US Naval Nostalgia for a Traditional Enemy

The British White Paper on defence spending provided a pretext for the US Navy to weigh into the debate on US rearmament. Affecting to treat mention of building up the Royal Navy as being aimed at the US, Admiral Leahy publicly asked whether the moment had arrived to match the British building programme. It was still an episode of the cart of armaments was put before the horse of diplomacy. Leahy’s remark only made sense if an Anglo-Japanese alliance against the US in the Pacific was a meaningful risk. It sounded pleasant, though, to US traditionalists. An Anglo-US agreement aimed at Japan was equally improbable; no such thing was even talked about, but in the calculus of diplomacy Japan’s aggressive expansionism threatened the English speaking powers with a force and immediacy, which entirely eclipsed their historic mutual rivalry. The President wisely ducked this aspect of naval rearmament, and instead focused on steering it through the minefields of his own social legislation. T