On Reflection | The lesson from Pearl Harbour that Donald Trump needs to learn
Having kicked up a storm by talking to Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan, the US president-elect would do well to remember that the pre-war history of Asia suggests economic isolationism leads to brutal politics and, eventually, war
Seventy-five years ago, on December 7, 1941, Japanese fighter planes attacked American warships at anchor in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii. They attacked Manila, Hong Kong and Guam hours later, but it was the attack on the American naval base that history has preserved, in the memorable phrasing of president Franklin Roosevelt, as a “date which will live in infamy”.
There’s not much sign yet that the next president, Donald Trump, has noticed this anniversary. Nor is his rhetoric quite as commanding as Roosevelt’s. Tweeting “Sad!” doesn’t quite match up to “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
But, like Roosevelt, he has taken to rethinking Asian geopolitics, with his phone call with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen and his follow-up comments about China being a country that snatches away US jobs while building up its strength in the South China Sea.
Trump might do well to reflect on the legacy of Pearl Harbour. It was a moment whose effects are still very much with us today. It was a pivotal historical moment for a simple reason: it was the moment that two wars – Hitler’s war in Europe and the Japanese aggression in Asia – came together into a world war (Hitler helpfully declared war on the United States a few days after the Japanese attack, giving Roosevelt an easier path to involve the US in Europe as well as Asia.)
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The war lasted four more years, but the regional order that it bequeathed in 1945 has been with us, in some form, for more than seven decades.