prior to the start of the Pacific War; but  what about the other major player of the war?  

What was the position of the United States  after the end of World War One? What were  

their interests and strategies in the Pacific?  And how did they feel about their future rival  

and its rise as a great power? Today, we  are going to answer all these questions and  

more as we cover the history of the United  States and its role in the Pacific theater.

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Since its inception, one of the primary objectives  of the United States has been to secure America's  

commercial interests in the world, without  hesitation to use force to preserve its trade  

and only bothering to intervene in  conflicts if they impede American profits.  

Yet expansionism wasn't rare either in the  early history of the US, albeit not by force  

of arms in most cases . Following independence,  the Manifest Destiny doctrine urged Americans to  

expand in a westward direction until getting to  the Pacific Ocean. With the Purchase of Alaska,  

westward expansion finally ended, but the Manifest  Destiny did not; as in the late 19th Century, it  

evolved to promote an overseas expansion directed  to the acquisition of Pacific island groups .  

Commercial interests in the Far East also helped  to fuel this extension of the Manifest Destiny,  

with the US participating in the forced  establishment of trade in China, Japan and Korea  

via the unequal treaties through the decades. And  back home, as the United States resisted getting  

itself entangled in Europe's perennial wars, a  sphere of influence was gradually created over  

its own continent and the US soon started to grow  as a world power . This sphere of influence then  

expanded into the Pacific, where the Americans  found great interests on the Hawaiian Archipelago,  

which would eventually cause the collapse of the  Kingdom of Hawaii and its subsequent annexation  

by the US, an event that coincided with the  outbreak of war with the Spanish Empire over Cuba. 

From this war, the United States also obtained  the Philippines and Guam in the Pacific,  

yet these territories were not to be new states;  instead, they were basically declared as colonies,  

not enjoying full constitutional  rights under American rule.  

The newly-born American Imperialism in the  Pacific would continue with the colonization  

of the eastern islands of Samoa and  the main islands surrounding Hawaii.  

In East Asia, the Americans opted to cede the  initiative to Europeans with the objective of  

securing the little presence they had in the  region, while at the same time helping important  

states like Japan or China to modernize and thus  become a counterweight to European encroachment.  

In result, relationships with the Qing Dynasty  and the early Meiji government were very amicable,  

with the US promising to intercede on their  behalf in the face of renewed European aggression.  

But when the Japanese Empire quickly began  to manifest its own imperial ambitions,  

the Americans had to act upon to prevent  war between Japan and China, consequently  

damaging American-Japanese relations. After  the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, however,  

the US helped to broker peace between them with  the Treaty of Shimonoseki and refused to join the  

Europeans during the Triple Intervention, again  becoming one of the friendliest powers to Japan. 

In 1899, after a scramble for concessions  in China, Secretary of State John Hay  

established a new American foreign policy aimed  towards East Asia. With the Open Door Policy,  

the US wanted to preserve Chinese  territorial and administrative integrity  

as a buffer against intensifying conflicts in  the region and to secure American commercial,  

rail and navigational access to Chinese markets.  This skilful articulation of US interests probably  

slowed imperial expansion within China during  and after the Boxer Rebellion, yet it wouldn't be  

enough to deter Russian and Japanese aggression,  leading to the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War.  

Once again, the Americans would have to intervene  to end the war and maintain a favorable balance of  

power in the region during the negotiations at the  Treaty of Portsmouth. The very restrained peace  

terms negotiated by President Theodore Roosevelt  strongly damaged American-Japanese relations,  

as Roosevelt supported the defeated Russians in  their stance to concede little territory and to  

avoid war reparations. The Japanese expected  these reparations to help families recover  

from lost fathers and sons and to relieve  the burden of heavy taxation; without them,  

social unrest erupted in the country. Roosevelt  did this because he wanted the war to end  

with both Russia and Japan in a weak state; Russia  humiliated and militarily weak, and Japan bankrupt  

and with unrest. The Japanese, however, managed  to recover from the economic crisis and continued  

to modernize as we have already seen. Worried  about Japan's growing naval power after the war,  

the Roosevelt administration set out to improve  its defenses in the Pacific and to embark on  

a large naval buildup capable of defending  Pacific possessions from Japanese aggression. 

In the remainder of Roosevelt's presidency, an  effort was made to improve relations with the  

Japanese, but despite the successes that American  diplomats might have had, everything would change  

after the outbreak of the First World War. From  it, the United States emerged as a great power,  

playing a key part in the collapse of the  German Empire at the end of the war. But despite  

President Woodrow Wilson's goal of world peace  with the establishment of the League of Nations,  

his foreign policy in the Pacific would be poor  and inconsistent. It was during this time that  

American-Japanese relations reached a point of no  return, as the US condemned the Twenty-One Demands  

presented by the Japanese to China in an effort to  increase their sphere of influence in the region.  

The growing tensions between Japan and the US then  reached a climax at Versailles, forcing the Allied  

nations to strike a compromise during the peace  negotiations. In exchange for the German leases  

in China and their colonies in Micronesia, the  Racial Equality Proposal presented by the Japanese  

would be rejected, mainly due to the opposition  of the British and the US itself. This compromise  

was seen as a humiliation by both the Chinese, who  believed that the German leases should return to  

them, and the Japanese, who felt alienated by  the Western powers and in response suffered a  

rise of nationalism and anti-American sentiment. Overall, however, Wilson would maintain the Open  

Door policy towards China in a more friendly  way and would succeed at supporting democracy  

and self-determination in Asia and the Pacific,  even going so far as to propose the decolonization  

of the Philippines. But the devastation of  the Great War had an unforeseen consequence:  

it left only the US and the Japanese Empire as  the main players in the Pacific. To preserve the  

Open Door, the Americans would now have to balance  their own power in the region and that of Japan;  

and to increase the difficulty of their task, the  Republic of China would also fracture into several  

Warlord states, so the Open Door was detrimental  for the Chinese territorial integrity. Meanwhile,  

the American Navy had been preparing for war  with the Japanese Empire since the start of the  

century, developing and adapting their War Plan  Orange through the years. Their plan initially  

involved the defense of their Pacific possessions  from their base at Corregidor Island while waiting  

for reinforcements to arrive from the Atlantic,  as the US expected a sudden Japanese attack. Then,  

advancing up the Caroline and Marshall Islands in  preparation for a decisive counterattack against  

the Japanese Navy, the Americans would  take Japan's home islands under blockade  

and then end the war. Thus for the success of War  Plan Orange, continued parity with the IJN in the  

Pacific and the fortification of the US Pacific  possessions was of absolute importance. If the  

Americans neglected these endeavours, they would  then throw away an invaluable military advantage  

and risk prolongation of war, maximum  expenditure and uncertainty of outcome. 

But the Roaring Twenties were a time of great  prosperity for the US, one in which naval spending  

had very little support, as the Republican  governments instead focused on business prospects.  

By the end of the decade, the Americans had become  the largest exporter of the world, expanding the  

size of its domestic market and becoming less  dependent from trade; and to avoid a costly  

naval arms race with Japan, the US would turn to  convene an international disarmament conference in  

Washington. Furthermore, the Anglo-Japanese Treaty  of 1902 was an important matter for the Americans,  

so they would pressure Great Britain to terminate  the treaty, leaving Japan alone and isolated.  

As such, they would be easily pressured into  agreeing with the Washington Naval Treaty.  

The Treaty itself, signed in 1922, established  a 5:5:3 ratio in battleship tonnage for the US,  

Britain and Japan, as well as a non-fortification  clause in the Pacific. It also enforced the Open  

Door Policy by making all the powers guarantee  the commercial and territorial integrity of  

China. The Treaty was thus a great success,  securing American superiority against the IJN  

and managing to soothe Japanese aggression against  China for the remainder of the decade. Yet in the  

long term, the Treaty would render War Plan Orange  completely ineffective, as the non-fortification  

clause left the US at a severe disadvantage in  the Pacific, and, since [in?] the 30s, Japan would  

begin to build up its Navy again to compete with  the US and to establish hegemony in East Asia. 

The Japanese would also see the  growth of anti-American sentiment  

with the Japanese Exclusion Act of 1924, which  closed off Japanese immigration to the US. This  

Act further provoked the rise of ultranationalism  and racist-driven facsim in the Japanese Empire,  

which would eventually lead to the decision  to abandon disarmament and to prepare for war  

against the US. For the remainder of the decade,  the US would try to financially support Japan to  

heal a little their poor relationship; but with  the signing of the London Naval Treaty of 1930,  

which further established limitations  on cruiser and submarine construction,  

the ultranationalists in Japan finally began  their rise to power. The prosperous Roaring  

Twenties would also end very poorly, with the  Wall Street Crash of 1929 signaling the beginning  

of the Great Depression . What followed was a  time of high unemployment, poverty, deflation,  

emigration and economic crisis, poorly managed  by the government of President Herbert Hoover.  

The 1932 election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt,  however, saw the establishment of an economic  

recovery plan , the New Deal, which would allow  for much of the economy to recover by 1936,  

although the effects of the Great Depression  would still be felt for many more years.  

In 1937 for example, the American economy would  unexpectedly fall again, with a renewed decline  

of production, profits and employment. FDR  reacted by launching a rhetorical campaign  

against monopoly power and a $5 billion spending  program to increase mass purchasing power.  

Luckily, the 1937 Recession had ended by 1939, and  the American economy was recovering once again. 

In the Pacific meanwhile, the economic turmoil  in the US coincided with the consolidation of  

ultranationalist elements in Japan, which  launched a successful Invasion of Manchuria,  

left the League of Nations, and abandoned  the naval disarmament. Overwhelmed by  

the financial crisis at home, the Hoover  administration wanted no problem with Japan,  

so they allowed the Japanese to get away with it  without enacting economic sanctions against them.  

As the Open Door was falling apart, FDR would  also focus exclusively on more pressing domestic  

programs, resulting in the Japanese having  a free hand to act in China. Furthermore,  

the American Navy was in a miserable state, with  the Asiatic Squadron still using aged vessels from  

the Great War. Hoover and FDR would also cut down  the army and navy budgets, and in Hoover's mandate  

not a single ship would be constructed, further  weakening the American military. In response,  

Congressman Carl Vinson, the main champion  of a stronger navy during the 30s,  

would work with Roosevelt's administration to use  the naval buildup as a jobs program in accordance  

with FDR's own politics. Through the Vinson Acts,  by 1942 the American Navy had been successfully  

built up back to the London Treaty limits, which  gave a little more confidence for War Plan Orange.  

But still, Japan held considerable superiority  in the Pacific, so the Americans would design the  

Royal Road, a plan that anticipated a sustained  campaign of island hopping culminating in a  

decisive fleet engagement and the fall of Japan.  As we'll see, this plan would become essential  

during the strategies of the Pacific War.  Next week, however, we'll return to East Asia  

as we cover the civil strife within China and  the outbreak of war with the Japanese Empire,  

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