desperately to win. Chiang Kai-Shek, however, withdrew even more deeply into the interior and tied the United States more tightly to his regime. The Japanese government would not negotiate a settlement with Chiang Kai-Shek, though that would have ended the war, and instead the Japanese believed that if the United States would discontinue its aid to the nationalist government, the latter would be forced to reach a settlement, one that would recognize some type of Japanese territorial gains in China:
All three parties understood the Japanese rationale clearly; the United States refused to cooperate with the Japanese plan. Each month that the Sino-Japanese War continued the Japanese military became more desperate. In the meantime, the Americans interpreted the Japanese signing of the Tripartite Pact of 1940 with Germany and Italy as directed toward the United States. The three nations appeared to have reached a decision to carve up the world among them. Japan's occupation of all of French Indochina seemed to confirm that suspicion.
The Japanese were on a quest for self-sufficiency and empire, and this was being met by increased economic sanctions by the United States. The Japanese military developed a siege mentality and argued that the only solution was war:
When Nazi Germany attacked their traditional foe, the Soviet Union, and seemed the inevitable victor in the late fall of 1941, Japan took the opportunity to eliminate U.S. interference in the Pacific.
Hata Ikuhiko agrees that the Tripartite Pact was the impetus for the war and note that it offered an illusion of global strategy. The signing of the pact made Japan the enemy of the United States; added resolve to China in her war with Japan; drove the USSR into the American camp; and probably led to the attack on Pearl Harbor:
When he made his decision to plunge into the war, Prime Minister Tojo was in a desperate state of mind. . . Unless he was willing to...