I recall an ethics instructor who decried our tendency to assume that ethical violations would be easy to spot, as if we resembled those roast turkeys with an inserted thermometer that would pop out at the right moment.
The difficulty of gaining timely notice is also present in defense strategy debates when people declare that no military action should be taken unless there is an imminent threat.
Just what constitutes an imminent threat is where things become vague. Some threats are difficult to discern until it's too late to do much about them.
At which point did the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor become an imminent threat? Would there have been time for an effective defense once the threat was undeniable?
I've seen similar situations with organizations. Given our ability to deny dangers - to stare at a lion and declare "That is not a lion" - the only moment when many matters are crystal clear are when they are being analyzed from inside of the lion's stomach.
Rather than looking for major stages, we should consider the flow of events. That requires both information and attentiveness.
It may also require what many may regard as premature confrontation.
[Photo by Birger Strahl at Unsplash]
If you consider all the little things the US was doing to mold and shape Japan’s economy and power by use of oil embargoes and other things, Japan had people looking at this attack on their sovereignty as an imminent threat that yielded just one solution and yet some people today never stop talking about imposing hugely dramatic sanctions and all act as if reasonable people will not conflate them with acts of war and aggression.
ReplyDeleteJapan's highly aggressive actions in China and the nature of the Japanese military were such that the Japanese should have been surprised if they were not regarded as a threat. They also followed precedent from their war with Russia by starting the war with a surprise attack.
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