Isaacs Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. III No. 95, 30 December 1939, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
During the first month of the new year the crisis in Japanese-American relations will enter an acute phase. The trade treaty of 1911 denounced by President Roosevelt six months ago will expire on Jan. 26. The negotiations for replacing it involve not merely trade questions but the broader and graver issues of Japan’s position in East Asia, its relations with the Soviet Union, and its role in the war.
Under the pressure of open threats of an embargo, supplemented by ostentatious additions to U.S. naval and air strength in the Far East, Japan has made a token gesture of conciliation. It has promised to re-open to American and other foreign shipping the lower Yangtze River, which it closed after conquering Shanghai and Nanking two years ago.
Japanese spokesmen represented this step as a major concession on Japan’s part and seemed to look for some immediate softening of the American attitude, which has grown extremely tough during the last two months.
In this they are doomed to disappointment. They will have to come across with much more before a Washington-Tokyo deal can be consummated.
Meanwhile, as the counterfoil to its dickering with the U.S., Japan continues its negotiations with the Soviet Union and in Japan itself a fairly broad division appears to have takten place in the ruling circles along the lines of a Russian orientation on the one side, and an American orientation on the other.
That the Japanese leaned far more definitely on the Russian side BEFORE Stalin’s invasion of Finland, and began showing signs of conciliation toward U.S. imperialism AFTER the invasion is an extremely significant fact. Even if sheer weight of numbers should bring belated Soviet victories in Finland, the Japanese militarists along with hawk-eyed observers throughout the world, have had a chance to observe the much-vaunted Red Army machine in action.
It was what they learned that lay back of the unusually swift and stiff retaliatory action against the U.S.S.R. taken by England and France through the League and by this country. It also must be playing no small part in the decisions now being made in Japan’s inner councils concerning that country’s course during the coming fateful months.
For in 1940 all those nations not yet directly involved in hostilities are destined to be forced to move one way or another. Many countries whose “neutrality” is only a thin mask for actual participation – like the U.S. – will take steps toward more decisive intervention in the conflict.
What Chamberlain told the House of Commons a few weeks ago still remains the salient fact of the war: the final lineups are not yet decided and those now warring do not yet know or are not yet sure who will turn out to be friends and who foes when the showdown comes. They will be lots surer, it is safe to say, long before 1940 in its turn joins the present outgoing year in dark record of this epoch of capitalist decline and disintegration.
Main NI Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 27 June 2018