How should a great power manage a rival with an authoritarian government, a state-directed capitalist economy, strong mercantilist tendencies and a “leader for life” that exploited a “cult of personality?” To make matters more difficult, this country’s government dominates society through an all-pervasive party structure that stresses nationalism and argues that only the party can reverse recent slights and return the nation to its rightful place in the sun. This might sound like modern-day China, but in fact it is 1930s Germany.
Early in the decade, Britain was a great power intent on maintaining the status quo. The Foreign Office observed: “We have got all that we want, perhaps more. Our sole object is to keep what we have and live in peace.” Japan, Italy, and Germany, though, were starting to pose troubling security problems. With resource limitations constraining their options, British policymakers in early 1934 decided to focus on Germany as the nation of primary concern and accordingly embraced a grand strategy that combined engagement and balancing. (For a fuller account, see my book Grand Strategy.)
I should note that this article uses present-day terminology, which is not necessarily the same as that used in the 1930s. For example, it was not until the 1980s that the term “grand strategy” began to be used to describe the coordinated diplomatic, military, and economic policies the British government adopted in the 1930s; one of the first to use the term was Paul Kennedy. Similarly, in the 1930s, the terms “conciliation” and “rearmament” were used rather than “engagement” and “balancing.”
Please click here to read the full “To engage China or balance it? Lessons from a failed grand strategic exercise” article published at War on the Rocks, written by Griffith Asia Institute Visiting Fellow, Dr Peter Layton.
