Status Quoted

In today’s NY Times Op-Ed: James Bradley traces roots of Japan’s attack on Peal Harbor to Theodore Roosevelt’s 1900s Russo-Japanese diplomacy and not F.D. Roosevelt’s 1930s Asia policy.

(T.) Roosevelt knew that Japan coveted the Korean Peninsula as a springboard to its Asian expansion. Back in 1900, when he was still vice president, Roosevelt had written, “I should like to see Japan have Korea.” When, in February 1904, Japan broke off relations with Russia, President Roosevelt said publicly that he would “maintain the strictest neutrality,” but privately he wrote, “The sympathies of the United States are entirely on Japan’s side.”