If Japan attacked, the grandees agreed, the best policy would involve an initial primary focus on the defeat of Germany.
In January 1941, ten months before Pearl Harbour, British and Canadian defence staff officers attended a top-secret “no commitments” conference in Washington with top-level staff officers of the United States, still strictly a neutral in the war against Germany, if mightily sick of the carnage caused by U-boats in the Atlantic Ocean and already giving Britain some open and some clandestine assistance.
The discussions did not commit America to war. But it discussed how Britain and Canada – indeed Britain and the British Empire – might cooperate with American defence forces if America was forced into war, which most present agreed might happen if Japan declared war on the US and the Empire.
If Japan attacked, the grandees agreed, the best policy would involve an initial primary focus on the defeat of Germany. It would be better if only holding actions were launched against Japan until Germany was comprehensively defeated, by when all of the allies could move in concert to win the Pacific War.
Australia, which at that stage had many more of its troops actually engaged in fighting Germans than either Canada or Britain, was not invited, did not know that the conference was going on and was not told about the decision made by Britain and Canada on behalf of the Empire, including Australia. At that stage, the US more or less assumed that Britain spoke for Australia, as well as the British colonies, anyway.
The US initially regarded the meeting of minds at the so-called ABC-1 conference as not strictly binding. But after Pearl Harbour, the American military and political establishment revisited the Europe-first understanding, and recommitted themselves to it. In doing so they rejected advice from General Douglas MacArthur, soon to be the commander of allied forces including Australians, organising to resist Japanese aggression.
MacArthur did not strictly tell the Australians that his superiors in Washington had resolved on a Germany-first policy, though anyone might well have deduced it from the way that he railed non-stop during the war about getting his fair share of men, transports, aircraft, resources and attention from Washington, while many times the men and resources were going to Africa and then to Europe. Though some, of course, might have regarded his non-stop complaining as being a function of his ego.
As the war progressed, the formal policy did not change, though the Pacific War received a higher level of resources and went beyond the mere containment of the enemy. But it was always second in line until Germany was defeated, as it happens, mostly by the Soviet Union.
These moments, 81 years ago, are worth remembering now as America and its allies contemplate Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the threat to the peace of Europe, and the best means by which the western alliance can settle the neighbours, all of whom (except Belarus, Russia’s ally and vassal) belong to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. NATO’s constitution says a military attack on one member is an attack on all, to be met with combined force. In form, the treaty is far more definite and binding than the ANZUS Treaty, by which America, Australia and perhaps New Zealand, agree to “consult” each other if an enemy attacks their Pacific shores.
Early in the Ukraine conflict, while Vladimir Putin was massing troops in Belarus, the Crimea and Russia for what were described as “planned large-scale military exercises”, sharp minds in the western alliance wondered whether China might take advantage of the world’s distraction to launch an attack on Taiwan across the Taiwan Strait.
John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.
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