FDR's intentions prior to Pearl Harbor: the Dutch perspective

Abstract

The “backdoor theory” argues that President Franklin D. Roosevelt actively put the United States on a collision course with Japan in 1941, with the goal of bringing the United States into the European war, in spite of US public opinion favoring to stay out of the conflict. The focal point of the backdoor theory is the oil embargo on Japan, that the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands, including the Netherlands East Indies implemented July 1941.

While the Dutch support was of crucial importance for the success of the oil embargo, the role of the Dutch government and the Netherlands East Indies is not fully examined. In the light of the economic and (geo-) political significance of the Indies to the Netherlands and the risks that came with supporting the embargo, namely a Japanese invasion, the question emerges what the Netherlands had to gain by supporting such an embargo.

The Dutch motives for supporting the oil embargo and the Dutch assessment of FDR’s intentions offer a valuable new perspective on the backdoor theory. This paper offers a transatlantic approach by examining FDR’s intentions in the Far East from the perspective of the Dutch government. Archival research on the Dutch perception of FDR’s policy vis-à-vis Japan strongly supports the notion that FDR did not wish to deter Japan, but aimed to use the Indies as decoy to provoke war with Japan.

This research places Roosevelt’s policy towards Japan in the Far East in the broader 1941 geopolitical context. This will reveal the early phases of the US Far Eastern policy and the way US policy makers used and perpetuated the colonial relations of the European powers in the process of curbing Japanese expansionist policies in the Pacific.