[ZeroGravitas]

Major General Smedley Butler, in 1935:

"At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals of Washington (and there are always a lot of them) are very adroit lobbyists. And they are smart. They don't shout that "We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation." Oh no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only.

Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh.

The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast.

The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the united States fleet so close to Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles. "

https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

[jimbokun]

Sure, maybe those maneuvers were provocative, but they do not rise to the same level of responsibility as launching the first actual attack. Japan bears responsibility for taking the bait.

[literallycancer]

The Japanese had no choice, if they wanted to keep the territory they controlled at the time. They were heavily reliant on imports from the US, and the US imposed an embargo on them.

>US Ambassador Grew in Japan kept Roosevelt fully advised of her precarious economic situation and urgent need for imports. Chief of Naval Operations (NCO) Stark had warned the president of the danger of imposing an oil embargo on Japan. Stark had "made it known to the State Department in no uncertain terms that in my opinion if Japan's oil were shut off, she would go to war." He did not mean "necessarily with us, but … if her economic life had been choked and throttled by inability to get oil, she would go somewhere and take it … and if I were a Jap, I would" do the same.[1]

You can google many papers about this.

1 - https://mises.org/library/us-japanese-relations-wwii

[GunboatDiplomat]

Does it not matter that we were running those maneuvers largely in response to Japanese aggression in China and the Pacific? Does it matter that the reason we were in tension with Japan was their murder and conquest spree in China?

Does any of it excuse the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor?

I think the answer is no, despite my great respect for General Butler.

[ZeroGravitas]

It appears that if that was the real reason, then the government of the time wasn't prepared to tell anyone that was the case, going by the General's account anyway.

Many of the things he suggest merely re-align incentives. So if the Senators and Corporate CEOs really think that Japan is a menace to be dealt with, then they should be putting their money where their mouth is, rather than having the moral hazard of benefiting selfishly from unnecessary wars.