I think the problem is with your notion of "total victory". If I may quote The Master: "Anciently, those skilled in war sought to take all under heaven intact."

Such an objective, it seems to me, turns a war of defense into a war of vengeance

No, it simply means you're aiming at a full victory rather than risking fighting the damn thing again in a decade or two.

That may have been the reasoning, but it didn't work out that way for France in 1919. Or for Germany in 1871.

Of course, it's entirely possible that each country has to learn that lesson on its own...

As an aside, by 1945 there was nothing that could possibly have prevented the US from stripping Japan of her colonies and preventing her from posing a serious threat again in the foreseeable future. And if unconditional surrender were desired anyway, blockading Japan until they complied would have been relatively straightforward, given that Japan didn't have a navy or air force at this point in the war and was dependent on imports for much of its civilian industry. Whether it would have been more humane is, however, something I'm not competent to judge.

It is striking, though, that the most obvious geostrategic difference under a continued war scenario is that it would have involved a Russian occupation of Manchuria and Korea. Given that already in 1944 the American strategic establishment had a pretty clear read on the likely fracture lines of the post-war world order, it is not unlikely that a Soviet presence in Manchuria and Korea was judged to be undesirable.

But fundamentally, I think the discussion of The Bombs is a red herring as long as one does not consider the underlying doctrine of strategic bombing. Now there is a thorny subject... that I think we should leave, however, for another diary.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.