The Quest for Coalition

Abstract

A diplomatic containment of Germany would make most sense within a general strategy to counter the nascent alliance of Germany, Italy and Japan. Violent attacks on the international system by these Powers had been uncoordinated, and moves towards a formal alliance, with commitments more specific than the vague pledges of the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936–7, had so far failed, but neither had America, Great Britain, France and Russia yet tried to form the only counter-coalition likely to deter or defeat them. In their internal discussions, British ministers, for example, had merely expressed a hope that Russian and American power in East Asia and the Pacific would be sufficient to contain Japan if British and French forces had to be concentrated in Europe. Negotiating commitments to possible war was, of course, always difficult, the more so when preparations for war were far from complete. Some of the difficulties quickly surfaced in the wake of the new British initiative.