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor? Was it wanton imperial ambitions? Or was it the US oil blockade. What caused US to bomb Hiroshima/Nagasaki? Was it a desire to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of US soldiers? Or was it a desire not to have to split the islands with the Soviets who were lining up to invade, and intimidate them with the new weapon the US developed? There are always multiple angles to every historical narrative. Noone is purely good or purely evil. Understand that the NYT isn't writing this in a vacuum. None of the discussions of colonialism are. Discussions of colonialism are responding to DECADES of commonly accepted stereotypes that "Shucks darn, Haiti/Africa are just fundamentally worse at economics, peace and prosperity than the rest of the world. Must be because black people are inherently stupider/more violent/insert other racist justifications". It is only in the last couple of decades that we've openly started to acknowledge that maybe centuries of oppression had something to do with creating the violent/unstable environments we scoff at at the west, AND that the impact didn't end overnight when the colonial powers left - such as in the case of Haiti's ongoing debt repayments to France.

shakow 4y ago
> Or was it a desire not to have to split the islands with the Soviets who were lining up to invade I don't think that anyone, the Soviets the first ones, ever seriously envisioned a Soviet invasion of the US mainland; I'm not even aware of serious Soviet plans and/or preparation for it. Which is understandable given (i) their absence of fleet, (ii) their inexistent experience in full-scale amphibious invasions, (iii) the semi-failures that their smaller-scale amphibious operations were along the war, from the Crimea to the Kurils.
- zuminator 4y ago
  GP is talking about the bombs forestalling a possible Soviet invasion of Hokkaido. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Soviet_invasion_of_Hokkaido https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Soviet_invasion_of_...
  - shakow 4y ago
    and I meant: “concerns were raised within the Soviet high command that an invasion of Hokkaido would be impractical and unlikely to succeed” Sure, there was a huge political part at play and I don't deny it, but even abstracting the US, purely militarily speaking, the Soviets would have been hard-pressed to succesfully invade Japan mainland.

shakow 4y ago

> Or was it a desire not to have to split the islands with the Soviets who were lining up to invade I don't think that anyone, the Soviets the first ones, ever seriously envisioned a Soviet invasion of the US mainland; I'm not even aware of serious Soviet plans and/or preparation for it. Which is understandable given (i) their absence of fleet, (ii) their inexistent experience in full-scale amphibious invasions, (iii) the semi-failures that their smaller-scale amphibious operations were along the war, from the Crimea to the Kurils.

zuminator 4y ago
GP is talking about the bombs forestalling a possible Soviet invasion of Hokkaido. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Soviet_invasion_of_Hokkaido https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Soviet_invasion_of_...
- shakow 4y ago
  and I meant: “concerns were raised within the Soviet high command that an invasion of Hokkaido would be impractical and unlikely to succeed” Sure, there was a huge political part at play and I don't deny it, but even abstracting the US, purely militarily speaking, the Soviets would have been hard-pressed to succesfully invade Japan mainland.