I very much admire Marc Trachtenberg's scholarship, and much appreciate
his recalling my comments on the "curious pact between presidents and
the public."  I stand by those comments and ever so cautiously suggest
another example:  the firm public endorsement of the Vietnam War in
1963-65 "allowed" Kennedy and Johnson to set it on the road to
ever-increasing expansion of the U.S. commitment -- without a
declaration of war.

But I do draw the line at Marc's resuscitation of the "back door to war"
thesis.  Perhaps FDR did believe that a war with Japan would give him
the freedom to go to war with Germany, though I know of no evidence (as
opposed to speculation) for that.  Rather, I would suggest that the
prevailing attitude in the Administration was that Japan was too smart
to attack the U.S., a much stronger and more powerful nation.
FDR's policies after 1937 were aimed at deterring Japanese expansion,
not starting a war.  By the time Roosevelt recognized that the Japanese
would not back down (autumn 1941), it was too late.  As that became
clear to the Administration, General Marshall asked the President to do
what he could to postpone the conflict because the U.S. military was not
prepared to respond to a Japanese attack -- anywhere (however much they
exaggerated the destructive power of B-17 bombers).  For FDR actively to
seek war with Japan (and only a direct war could act as a back-door for
war against Germany) without ensuring military preparedness suggests
either overweaning contempt for Japan's military (possible, but not
revealed in anything FDR said or wrote), or that FDR was just plain
stupid (hardly a rational assessment).  The back-door result may have
flitted across the minds of FDR and his senior advisers, but Charles
Tansill could not find any hard evidence of that, and I know of no
scholar who has.

Cheers,
Warren Kimball
Rutgers University

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