Sunk Cost Fallacy is probably a major factor here?
Japan had sunk an ungodly amount of resources, treasure,blood and political capital in its Chinese adventure and lets face it was in a sort of proxy war against the US for some time now or at least US supplied Chinese forces.
In 1941 there is now way in hell any Japanese politician with power or upper military officer would accept the sort of withdrawal the Hull Note suggested, no matter how one sees it.
At that point the powers probably had no idea what a proper "superpower" was all about. Sure the Japanese knew in abstract that the US had an overwhelming advantage when it came to numbers, economy or production.
I doubt tho they could internalize the difference between Great Power and... Well the US.
They had beat European powers before. The US was probably to them just a wee bit tougher challenge.
Japan had sunk an ungodly amount of resources, treasure,blood and political capital in its Chinese adventure and lets face it was in a sort of proxy war against the US for some time now or at least US supplied Chinese forces.
In 1941 there is now way in hell any Japanese politician with power or upper military officer would accept the sort of withdrawal the Hull Note suggested, no matter how one sees it.
At that point the powers probably had no idea what a proper "superpower" was all about. Sure the Japanese knew in abstract that the US had an overwhelming advantage when it came to numbers, economy or production.
I doubt tho they could internalize the difference between Great Power and... Well the US.
They had beat European powers before. The US was probably to them just a wee bit tougher challenge.