I don't think you are arguing in a circle. B is caused by current and previous As. Obviously we're not going to see a correlation unless we control for the previous state of A. Properly controlled the relationship between the two variables will be one-to-one, won't it?
It is a commonplace that correlation does not imply causality, however eyebrow-wagglingly suggestive it may be of causal hypotheses. It is less commonly noted that causality does not imply correlation either. It is quite possible for two variables to have zero correlation, and yet for one of them to be completely determined by the other.