This thread includes a similar question and covers the diplomacy leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. This answer from /u/lubyak is also valuable. This answer from /u/DBHT14 also has some good information, as does this older answer from /u/kasirzin.

The United States and Japan had been in continuous negotiations throughout 1941 (and even before) in an attempt to avoid war. By fall of 1941 it became increasingly obvious that there was no real hope for a diplomatic solution. The two countries were too far apart. The Japanese had indeed considered whether they could bypass American forces and achieve their strategic goals that you mentioned. While Americans remember Pearl Harbor, the meatiest part of the attacks in December of 1941 and January 1942 included offensives to capture Malaya, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, and some other areas. Any review of a map shows that the American presence in the Philippines could threaten the Japanese advances into those areas. The United States maintained a navy base and large presence of aircraft in the Philippines that could be used to interdict movements of Japanese men and materiel.

Given their discussions in 1941, it was clear to the Japanese that the American position in the Philippines would have to be attacked. The United States had signaled to the Japanese during these discussions that it considered Japanese expansionism unacceptable. There were vehement responses from the United States to Japan's moves into Indochina in 1940 and 1941. The Americans were unambiguous about further expansion.

Public perception of Japanese expansionism is outside the area that I've studied. The American government's concerns about Japanese expansionism were complex. To boil it down, the Roosevelt administration was concerned about a world that featured Nazi domination of Europe and Japanese domination of Asia, perhaps with a Soviet sphere of influence as well. In early 1941, you might successfully argue that "World War II" had not formally begun; there were separate conflicts in Europe and Japan's war in Asia. By the end of 1941, with the Soviet Union and the United States drawn into the conflict, the global situation was different.

However, Franklin Roosevelt considered the conflicts linked even before that. Japan's decision to join the Tripartite Pact in 1940 was certainly one factor. Another was the importance of Britain's colonial holdings to its security at home. Shortly after his inauguration in early 1941, Roosevelt wrote to Joseph Grew, America's ambassador in Tokyo:

You suggest as one of the chief factors in the problem of our attitude toward Japan the question whether or getting into war with Japan would so handicap our help to Britain in Europe as to make the difference to Britain between victory and defeat. In this connection it seems to me that we must consider whether, if Japan should gain possession of the region of the Netherlands East Indies and the Malay Peninsula, the chances of England's winning in her struggle with Germany would not be decreased thereby. The British Isles, the British in those Isles, have been able to exist and to defend themselves not only because they have prepared strong local defenses but also because as the heart and the nerve center of the British Empire they have been able to draw upon vast resources for their sustenance and to bring into operation against their enemies economic, military and naval pressures on a worldwide scale. They live by importing goods from all parts of the world and by utilizing large overseas financial resources. They are defended not only by measures of defense carried out locally but also by distant and widespread economic, military, and naval activities which both contribute to the maintenance of their supplies, deny certain sources of supply to the their enemies, and prevent those enemies from concentrating the full force of their armed power against the heart and nerve center of the Empire. The British need assistance along the lines of our generally established policies at many points, assistance well within the realm of "possibility" so far as the capacity of the United States is concerned. Their defense strategy must in the nature of things be global. Our strategy of giving them assistance toward ensuring our own security must envisage both sending of supplies to England and helping to prevent a closing of channels of communication to and from various parts of the world, so that other important sources of supply will not be denied to the British and be added to the assets of the other side.

Roosevelt already viewed it as a global conflict, where one theater affected the other. That doesn't necessarily mean the American public would agree with him, though.

I am not aware of how Roosevelt planned to sell this to the American people without an attack. He certainly understood that it would be easier to gain public support for war if the United States were attacked first. For the most part, the expectation was that the Japanese were bound to attack given their course of action. Henry Stimson, then the Secretary of War, wrote in his diary of a meeting with the President on November 25, 1941 that was later referenced in Congress' Pearl Harbor investigation and seized upon by conspiracy theorists. From Stimson:

(Army Chief of Staff) General Marshall and I went to the White House, where we were until nearly half past one. At the meeting were (Secretary of State Cordell) Hull, (Secretary of the Navy Frank) Knox, Marshall, (Chief of Naval Operations Harold) Stark, and myself.

The President brought up the event that we were likely to be attacked, perhaps (as soon as) next Monday, for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning, and the question was what we should do. The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.

By this point, the Japanese fleet bound for Pearl Harbor had already departed. American naval intelligence was tracking hundreds of other Japanese warships and supply ships carrying men and equipment for their offensive. There was no need to maneuver the Japanese into anything. The attack was already in motion.