[twblalock]

No, it's not like that at all. The outcome was not determined in advance because there were multiple possible outcomes. People could have chosen to take different actions than they actually did. The events of the 1940s were not set in stone in the 1850s.

[darkerside]

I don't disagree with that. I'm saying that no events are ever set in stone, so you can't talk about history without tying together events that are only partly related.

[ajmurmann]

The same is true for the US response to Japan's invasion of Mongolia and Japan's response to the US response. If any step along the way had been different the outcome would have likely been as well.

An important point here is that it's much harder to find a clear starting point of WWII from a Japanese perspective. The whole thing pretty much was a mess starting with Commodore Perry's arrival.