"The west" is always, always, to blame

The Guardian's Comment is Free has an article by Eri Hotta that makes some odd claims to justify the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour (67 years ago yesterday), apparently:

"Japan's military thrust into southeast Asia led President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration to impose sanctions. The US froze Japanese assets, an example followed by Britain and the Dutch East Indies. When Japan responded by taking over southern French Indochina, the US retaliated by imposing an embargo on oil exports to Japan. Rather than telling Japan that the US was determined to search for a diplomatic solution, America's categorical reaction confirmed it to the Japanese as an arrogant and conceited enemy. Moreover, by transferring its Pacific fleet from San Diego to Pearl Harbor, the US encouraged the Japanese understanding that the US fully anticipated war with Japan.

The second world war in the Pacific finally came about for many different reasons. But it was, above all, the sense of encirclement and humiliation that united the deeply divided Japanese government. Feeling defeated by a series of failed approaches to the US, including an overture to hold direct talks with Roosevelt, prime minister Fumimaro Konoe resigned on October 16, making hard-line army minister Hideki Tōjō his successor. "

Read the rest and wonder if anyone apart from "the West" is ever to blame for anything, free-will seems to go out of the window in Guardian-land.

I presume Eri Hotta has heard of the "1937 Rape of Nanjing", or maybe that is of no consequence as the perpetrators were not Americans or British and therefore the rape and murder of hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians is of no consequence when compared to one shot being fired by Imperialist American or British troops.