The Back Door to War Strategy

Shoot on sight means you've adopted a clearly non neutral, aggressive posture. This is despite the existence of an undeclared naval war between germany and the united states. Roosevelt hesitated to ask for a formal declaration because most of the american public still supported neutrality at this point. According to some he believed that he could obtain a public consensus in favor of war only if the country were aked by a foreign power. And so the proposal is that he either manoeuvered japan into attacking us, or at least did nothing deliberately when he learned that japan was about to attack. In later years it was referred to as the back door to war strategy.