Anglo-American Strategic Relations and the Far East, 1933-1939 (review)

This is an unabashedly revisionist book. It is not that its thesis is arresting: Anglo-American "special" relations originated in the Far East between 1933 and 1939 when London and Washington pursued parallel rather than joint policies to maintain the western Pacific balance of power. Rather, Kennedy's revisionism stems from attacking the supposed failings of almost every historian who has studied interwar Anglo-American relations, in particular, and British and American foreign and defence policy, in general; the list includes Brian Bond, Robert Dallek, Michael Howard, Peter Lowe, Malcolm Muir, David Reynolds, Donald Watt, and everyone in-between. Thus, works about Anglo-American relations after 1937 "fail to appreciate the true nature of the ongoing relationships that already existed" (p. 16 and n. 2). Non-American historians, critical of American policy in the 1930s for not supporting Britain, "have laboured under a number of mistaken liberal notions" (p. 3). Others "confuse Japan's tactical or operational competence and innovation with strategic superiority" (p. 10). Word limits prevent me from going on; I will just say that for Kennedy, the list of poor and/or unfortunate historians who have failed to provide an accurate account of Anglo-American relations in the context of the 1930s is staggering. Hence, his revisionism.

No one will deprecate Kennedy's energies or research—his archival work on both sides of the Atlantic is impressive. But his revisionism's limitations can be illuminated by looking at three major issues covered in his book. First, contrary to most analyses of interwar Anglo-American relations, Kennedy argues that those in the Far East improved in the 1930s via low-level contacts between British and American naval officers and diplomats, which allowed for parallel policies to maintain the balance. One example (p. 17) concerns the Lytton Commission, sent by the League of Nations to the Far East in 1932 to investigate the Manchurian crisis. Kennedy shows that Lord Lytton's secretary leaked information through an American advisor to the Commission, Blakeslee, to the American ambassador in China. The ambassador then provided "unofficial" comments to help the commissioners. Whilst no doubt true, Kennedy is unaware that Lytton's group included an American commissioner, General Frank McCoy, a trusted friend of Henry Stimson, the U.S. Secretary of State. McCoy kept Stimson fully apprised of all Commission deliberations. Here and throughout this study, the importance of low-level contacts is over-stated. More telling for later Anglo-American "special" relations would have been an analysis of low-level officers and diplomats who had importance after 1939 or, even, 1941. Admiral Ernest King comes quickly to mind.

From this derives the second point. Who was making British and American policies? Kennedy avers (p. 7) that: "High-level officials rarely 'make' policy, they simply approve or disapprove recommendations." From this flows his argument about low-level contacts and their influence. Yet Kennedy undercuts his argument about "high-level officials" not making policy each time he discusses the bête-noir in this book, Neville Chamberlain, British chancellor of the exchequer (1931-37) and premier (1937-40); for instance, in 1934, over Foreign Office opposition, Chamberlain and the Treasury tried with near success to reestablish the Anglo-Japanese alliance (pp. 136-39); "the anti-American sentiments and ill-conceived foreign policy of . . . Chamberlain reared its head in early 1938, threatening the fabric of the newly-established Anglo-American relationship" (p. 239); in May 1939, British policy wobbled because Chamberlain was indecisive (p. 80). And what is argued about Chamberlain is doubly so when that other giant of the period, Franklin Roosevelt, is discussed—thus, although genuflecting to Donald Watt's eminence in assessing interwar Anglo-American relations, Kennedy seeks unsuccessfully to revise Watt about Roosevelt's significant influence on American policy towards Britain.

Finally...