Something I always wondered about Pacific conflict in WW2. Traditional story is that Japan saw America as the major threat, and with the oil embargo/asset freezing knew their great power dreams were eroding. The solution to this was to declare war on the U.S., destroy their fleet(s), boot out the allies, consolidate their gains and then sue for peace thereby regaining trading rights and becoming the preeminent Pacific Power.
Couldn't they have instead declared War on the Commonwealth/Dutch and gained their needed resources that way? (oil in Indonesia I believe, etc...) Or did they see that as strategically untenable due to that approach leaving them wide open to an American attack?
I've written about this a few times before, but the short answer is that if Japan wanted access to the oil and other resources of the colonial powers in Southeast Asia, it would have to go through the Philippines to get them; and the Philippines in the 1940s were an American colony. You can read more about Japanese intentions and war plans here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/80xu8w/did_the_japanese_seriously_consider_invading/