f reedom of a ction 147States. In late 1940, Admiral Harold Stark, Chief of Naval Operations,
proposed and endorsed Plan Dog, a strategic overview that called for
concentrating on the defeat of Germany, avoiding war with Japan or
remaining on the defensive in the Pacifi c, and sending major ground
and air forces to the European theater for an off ensive against Germany.
Roosevelt again declined to commit himself to a grand strategy for war,
but he did approve staff talks with the British. For two months,
beginning at the end of January 1941, senior American and British mil-
itary commanders held the American-British Conversations Number 1
(ABC-1) to begin planning for the day the United States fi nally entered
the war. Absent clear policy guidance from their political leader, the
American offi cers could make few concrete suggestions. Even so, both
sides quickly confirmed that Germany represented a much greater
threat than Japan, defeating the Nazi war machine would be the fi rst
priority, and American and British resources would be concentrated in
the Atlantic.
Diff erences arose over the Far East, where the British expected war
and wanted an increased American presence, while the Americans
hoped Japan would remain neutral and refused to promise additional
forces. Nonetheless, here, too, the two countries’ military representa-
tives found common ground in the position that every eff ort should be
made to delay war with Japan as long as possible. In keeping with his
conduct throughout this period, Roosevelt did not endorse the resulting
report. American commanders, with no other instructions, used it
anyway as the basis for planning.
If American grand strategy in the latter half of 1941 intended to post-
pone a clash with Japan, though, Roosevelt neglected to coordinate the
pieces of American policy toward that objective. Denying Japan access
to oil made sense in military terms—Japan would be unable to wage a
long war without a secure supply—but asking the Dutch to resist
Japanese demands for increased oil shipments from the Netherlands
East Indies in mid-1941 merely confi rmed for Tokyo its strategic vulner-
ability and gave it added incentive to seize what it could not purchase.
In this instance appeasement would have better served the immediate
security interests of the United States and its allies.
Th e president’s minimal control over junior-rank offi cials within his
administration again made matters worse. In response to the Japanese