the attack on Pearl Harbor was retaliation for those economic sanctions
Not quite. after the sanctions we put on Japan and cutting off oil trade with them, Japan needed a source of oil to fuel their war machine in china. They started eyeing us allies south of them, at which point the US moved its fleet to Pearl harbor to basically tell Japan "don't you dare". Japan dared, and the rest is history.
The other issue at hand is Japan is a (largely) resourceless chain of islands for a lot of things required to function, including space.
The southern resource area was decided to be more easily taken over (vs the north, which was a Japanese Army plan and included Siberia, etc) which the expansion and war was meant to give Japan room to defend their interests.
Attacking Pearl Harbor was Japan trying to both work with Hitler and remove the US as a significant power to challenge their expansion to the south. The problem (fundamentally) was a lack of understanding of how the US would react, and we had the same problem with Japan later.
Not quite. after the sanctions we put on Japan and cutting off oil trade with them, Japan needed a source of oil to fuel their war machine in china. They started eyeing us allies south of them, at which point the US moved its fleet to Pearl harbor to basically tell Japan "don't you dare". Japan dared, and the rest is history.
The other issue at hand is Japan is a (largely) resourceless chain of islands for a lot of things required to function, including space.
The southern resource area was decided to be more easily taken over (vs the north, which was a Japanese Army plan and included Siberia, etc) which the expansion and war was meant to give Japan room to defend their interests.
Attacking Pearl Harbor was Japan trying to both work with Hitler and remove the US as a significant power to challenge their expansion to the south. The problem (fundamentally) was a lack of understanding of how the US would react, and we had the same problem with Japan later.