[kyboren]

I know it's supposed to be an oversimplification, but this is pretty shockingly ignorant of the scope, scale, and brutality of the Japanese campaign. They didn't merely "shoot some of our boats"; that's an egregious minimization of their culpability and the proportionality of their comeuppance. The Japanese launched a coordinated all-out assault not only on Pearl Harbor but also:

  - The Philippines, a US territory, where tens of thousands of American soldiers were killed or captured and
    subjected to the infamous Bataan Death March. Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos are killed during invasion and occupation.

  - Guam, also a US territory

  - Hong Kong, Malaya and Singapore: British territories

  - Thailand, an independent kingdom

All this after having already invaded Manchuria and French Indochina, and then later going on to invade and occupy Burma, the Dutch East Indies, Borneo, New Guinea, and a whole slew of Pacific islands and atolls.

Not only did the Japs attack Pearl Harbor, formally declare war on the United States, enjoy an alliance with Germany and Italy who themselves declared war on the Unites States, and conquer or attempt to conquer all those places to build their empire; they also fought fanatically and with exceptional brutality, they committed countless atrocities (wanton murders, amputations and mutilations, gang rapes, sex slavery, vivisections, human experiments--you name it, they did it), they administered conquered territories cruelly, and they treated prisoners of war even more cruelly.

Considering all of the above, conquering the Japanese nation and ensuring their total defeat was not only justified (as I believe you'd agree), it was also entirely proportionate to their warmongering and brutality.

Please stop pushing ahistorical claims.

[lovich]

And in exchange we destroyed their empire and government

We did not respond proportionately, we responded disproportionately. I don’t know how this is even being argued by people that our response on WW2 to any of our belligerents was in measured proportion.

Like, it was the last time we went to total warfare and indiscriminately bombed civilian population centers

[kyboren]

They were busily destroying empires and governments. How is the destruction of their empire and government disproportionate?

And certainly neither Germany nor Japan had any compunction about indiscriminately bombing civilians, let alone intentionally murdering many millions of them.

[Sabinus]

Are you seriously arguing that the US war against Japan was disproportionate and ultimately unjust?

[lovich]

I said our response was disproportionate, at no point did I say it was unjust.

Walk softly and carry a big stick, is still applicable game theory and the big stick was not meant to be held back just because someone hit you with a smaller stick.

If you only respond in proportion to an adversary, they basically get to dictate the engagement. A strategy that leads to less violence overall is to apply disproportionate retaliation to any attacks, which signals to other players that you will make actions against you not a viable long term strategy

[kyboren]

I generally agree with you there, I simply don't think firebombing Tokyo and even nuking a couple cities was disproportionate. Morally wrong? Maybe. The only way to achieve a necessary military effect? Probably not. But they certainly had it coming in spades.

The Japanese tried to firebomb the US, too; they simply weren't as successful[0]. They also had a nuclear program, and God knows they would have nuked the US first if they could have. There was no Mutually Assured Destruction back then, either--just unidrectional Assured Destruction. I'm glad the US got there first.

Consider the handy Wikipedia chart of WWII deaths[1]. The main instigators of the deadliest war in history, Germany and Japan, have fairly low total death rates and, in fact, comparatively low civilian death rates compared to the Allies.

Further I want to point out that 'proportionate' is not the same as 'equivalent'. A proportionate response doesn't mean you try to kill exactly the same number of troops or sink the same number of warships.

Finally I want to reiterate that I do generally agree with you about the value and deterrent effect of some perceived probability of a disproportionate response, or at least the value of unpredictability in general. That is not to say that I believe the Madman Theory is an optimal strategy over the long term, but I do think it can be played effectively as a short-term tactic.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb

[1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/Wo...