The point was to not have Pearl Harbor.
Let me try to understand your logic. Are you saying had the USA not put an embargo on oil and steel to the Imperial Japanese, that that type of appeasement would have likely meant they would not have ever decided to attack the USA? Is that your point?
Even if they had not attacked Pearl Harbor to take out our navy, they still were going to attack our bases in the Philippines, and also all of the British, French, Dutch and other bases throughout the region, including the European ports in China. The Imperial Japanese were on a quest to preserve Asia for Asians as they said, so allowing them to get stronger by appeasement was not going to change the final outcome, unless as the Japanese wrongly believed, that the USA and then Britain too, would just cave and allow for Japan to keep going.
Japan's miscalculation was based on the assumption that the Western powers, including the USA (albeit neutral at the time, but only in name), would not have the power or will after or during the fighting in Europe, to come after the Japanese. And when we finally decided to, that Japan would be too strong, and then able to force us into a negotiated settlement, leaving Japan as the ruling power in much of Asia.
Total miscalculation. The Imperial Japanese leaders were drunk on their own initial successes. They had a very poor understanding of the pent up power and ability of the post depression industrial might of the United States. I mean God man, just look at how in a couple of years we turned the United States into one giant military factory, pumping out thousands of ships, aircraft, and munitions. Something no other nation at time had any matching ability to do. Not Britain, not France, not Germany, or Russia, and even not the very crafty and industrious Japanese. They were wildly outmatched, and they didn't even realize it as they looked across the Pacific at America quietly just lumbering along at that period during the depression.
