WHY FAILING TO DETER 1930S IMPERIAL JAPAN STILL MATTERS

Western powers failed to hold Japan accountable for its illegal occupation of Manchuria in 1931 and military action in the Shanghai area in 1932, a failure that only emboldened Japanese aggression in the coming years.

On July 7, 1937, units of Imperial Japan’s Kwantung Army conducted a military exercise along China’s northern border near the Marco Polo Bridge. The Kwangtung Army’s actions provoked a series of sharp skirmishes with the Chinese border garrison. Within three weeks of the initial fighting, the Japanese escalated the situation by launching a full-scale offensive into China’s northern Hebei province, which ended in the capture of Peking (Beijing today). What started as an intense but localized operation expanded into a multi-front war between Imperial Japan and Nationalist China. In response to Chinese military mobilization around Japan’s extraterritorial possessions in Shanghai, the Japanese opened another front, which culminated in the largest urban battle in history up to that point. Emerging victorious at Shanghai, the Japanese prosecuted an all-out war of conquest that led to the fall of the Chinese capital of Nanking and the subsequent rape and murder of at least 300,000 Chinese men, women, and children. The nightmare in China was only beginning, and it would cost the lives of nearly 20 million Chinese soldiers and civilians over the course of eight years of war.

The Second Sino-Japanese War that began in 1937 would ultimately expand into a global conflict that engulfed the entire Asia Pacific. In the years preceding the war in 1937, however, the leading Western powers in the Pacific had opportunities to curtail Japanese expansion and prevent the outbreak of full-scale war in China. Specifically, during 1931–1933, Western powers failed to hold Japan accountable for its illegal occupation of Manchuria in 1931 and military action in the Shanghai area in 1932, a failure that only emboldened Japanese aggression in the coming years.

While the aforementioned events seem distant, contemporary Western powers face serious regional geopolitical challenges across the globe—namely ongoing conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and rising tensions in East Asia—that have the potential to become much larger crises. The events leading to 1937 should serve as a reminder that Western passivity and risk aversion with respect to countries who violate international norms will not deter conflicts but expand them into wars that the West can no longer ignore.

The Mistakes That Led to War

Japan’s war against China was the culmination of years of Japanese expansionist policies in East Asia. During the early 1930s, cliques of ultra-nationalist officers within the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) became increasingly assertive and played a greater role in driving an aggressive Japanese foreign policy. In 1931, officers of the Kwantung Army, responsible for garrisoning Japanese possessions in Korea, orchestrated a false flag attack known as the “Mukden Incident,” which ended in Japan’s annexation of Manchuria and the establishment of the puppet government of Manchukuo. In response to the Kwantung Army’s aggression, anti-Japanese protests broke out across Shanghai—a city where Japan maintained territorial rights—and resulted in the death of a Japanese national. Tokyo dispatched approximately 59,000 troops to the Shanghai area, and fighting ensued against Chinese forces in what became known as the “January 28 Incident” or First Battle of Shanghai.

The Chinese government pleaded with the League of Nations to take action, but the League stood idle. After a month of intense combat, the Japanese inflicted a disproportionate number of casualties on the Chinese, numbering in the thousands, and obtained a secure position for themselves in the Shanghai area. With China’s military and political credibility embarrassed, Japan had established a firm presence on China’s borders that later served as springboards for future offensive military actions.

In response, the League of Nations established a commission to review events in East Asia. The resulting Lytton Report—named after the commission’s British chairman, Victor Bulwer-Lytton—was a weak document that underscored Western indecision. The report failed to firmly condemn Japan’s bellicosity and instead ascribed blame for the crisis to both China and Japan; however, the commission chose not to recognize the Manchukuo government and argued that the Japanese puppet threatened China’s territorial integrity. Vehemently disagreeing with the commission’s rather modest findings, Japan ultimately withdrew from the League of Nations when the League voted 42-1 for Japan to return Manchuria to China. Moreover, the commission published its findings one year after Manchuria’s annexation, which provided Japan ample time to firmly establish its grip over the region while setting a new regional status quo for the coming years. Notwithstanding the League of Nation’s vote on the Manchurian question, the international organization failed to compel Japan to withdraw from Manchuria, and ultimately allowed Japan to retain its new imperial possession.

At the time, the United States did not maintain specific strategic interests in Manchuria, but as a signatory of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which called for the outlaw of war, it felt obligated to respond with the Stimson Doctrine. The doctrine called for a policy of non-recognition, which meant the United States would not recognize overseas possessions acquired by a breach of international law and norms. The doctrine’s author, Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, originally advocated for economic sanctions and even limited military action but, to Stimson’s frustration, he remained captive to President Herbert Hoover’s decision to pursue a policy of non-recognition alone. Hoover maintained reasonable fears of embroiling the United States in a war, especially as the country was in the throes of the Great Depression.

American policymakers failed to recognize the long-term danger that Japan would pose to its interests, and this lack of prescience proved to be the undoing of American policy in East Asia.

Since Japan did not pose an immediate threat to American interests at the time, the United States avoided taking serious action against Japan. American policymakers failed to recognize the long-term danger that Japan would pose to its interests, and this lack of prescience proved to be the undoing of American policy in East Asia. Stimson, recognizing the limitations of American policy, claimed he had “spears of straws and swords of ice.” In fact, the Stimson Doctrine, appearing publicly before the Lytton Report, served as the precursor to the League of Nation’s own policy of non-recognition, which illustrates the effect that American decisions had on the wider global community.

Ultimately, however, the Western powers’ policy of nonrecognition proved ineffectual,  set a dangerous precedent for continued Japanese expansion by tolerating its new imperial possessions, and encouraged Japan’s unilateral military action in the Shanghai area in 1932, which occurred immediately following the Stimson Doctrine’s public release. Both the Lytton Report and Stimson Doctrine signaled little more than rhetorical commitment, and failed to hold Japan accountable for its actions or deter future expansion. The IJA, driving Japanese national policy by 1937, interpreted Western impotence a few years before as an indication of how the Western power would respond in the future.

Consequences of Western Policy in East Asia During the 1930s and its Contemporary Implications

While Japanese aggression remained undeterred throughout the 1930s, the Second Sino-Japanese War threatened global stability and American and European interests. Despite Japan’s impressive military successes in 1937, the war in China devolved into a stalemate. The Japanese lacked the means to deal a killing blow to Chiang Kai-Shek’s government, but the fighting dragged on because Japan could not extricate itself from the conflict after having expended tens of thousands of lives and staking Japanese legitimacy on the war’s outcome.

The Western powers, and the United States in particular, were economically enabling Japan’s war machine by continuing to export critical commodities such as iron, steel, and oil. Faced with this reality, the Western powers took steps to limit exports to Japan in addition to providing critical supplies to Nationalist China. Japan pursued further conquests to both secure alternative resources to sustain its war effort and seal China off from external support. Tokyo looked to American and British possessions, and, more specifically, the Netherlands East Indies and French Indochina in Southeast Asia to satisfy its needs. With strategic interests under threat, the United States now led the way by engaging in economic warfare against Japan, which placed the Western powers on a collision course with Japan that broke out into a global war in December 1941.

Recognizing that applying historical lessons directly to contemporary problems can be a misuse of history, understanding the inability of the Western powers to sufficiently deter Japan from 1931–1933 offers relevant insights into the contemporary foreign policy challenges the United States faces today. International institutions must recognize aggression and take the decisive steps to call it out publicly instead of pursuing moral ambiguity. When trying to deter bellicose foreign actors, we must back rhetoric and statements of national policy with action. It is critical to understand threats sooner rather than later, even when national interests are not presently threatened.

In Ukraine, we observed another regional conflict born out of an inability of the United States—focused on the Middle East and a pivot to the Indo-Pacific—to sufficiently deter an expansionist power that demonstrated aggressive intentions in 2008 and again in 2014. Despite these warning signs, the United States failed to discern Russia’s re-surgent ambitions, harkening back to America’s inability to discern Japan’s intentions in the twentieth century. As emphasized earlier, while a full-scale war rages in Ukraine, and regional tensions grow in the Middle East and East Asia, the United States and its allies must maintain the ability to curtail regional aggression rather than vacillate. Conflict escalation or expansion are not inevitable. In 1931-1933, Western policymakers controlled the instruments of power that could have deterred the tragedy of 1937 and possibly prevented the descent into global war in East Asia four years later. Contemporary policymakers have an obligation to consult the historical record to inform how to navigate today’s growing challenges abroad.

Anthony Marco is an Army infantry officer who holds a Bachelor of Science degree in history from the United States Military Academy at West Point. He is currently pursuing his master’s degree in counter-terrorism and homeland security from Reichman University as an Anna Sobol Levy Scholar, and he is a part-time intern at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT). Tony also serves as a special advisor on the Proxies and Partners Special Project for the Irregular Warfare Initiative.

Kyle Sajoyan is a research assistant for the Yorktown Institute where he specializes in maritime great power competition and U.S. military readiness. He has held internships with the U.S. Department of State, Hudson Institute, and the Council on Foreign Relations. His commentary has appeared in Asia Times, Real Clear Defense, 19FortyFive, and On Point: The Journal of Army History.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, the U.S. Army, or the Department of Defense.

Photo Description: Site of 1937 Japanese atrocities known as the Rape of Nanjing. Caption reads “My dear mother in the eighties, Hurry up! Run away from the bloody hands!

Photo Credit: Gary Todd from Xinzheng, China via Wikimedia