Don’t Wait For Another Pearl Harbor

 by Alan J. Feiffer

America is visibly careening toward a state of isolationism we haven't witnessed since the 1930s. Two-thirds of my audience probably just stopped reading. But I hope you'll stay with me while I lay out something that directly matters to you today.

In 1940, the Gallup organization asked Americans:

Should the United States declare war on Germany and send our army and navy to Europe to fight?

Eighty-two percent said no; another poll found that 77% opposed declaring war even if Germany was defeating England and France.

Then, a week after Pearl Harbor, Gallup asked:

Do you approve or disapprove of Congress declaring war on Japan?

Ninety-seven percent said yes, revealing perhaps polling's largest flip-flop ever.

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The world changed on December 7; however, the underlying dangers had existed long before the attack. Pearl Harbor forced Americans to confront realities they had believed could remain distant.

America often drifts in similar denial until we're smacked in the face yet again. That's today's challenge: How do we confront serious threats early—when they're still nascent, and action may prevent war—rather than wait until they become unavoidable?

Roosevelt understood the danger and had spent months preparing a nation determined to stay out. Pearl Harbor ended the debate. Overnight, Americans grasped the new reality: war had arrived, and there was no alternative path forward.

But consider the counterfactual.

What if Pearl Harbor had never happened? What if Hitler had said, "Stay out, and we'll leave you alone"? What if Japan had avoided attacking America while continuing its drive to build its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere?

Could Roosevelt have rallied Americans to declare war on Germany and Japan? Germany had invaded Poland, France had fallen, Britain was fighting for survival, German submarines were attacking American ships, and Japan was expanding across Asia—yet public opinion remained firmly opposed to entering the war.

Americans increasingly supported aiding Europe and confronting Japan economically, but they still resisted entering the war itself. Without Pearl Harbor—and without Hitler's subsequent declaration of war on the United States—could Roosevelt have gotten America into the European war?

Probably not.

Sound vaguely familiar?

America today is again increasingly reluctant to involve itself in conflicts that appear distant, complicated, and unnecessary. That reluctance is understandable. Americans have watched decades of wars produce enormous costs with ambiguous results. They have little appetite for sending their sons and daughters to die in places most can't find on a map.

What if America had remained physically untouched while Germany conquered Europe and Japan completed its conquest of Asia? What would the world have looked like five, ten, or twenty years later?

We don't know.

And that's precisely the point.

Americans in 1941 were living in the present. They understood the costs of entering another world war. They saw the oceans between themselves and Europe and Asia. What they could not see clearly was what events over there might ultimately mean for them.

They could see the present, not what it foretold.

Today, recognizing distant threats is in some ways even harder because our adversaries can participate directly in shaping how Americans perceive them.

In 1941, America's enemies could not whisper into Americans' phones, sow doubt through social media, or tailor propaganda to their fears, resentments, and political tribes. Today they can. Foreign adversaries can bypass American leaders and traditional institutions and speak directly to the public, exploiting divisions and influencing how Americans understand events abroad.

On September 24, Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran's president, went on Fox News and spoke directly to the American public. Whatever one makes of his arguments, the episode illustrates something Americans in 1941 never had to consider: a foreign adversary can now address millions of Americans directly and influence our national dialogue.

Imagine if Hitler had been able to address the American public directly and offer peace if America remained neutral.

The information environment itself has become part of the strategic battlefield. That matters because perceptions of a distant threat help determine whether Americans will tolerate the costs of confronting it before it becomes an immediate one.

If gasoline is cheap, the Middle East seems less important. If Taiwan's semiconductor factories continue operating, China seems less threatening. If Russian missiles are falling on Ukraine, not us, Russia can seem like someone else's problem.

Until it doesn't.

I'm not arguing that America must fight every enemy, nor that every threat requires military action; it's okay to be skeptical about endless wars. My argument is simpler: We cannot evaluate the consequences of today's decisions solely by how they affect us in the moment. The future doesn't arrive independently of the present; it grows out of it.

Americans who opposed war in November 1941 weren't fools. They had good reasons. World War I was still fresh in their minds, and they honestly believed America could remain safely apart from events overseas.

Their mistake wasn't wanting peace; it was assuming the world they loved would remain untouched.

Today, America still has choices. We should weigh them carefully but not assume we have unlimited time. For much of American history, geography was our great strategic advantage. Two oceans separated us from the world's wars. Today, missiles cross those oceans in minutes, cyberattacks cross them instantaneously, supply chains stretch across them, and the world's economies are intertwined in ways few appreciate.

Distance once gave America time. Today, distance gives us the illusion of time.

The danger is not that every distant conflict will eventually reach American shores. It is that by the time Americans can see a threat clearly enough to demand action, the choices available may be radically different from those we had when the threat was still distant, ambiguous, and preventable.

Pearl Harbor was not the beginning of the danger America faced in 1941. It was the moment the danger could no longer be denied.

We should not require another Pearl Harbor to tell us the world has changed.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/10/don-t-wait-for-another-pearl-harbor/