No Eternal Friends or Enemies: British Defence Policy and the Problem of the United States, 1919-1939

Abstract

Based largely on the axiom that Britain had no eternal friends or enemies, only eternal interests, British defence policy saw the list of potential adversaries change between 1919 and 1939. War against most powers was considered at one time or another, but not against the United States. Political isolation and geographic segregation removed it from British war planning. Nonetheless, the American question presented problems for British defence planners. In the 1920s, when successive American governments sought naval equality with Britain, the threat that a neutral United States might seek to break a British maritime blockade of an enemy led to hard feelings in London. But the conclusion of the London naval treaty in 1930, began a period of Anglo-American co-operation which lasted until the Roosevelt administration withdrew from internationalism into a preoccupation with domestic matters. However, in the worsening international situation by late 1937, the British, even the suspicious Neville Chamberlain, began to see American economic and diplomatic support as adjuncts to British efforts to oppose the totalitarian powers. Roosevelt reluctantly concurred, and the basis for the wartime Anglo-American alliance began to be laid as the Polish crisis of 1939 unfolded.