Compare and contrast sources j and k reveal about the significance of the three power/tripartite pact.
By September 1940, Britain could be assured of continued American support, and the United States had already implemented some of its embargoes against Japan. Under the circumstances, there would have been no way in which an Axis pact would cause the Anglo-American powers to soften their stand. On the contrary, the pact could be expected to give them added resolve to stand firm. This is exactly what happened.
Japanese and German negotiators were fully aware of the developing ties between America and Britain, and for this very reason they hoped their alliance would serve to check and reduce the effectiveness of American intervention. By then, as Matsuoka [the Japanese Foreign
Source j: explained at the time, it was becoming obvious that the United States was steadily involving itself not only in European but in Asian-Pacific affairs as well. It was tying itself not just to the British in the Atlantic but to the Commonwealth in Asia and the Pacific. The United States, in fact, would establish itself as a global power, with its influence in the Atlantic, Canada, the Western hemisphere, the Pacific Ocean and Asia. It followed, then, that it would be an American-led coalition that Japan had to confront and be prepared to fight. It would no longer be China in isolation, but China assisted by the Soviet Union, Britain, and especially the United States.
Source k: The American response quickly revealed the folly of Matsuoka’s claim – that the Tripartite [Three Power] Pact would serve as a deterrent. Instead, it merely confirmed American views that Japan was a belligerent [warlike], bullying, imperialist force in the Far East, an Asian equivalent of Nazi Germany, and had to be stopped. Such views seemed confirmed by the entry of Japanese troops into French Indochina on 23 September 1940. The essential purpose of the Tripartite Pact, from the Japanese perspective, was to deter the United States from intervening to prevent the southern advance seen as necessary to ensure Japan’s control of raw materials and, therefore, her future economic and political security.
The gamble in the pact was self-evident. What if the United States did not regard the pact as a deterrent, but as a provocation? What if the effect was to reinforce the determination to prevent Japanese expansion by threatening the lifeline of oil supplies? But from a Japanese perspective at the time, the gamble had to be taken. To take it held great dangers, but also the potential of enormous rewards. Not to take it meant long-term domination by the Anglo-American powers. It meant, too, that the China War had been in vain. The need for boldness, not caution, carried the day in such a mentality.
