It seems to me that, in July of 1941, Roosevelt could have invited ambassador Nomura to have a discussion in the Oval Office, with Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and explained to him that the American people were gravely concerned about reports (from multiple reliable sources) of Japanese atrocities in China. If these didn't stop, and if Japan didn't stop its invasion of China, he could have said, then, to their great regrets, the United States would have to sanction Japan by restricting oil exports, in order to apply serious pressure on Japan, without, however, going so far as trying to crush its economy and its military (there was no need to humiliate Japan by withdrawing all the oil used by its military). I see no reason why ambassador Nomura, and Japanese leaders, would not have understood such a pedagogic (and gradual) approach.
This paragraph is so astonishingly wrong that I cannot decide which bit of stupid to address first.
Had the Japanese been told in no uncertain terms that the US would cut off its oil supply, Japan would have seen itself as having no choice but to try to remove the American threat in the Pacific. Pearl Harbor would have been an attack with a rubber band finger gun compared to what Japan would actually do to American interests (and lives). The best way to be attacked by a tiger is to corner it, which is exactly what you are suggesting FDR should have done.
Japan's invasion of China was not some innocent testing of the waters. Japan truly and deeply believed that it had a claim to the Chinese coast and all of Korea.They didn't occupy the ring of fire because they thought it would be neat and snazzy. They did it because they were honestly convinced of their claims to those lands. They were so convinced that they had little problem murdering a whole bunch of people (including their own young men) to secure it.
And that leads to my last and probably most important point - racism. We talk about racism when the Germans convinced themselves that all of their problems were caused by Jews. We talk about it when we say the US should never have interred its own citizens of Japanese descent. However, we don't talk nearly enough about Japanese racism.
The Japanese were absolutely and unquestionably convinced that they were the genetic, intellectual and moral superiors of all the rest of Asia. They particularly hated the Koreans.
In fact, you can still find traces of this left. Almost all anthropologists agree that Japan was the most backwards of islands before Koreans began to settle in the south. Then, archeologists can literally watch the hallmarks of civilization slowly creep north. The only anthropologists/archeologists who disagree? Japanese ones. In Japan, the idea that small bands of nomads were turned into sedentary cities by copying Korea, with the help of Korean settlers.
Nobody in WWII really thought much about anybody else's point of view. Everybody was convinced that they were the best nation and all others could stick it in their ear. That was true of the Japanese, too. They were never going to release their claims on China, Korea, and other ring of fire nations. They certainly weren't going to do it because their ambassador to the US had been given a stern talking-to.
You are hanging on to your points with your bare hands because they support your conclusion that Belgium could have escaped the harshness of other countries' war. Don't start with a conclusion. Start with facts and build up to whatever conclusion they may support.
Also, your understanding about the "ease" of amending the US Constitution is so magnificently wrong that, as a doctor of laws, I cannot think about it without getting a headache.
