President Biden today warned Russian strongman President Putin against invading Ukraine, press accounts say. The telephone parley falls 80 years after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, adding a frisson of historical resonance, even if it’s merely an accident of scheduling. It’s nevertheless a moment to remember not only the infamy of that day, but the why of it. Pearl Harbor happened because Japan failed to appreciate the consequences of attacking America.

A RAND study on World War II’s origins reckons that in the lead-up to the 1941 sneak attack “Japan saw the United States as having weak will and capability.” America’s “military had been allowed to deteriorate over a twenty-year period,” and “isolationism and neutrality reflected America’s interwar mood.” The regime in Tokyo, along with their allies in Berlin, also “believed that they were racially and spiritually superior to the effete Americans,” RAND’s authors say.

We know now that Japan made a mistake. All the Japanese Empire accomplished, in the words of its own Admiral Yamamoto, was to “awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” Even then, victory over Japan would take more than three years and come at a cost of more than 100,000 American lives, not to mention 2 million Japanese deaths. It would have been even more costly but for the atomic bomb.

Today’s phone call between Messrs. Biden and Putin falls amidst a general testing of America’s resolve to defend its allies and interests in Europe and Asia. Russia has massed troops and threatens to “retaliate” should Ukraine attack armed separatists in the Donbass region, or even if Kiev’s allies simply send weapons or troops. Russia may well think it can act with impunity, as it did when it seized Crimea from Ukraine during the Obama Presidency.

At that time, Mr. Putin faced few consequences beyond Vice President Biden threatening to “increase the costs to Russia” for “blatantly violating Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Last week State Secretary Blinken warned Russia that if it “decides to pursue confrontation, there will be serious consequences,” which may not frighten Mr. Putin. Aleksandra Gadzala-Tirziu has reported in the Sun that he dreams of “a grandly restored ‘Great Russia’” with Ukraine back under Moscow’s thumb.

In the Pacific, communist China has been ramping up its own threats against the free Chinese republic on Taiwan. Beijing has effected a huge naval buildup, lofted new weapons into space, tested advanced hypersonic missiles, and achieved dominance in artificial intelligence. Mr. Biden said America would defend Taiwan, but then his aides walked back the comment, reinforcing the post-Afghanistan sense of White House confusion. Is this vacillation serving to embolden America’s enemies?

Particularly at the moment when our adversaries look at us and perceive that we have a divided Congress that cannot pass a National Defense Authorization Act; a faltering economy; an administration that surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban; and a State Department working harder to appease Iran than to stop its nuclear bomb program. We wouldn’t want to make too much of that, but neither would want to ignore it.

In terms of American interests, neither Ukraine nor Taiwan rank with the fleet that was sunk at Pearl Harbor. And no one is suggesting the possibility of an attack like Pearl Harbor on the territory of the United States itself. Yet looking back to the events of 80 years ago, we can’t help but wonder whether America’s enemies today are feeling the same perception of American “weak will and capability” that the Japanese regime thought it detected on December 7, 1941.

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Image of the USS Arizona courtesy of Wikimedia commons.