142 e lusive v ictories
behavior, altered the language to broaden the embargo to cover all
petroleum products, added scrap iron and steel to the list, and sent the
revised order to the president without alerting him of the change. Roos-
evelt signed the Morgenthau version, but the State Department struck
back and replaced the initial directive with one more narrowly drawn.
Even that did not end the matter, for lower-level bureaucrats managed
to establish a tighter oil embargo on Japan (though not on the fuel
Japanese planes used).
To this odd policy stew we can add the military, which had its own
agenda. Because the president declined to set clear security goals, mil-
itary planners adopted a very conservative course that emphasized
defense of the Western Hemisphere. Th is refl ected the low level of
military readiness—only the U.S. Navy could be deemed combat-
capable before 1941. When diplomats urged that the United States take
over from the Royal Navy the responsibility for blocking Japanese
expansion in the Western Pacific, senior naval officers balked and
insisted that the fl eet not go beyond Hawaii. Roosevelt declined to
resolve the confl icting policy views between civilians and the military,
while letting each believe he shared its perspective.
The political calendar, specifically the pending 1940 presidential
election, imposed yet another constraint on what Roosevelt believed he
could do. All wondered whether he would seek an unprecedented third
term. To his critics, who worried that he had already amassed more
power than any other peacetime president, another reelection bid
would mark a move toward an elected dictatorship. Others wondered
about the wisdom of breaching a political norm set by George Wash-
ington himself. Ever the attentive politician, Franklin Roosevelt under-
stood the reservations and appreciated that he would have to tread
softly when it came to expanding presidential powers. He declined to
override restrictions set by the Neutrality Act, even though some key
fi gures within his administration advised him in 1939 that he might do
so under his constitutional authority over foreign policy. When he did
pursue a third term, he promised American mothers that their sons
were not going to be sent off to war.
Last and most important, unanticipated events in the war itself
deprived Roosevelt of alternatives he had taken for granted. Th e swift
collapse of France under the German blitzkrieg stunned the president