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From The Militant, Vol. V No. 16, 19 April 1941, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
A Moscow-Tokyo pact “would constitute a symmetric supplement to the pact between Moscow and Berlin,” Trotsky predicted in an article published in Liberty magazine, January 27, 1940. Trotsky said:
“So long as Germany is occupied on the western front, the Soviet Union feels much more free in the Far East. This doesn’t mean that offensive operations will be launched there. It is true that the Japanese oligarchy is even less capable of waging war than the one in Moscow. However, compelled to face the west, Moscow cannot have the slightest motive for expanding in Asia. Japan, for her part, must consider that she could expect a serious and even annihilating resistance from the USSR. Under these conditions Tokyo must prefer the program of her army – an offensive not to the west but to the south, toward the Philippines, Dutch East Indies, Borneo, French Indo-China, British Burma.
“An agreement between Moscow and Tokyo, on this basis would constitute a symmetric supplement to the pact between Moscow and Berlin.”
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Last updated on 4 November 2015