Discord and deception: Germany’s failure to woo the USA in Asia and the Pacific before 1914

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay examines the key background issues that caused increasing friction between the two United States and Imperial Germany; particularly, it considers from Germany’s geopolitical perspective its motivations for seeking American cooperation in East Asia and the contradictory approaches it followed. Issues are analysed that contributed to increasing German-American friction and Germany’s often manipulative actions to entice cooperation from the United States, prevent close Anglo-American cooperation, counteract British imperial and commercial influence, and neutralize Japanese ambitions. German politicians hoped that a subsidiary effect of the shifting of power relationships in the Asian-Pacific region would be the strengthening of Germany’s position in Europe in relation to Russia. Although geographically on the European periphery, the Asia-Pacific region was an area of long-term focus in Germany’s push for world power status under Wilhelm II. This foretold a clash with the United States. In the long term, German preoccupation with a possible Anglo-American alliance, erratic policy changes, and clumsy attempts to woo the US to its side only resulted in reactions that further alienated the Americans.