From Colony to Superpower XII: The Calm Before…

Chapter XII of From Colony to Superpower covers the period between 1932 and 1941. This is, as far as I can recall, the first time that Herring has broken up a presidential administration across chapters. This is, of course, a sensible enough move in the context of the Roosevelt administration…

Herring goes into some detail on international efforts to ameliorate the Great Depression. FDR does not come off well; he has little interest in accomodation with Europe, and minimal diplomatic skill. Given the immense size of the US economy relative to any European economy, this pretty much doomed the effort to create a multilateral response to the Depression. In fairness to Roosevelt, the international economy was not nearly as institutionalized in the 1930s as it would be post-war, but I suspect, nevertheless, that much good could have been accomplished by focusing on the disaster that was overtaking the entire Atlantic community, rather than to disaggregate the problem into a series of separate, national disasters. Although Roosevelt certainly understood the nature of the crisis, he may not have fully grasped its international dimension, or the possibility that international action could remedy, if not solve, certain aspects of the Depression.

Wholly apart from the Depression, the decade 1931-1940 was, of course, quite eventful. Roosevelt followed Hoover’s non-confrontational policy with Japan over Manchuria, but he did break with precedent by extending full diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union. Herring doesn’t dwell overmuch on Roosevelt’s conduct of relations with Japan, hitting the high points and moving on. It does merit note that Roosevelt’s Asia policy was well within the American mainstream in the first half of the twentieth century; the US strongly preferred access to China, and was willing to take a number of steps short of war to preserve that access. What changed between 1931 and 1941 was the Japanese invasion of China, and then (perhaps more important) Japan’s linkage with the European Axis and Japan’s seizure of French Indochina. The notion that Roosevelt “forced” Japan into war hardly merits attention; Japan was dependent on US resources in order to pursue its conquest of China and SE Asia. In response to US pressure it could have abandoned such policies; while the outcome of the oil embargo was predictable, it doesn’t follow that Roosevelt was responsible for the Japanese decision.

While the US maintained diplomatic relations with Germany well into the Second World War (although the US ambassador was recalled in 1938), there was never much question as to where Roosevelt’s sympathies lay. Herring’s account doesn’t differ from most other accounts of this period in suggesting that Roosevelt was willing to take reasonable risks on behalf of the United Kingdom, and that he identified Nazi Germany as a serious threat to American security. These steps are familiar; exchange of military information, loans, arms exports, Lend Lease, and eventually direct cooperation in the anti-submarine war. By December 1941, the United States was already de facto at war with Germany; Hitler’s declaration of war simply made things official, and opened American coastal shipping to U-boat devastation.

US relations with Latin America reached a high point during this decade. The US didn’t have the means to muck around in Central America or the Caribbean, nor did Roosevelt have much of a taste for such adventurism. The result was the Good Neighbor policy, which minimized chances for intervention while continuing to push trade contact. The situation became somewhat more complicated with the rise of German influence in Latin America, leading the US to make a variety of trade and political concessions in return for the excision of German capital and advisors. For example, Mexican nationalization of US owned oil assets in 1938 brought hardly a peep from the US, as long as Mexico agreed to minimize its contacts with Japan and the European Axis. Military-to-military connections (these would eventually grow into the School of the Americas) also began during this period.

More soon…