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I did not think that this third H-Diplo thread could avoid repeating what has gone before, even though, as Warren Kimbball says, FDR is fun,but I was wrong. I therefore feel impelled to throw a few pebbles into the pool from downunder. William D. O'Neil makes a sound point about the changes in American public opinion, in which I should record that Australian representative in Washington R. G. Casey was an important actor in the common cause and recognized as such by both the British and American governments. Casey has noted in has published diaries the solidarity of anti-Japanese feeling,which was shared by the isolationists, and clearly would have been recognized by the Administration. Throughout 1941 US convened military and diplomatic consultations of the 8BCD, America -- Britain -- China -- Dutch, to which Australia was invited. These consultations used all-source information and reported SIGINT intelligence more freely than would become the practice. This contributed to a developing sense of common purpose, but there were also differences, national, Services, internal etc. FDR had to appear above them. Casey, who had remarkably good access, including to the President, was constantly seeking assurance of FDR's knowledge of impediments to Alliance cooperation. But these were 'allies of a kind', in Christopher Thorne's memorable title for his account of the Pacific War. So there was necessary deception. How well was that understood at the very top? Take the decision by FDR on 26 November to call a stop to Cordell Hull's modus vivendi initiative, following Chinese diplomats' delivery, with emotional exposition, of a very strong message from Chiang Kai-shek. The State Department was not amused, and while they laid most of the blame on the Chinese they also suspected a British rat. Rightly so, it turned out, for some months later the British ambassador told Australians in China that he had written Chiang's letter himself. Was this a local initiative, or how far up the line was the scenario orchestrated? By this time the Conservative politician Casey, who was so focused on, and an important player in, achieving British American solidarity, looking to the war against Germany, with the policy already established off 'beat Hitler first', was representing a government made up of his political opponents undergoing a crash course in national diplomacy and awareness of Australia's vulnerability. FDR never misled Australia: it was not on his map - until the adverts course of war made it so. Prime Minister John Curtin, a Lincolnesque figure, told his Foreign Minister he sympathised with Chiang Kai-shek but did not want Australia become a pawn either, or be put in a similar predicament. However, this was the inevitable effect of the oil embargo, unless Japan could be persuaded to back down. The Labour Party understood that even an opposition, from contact with an active Japanese representative. Casey was one of the first leaders after the war to acknowledge that Japan was manoeuvred into it. However the diaries say very little about the embargo, although he was close to its architect Dean Acheson (and left his children with him in Washington when Churchill rewarded him with a place in the British Cabinet and a post in Cairo). Laid back Australians are a bit insouciant about conspiracy theories, although some of them are ready to believe anything against Churchill. Garry Woodard Adjunct Professor RMIT & Senior Fellow at Melbourne University
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