I'm sorry, I have to go back to it.

"Also, Stalin probably could have been persuaded by Western diplomats to lease part of Korea. He really didn't have any interests in Asia. He was just after Europe."

As if Stalin would deny himself an advantage in Asia. Plus, you need to remember that Korea has a part of Japan at the time, so the occupier, whomever it may be, couldn't "lease" it to anyone. The Soviets might have allowed us to use bases there, but why would they? If I were Stalin I'd let the West bleed itself dry in Japan and do only the bare minimum to sustain a war. There'd be a great excuse, too.

"Comrade, we Russians are tired of war. For years we fought the fascists alone and lost millions of our people. Our land was raped from Stalingrad to Leningrad. Surely you cannot press us to commit to another total war against an enemy we are fighting purely out of a sense of solidarity with our allies. Japan never attacked us, why should millions more Soviets die in an invasion of Japan?"

Meanwhile, the Russians DO attack the Japanese in China and give safe haven to the Chinese Communists. A continued war with Japan would only have given the Soviet Union a stronger position. Surely no one will say that the world would have been better off with the USSR rather than the USA having a slight advantage in the Cold War?

More or less what all but one of us was saying.