However any one could do them if thay had been planned for it from 1936 or from 1939 ect. Japan as any other nation in the world, should have had a plan for a "if we encounter war with xxx" type of plan, also if thay had planned the Japanese Econnomy better thay could without a problem traded Tungsten for Oil with Romania as well as Venecuela in a larger degree then what thay did, this could buy them time to make the planns and preperations for "a real" first strike, instead of the poor Pearl Harbour attack that thay actualy did.
I like the way that you are thinking about the mix of ambition, economics and politics. That said, I think you need to go read about how and why Japan wound up in the pickle she was in. The basic mistake was desire to conquer China. Japan did not have the HUMAN resources to do it, but they erred in attributing their lack of success in "closing the deal" in China to a lack of *material* resources. As a result they were pursuing a poorly conceived occupation policy of brutality in occupied China, and counting on the rest of the world to merely accept brutality as an appropriate mode, and counting on the US to continue to supply all of the ever growing Japanese needs for strategic metals and fuel.
Given her hyperdependency on the USA, ANY scheme (no matter how well conceived) that involved a war with the USA immediately entailed cutting off Japan's primary source of strategic materials. The only plausible "alternate history" I can imagine that doesn't screw Japan is for Japan to find a way to make their occupation of China seem really good to the USA and UK and therefore avoid a war entirely. One possible way may have been to open up China for observation, and stand down from the culture of arrogance that had the Japanese committing atrocities even against westerners... but that'd be a whole different society from the Japan that was.
I can agree with you that it would take alot more planning and preperation, but there is no doubdt that it could been done.
I disagree. That is, there is extreme doubt that it could even have been attempted and no plausible belief that they could have pulled it off, regardless of the amount or depth of preparation.
(If prepered for and planned for for a few years), - just imagine yourself the damage you could do to the US economy if you had 10 men and the weapons or explosivse of your choise? (Now refering to vital railroad bridges, Oil Pipe lines ect ect)
The only damage that one could do would be very very short term. Not strategically significant and in the long run simply setting a standard for more vicious retaliation in the end.
as thay did not evan have a "real plan" for how to Hurt US in the long Run.
There was no way that they could have hurt the US in the long run. Their economy had about 10% of the productive capacity of the US economy, and that was when the US was willing to sell Japan all the scrap metal and oil she wanted. Beyond that, the US economy was structured to be able to expand rapidly.
Consider a road. In 1941 in the lower 48 the US could lay a 2-lane highway for 5 miles using 10 men and a machine in a day. To lay the same road in Japan required hundreds of workers for several days. If WitP *accurately* modeled engineering capability, it would literally take MONTHS for the Japanese to build up airfields in the south pacific and central pacific, and along the malay barrier, where the same degree of build up would be accomplished in a couple of weeks by a US military engineer team, or in DAYS anywhere in Australia or the USA.
