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  • 1
    Regarding your first point, are you saying that the very different political situation in the US vs Imperial Russia was just completely ignored? If so, was this a fluke or was a suitable understanding not available to the decision makers? Commented Jan 1, 2021 at 13:40
  • 10
    @Arno, compare the outcome of Korea and Vietnam. Once the US stuck it out until the armisitce, once they disengaged. Same US, right? Different conditions. That's the third bullet point on a national basis. Japan had a much greater stake in the war than the US, so they figured that they would pay the price and the US wouldn't. Commented Jan 1, 2021 at 13:46
  • 4
    @JLK, some of them thought that after a decisive naval victory, the US would simply go away rather than fight a two-ocean war. Not much of a plan, but a plan. Others did not think that realistic, but they were ignored or never spoke up. Commented Jan 2, 2021 at 12:21
  • 3
    While I don't agree with @JLK that this answer deserves a downvote, perhaps you could say more about just how egregiously bad Japanese decision making was in 1941. The point of the Hotta book is (if I remember correctly) that the majority of decision makers knew (or strongly suspected) that going to war with the US was a disastrously bad move, but the dynamics of Japanese decision making prevented these private reservations from playing much of a role. In effect, your second point relegates the other points to little more than wishful thinking. Commented Jan 2, 2021 at 14:22
  • 4
    I have seen suggestion, for example at nytimes.com/2009/12/06/opinion/06bradley.html that somebody in Theodore Roosevelt's administration gave the Japanese the impression that they had carte blanche in the Pacific in the same way that the USA's Monroe Doctrine was intended to keep everybody else away from the Americas. The justification was allegedly that the USA considered imperial Russia and its successor the USSR to be barbaric, while Japan was progressive and potentially friendly. It's ironic how, after the minor unpleasantness of the Pacific War, that impression became fact. Commented Jan 2, 2021 at 16:02