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(Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2014). 362 pp. $40.00. The Currents of War is a detailed diplomatic history of u.s. policy towards Japan in the years prior to World War ii . Taking an explicitly revisionist approach, Sidney Pash seeks to explain why u.s. policymakers ultimately pursued a “strategy that brought on the Pacific War” (p. xv). Drawing from the tradition of William Appleman Williams, Pash argues that the origins of this strategy lay in the first half of the 20 th Century, when u.s. policymakers, especially in the State Department, sought to maintain “Open Door” access to China. In the spirit of Williams, Pash’s treatment of the Open Door seeks to prioritize policymakers’ beliefs—their convictions, their assumptions, their mindsets, their weltanschauung—which he asserts profoundly shaped u.s. policy. In particular, he argues that the crucial actors formulating the u.s. response to Japan’s expansion into China the 1930s and 1940s—especially Secretary of State Cordell Hull and diplomat Stanley Hornbeck—were limited by a toxic combination of deep faith in American power’s deterrent effectiveness, an unshakeable belief in Japanese duplicity, and a conviction that Japan would not wage a doomed war against the United States. As a result of this
Journal of American-East Asian Relations – Brill
Published: Nov 26, 2015
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