GR context: reasons for the War

[pynchonoid]

[...] The United States' war with Japan from 1941 to
1945 was primarily a battle for control of Southeast
Asia's immense mineral and vegetable wealth. The
region, comprising Burma, British Malaya, French
Indochina, the Netherlands East Indies, the
Philippines, and Thailand, held rich supplies of
rubber, tin, tungsten, and other tropical commodities
essential to the economies of the advanced industrial
nations. Japan sought to end Western dominance of Asia
and build a self-sufficient economy by integrating
these lands into its own bloc, isolating the United
States and Great Britain from their primary sources of
these products. Defending a status quo that favored
the Western liberal powers, the United States drew the
line for Japanese expansion at Southeast Asia. [...]
But simple trade figures do not begin to tell the
whole story of U.S. economic dependence upon Southeast
Asia. With the world engulfed in war, vital industrial
materials took on a strategic importance far
outweighing their dollar value. Cut off from their
Southeast Asian supply lines, whole industries would
be unable to begin even the first stage of production
and would face agonizing readjustments or total ruin.
Production lines of tanks, trucks, and ships might
grind to a halt. These were the real stakes, as
popular economic analyst Eliot Janeway asserted at the
time: "It is on the economic front that Japan's drive
threatens us most dangerously: the American economy,
and with it American defense, cannot be operated
without rubber and tin, which at present cannot be
obtained in adequate quantity except from the British
and Dutch colonies in southeastern Asia. And Japan
today commands the trade route connecting the west
coast of the United States with the Malaysian Straits.
. . . Here, ready to hand for Japan, is a safer and
more powerful weapon against the United States than
the folly of naval attack."

And as the State Department's chief Far East expert,
Stanley Hornbeck, concurred in 1940, "the United
States finds itself so vitally and overwhelmingly
dependent on southeastern Asia that our entire foreign
policy must be adjusted to that fact. . . . It is not
an exaggeration to say that the United States would be
compelled, for its existence as a major industrial
state, to wage war against any power or powers that
might threaten to sever our trade lines with this part
of the world." [...] 

...from the Preface:
To Have and Have Not: Southeast Asian Raw Materials
and the Origins of the Pacific War.
by Jonathan Marshall.  
Berkeley:  University of California Press,  1995.
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft4489n8wm/
(the whole book is online)

20 years later, while Pynchon writes GR, the US is
still trying to control this region and these raw
materials, to ensure the health and wealth of the
companies (and shareholders) that depend on them for
profits.

<BR>

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