Potsdam Declaration Rhetorical Analysis

On the 26th of July, 1945, the United States, China, and the United Kingdom released the Potsdam Declaration, urging Japan to surrender unconditionally. A critical examination of the Potsdam Declaration reveals the West’s complicated relationship with religious freedom and foreign policy. While the Potsdam Declaration may initially seem to suggest American saviorism as a means to promote religious freedom, in this essay I argue American saviorism is empty rhetoric and the document is instead a threat to Japan. The declaration imposes empty rhetoric because the writers wanted to distract from America’s greater mission: imperialism. The Potsdam Declaration ultimately supports Jolyon Baraka Thomas’ idea in his book Faking Liberties that there

According to the United States, the Japanese people have been misled because the people are told by the Japanese government that they must follow Shintoism. Thus, the United States perceived Japanese citizens as being denied a supposed global inalienable right: religious freedom. America believed the Japanese should be members of the free world, which would include maintaining religious freedom, and shouldn't be withheld from this privilege because of their government. Therefore, the United States takes the task of promoting religious freedom in Japan upon itself by offering Japan the chance to “follow the path of reason”. Who better for the job than the epitome of the ‘free world’? The United States believed the achievement of religious freedom in Japan would never be possible without American intervention to set the example. However, the Potsdam Declaration is also a threat, or ultimatum, to Japan. The only alternative to the Potsdam Declaration is “prompt and utter destruction” and the West is prepared to “strike the final blows upon Japan” if the conditions of the declaration are not