Scorched Earth is an impressive analysis particularly of the imperialist logic that drove US strategy during and after World War II, finds Chris Bambery

This is one of the best histories I have read of the Second World War. It’s one of the best because it starts at the correct starting point; that this war was an imperial struggle. That goes a long way to explain what Chamberlin calls, ‘the genocidal brutality of the conflict’ (p.6).

The USA, Britain and the USSR presented the war as one against fascism, in part to motivate their forces and to overcome the hangover of 1914-1918, but they were fighting to stop Germany and Japan achieve world dominance and, in the case of Washington and Moscow, to re-partition the world in their own selfish interests.

Chamberlin goes further arguing: ‘the war’s legacy was not the destruction of fascism, racism and imperialism but rather the creation of a post-war world order in which the highly militarised, neo-imperialist states were forced to prepare for perpetual warfare and the prospect of nuclear annihilation. Our collective amnesia regarding the war’s colonial origins and its imperial fallout has stripped the conflict of its meaning, transforming it into a twentieth-century fairy tale’ (p.10).

US imperial designs

Chamberlin is also correct to focus on US ambitions. At one point, he quotes Leon Trotsky, who in May 1940 predicted: ‘History is bringing humanity face to face with the volcanic eruption of American imperialism … which emerged as the world’s creditor from the last war, expects to emerge from this one its undisputed master’ (p.128).ⁱ

US gross domestic product in 1938 stood at $800 billion, the British Empire came second at $688 billion, Germany’s GDP stood at $375 billion and Japan’s at $232 billion.

America had, and still has, a formal empire, but by the war’s outbreak, its priority was forging an informal one. Chamberlin points out: ‘… the Americans wielded their enormous economic influence through a concerted strategy of Open Door diplomacy. For generations, US leaders had worked to break down economic barriers to American trade and secure overseas markets for US goods … the Open Door strategy took on an altogether different tone of free-trade imperialism’ (p.14).

By the summer of 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt understood that having conquered continental Europe, Hitler would not stop there: he wanted global domination too. If Britain succumbed to the Nazis, Germany could take control of the Middle East and its oil and look to strike across the Atlantic at the US.

America provided the finance, weapons, steel, oil and much else to keep Britain in the war. On 18 June 1940, former US Secretary of State for War, Henry Stimson (he was reappointed to his old job the next day), broadcast regarding the impending fall of France, saying the US faced perhaps ‘the greatest crisis in its history’ with the world dividing into two camps, ‘half slave and half free’. Washington had to aid the Royal Navy and prepare itself for war (p.127).

In November 1940, the Chief of US Naval Operations, Admiral Stark, completed a strategic analysis which would lay the basis for US war strategy. He argued: ‘If Britain wins decisively against Germany we could win anywhere but … if she loses the problem confronting us would be very great; and while we might not lose everywhere, we might, possibly, not win anywhere’ (p.137).

Chamberlin outlines the strategic plan which evolved from this: ‘Allied forces conducted a series of offensives aimed at closing the ring around the contested borders of the Axis empires while using the colonial world as a launchpad for military operations. This peripheral strategy sought to dominate the lines of communication – vital transportation routes that allowed powers to move troops, supplies and information between military bases and forces operating in the field – and secure a network of colonial bases from which to launch strikes against Axis position’ (p.138).

In reality, only the US could do this. Britain was too weak and Washington’s eventual ally, the USSR, was a continental power. But US planners, pursuing the Open Door policy were determined, post-war, that they would dismantle the Sterling Bloc, an economic agreement that tariffs would be raised to block imports into Britain, its colonies and dominions and satellites like Argentina from outside. In 1945, they ensured that they would ‘kick open the doors of the British imperial preference system and gain access to colonial markets’ (p.148).

Another US ally was Nationalist China. Here Washington did not want to control Chinese territory, as Britain, Russia and Japan did, but wanted free economic access – the Open Door – and to dominate China economically. Mao Zedong would foil that in 1949 and Washington has never forgiven the People’s Republic for that.

US ambitions were open for all to see. In February 1941, Life’s managing publisher, Henry Luce, wrote an essay in it entitled ‘The American Century’. It would state that the USA had to: ‘… accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world and in consequence to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit’ (p.149).

A new post-war order

Chamberlin spells out what that would mean: ‘… when the United States joined the war, it would be fighting not to restore the prewar status quo but to establish a new, American-led international order built on ideas of free-trade capitalism, political self-determination, and collective security. The United States would sit at the center of this new world order: New York and Washington would control the global economy; the US Navy would command the seas; the American political system would become the archetype for post war governments around the world … a new American empire without colonies that would be structured by the power of the US dollar. The war would give Washington the military forces to project American power across every ocean and into every continent, thereby claiming a sphere of influence that was planetary in scope’ (p.162).

This Pax Americana rested on, ‘… the foundation of a massive navy and a sprawling network of bases both of which US leaders created to defeat the Axis empires’ (p.288).

The other side of all this was that the Anglo-American allies relied on the USSR and China to grind down the Axis forces. They shouldered a bloody burden they resented. The price Washington and London paid was to permit Stalin to occupy the Eurasian heartlands. That was the price Stalin insisted on, paid in so much Red Army blood.

However, after the Red Army victory at Stalingrad, American strategy had to shift to recognise they could not allow Stalin to dominate Germany. At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, where Roosevelt met with Churchill along with their military staffs, US Admiral King told the gathering: ‘Unless the US and Britain would make some definite move towards the defeat of Germany, Russia will dominate the peace table’ (p.315).

Chamberlin quotes the Yale University geographer, Nicholas Spykman, who in June 1943, shortly before his death, wrote The Geography of Peace argued: ‘… a sweeping geostrategic vision for US national security. The key to world power, he argued, lay in what he called the Eurasian rimlands – a belt of territory running from Western Europe and through the Middle East and South Asia before curving north along the Pacific coast of Asia and straddled vital shipping routes. Many of the largest battles of the Second World War were already raging across these territories, and their outcome would likely determine the winner in the global conflict. Going forward, Spkyman argued, US national security must take an active role to ensure that no hostile power or combination of powers could dominate these rimlands. “Who controls the rimlands rules Eurasia,” he wrote. “Who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world”’ (pp.319-20).

In the Pacific War, the US broke new ground: ‘US aircraft carriers operating in strike groups supported by battleships, cruisers and destroyers had gained the capacity to attack targets across the world littoral. These fast carrier task forces were supported by a network of bases that circled the globe, anchoring an unrivalled logistical chain that allowed Washington to operate as the world’s first planetary power – a role it would occupy well into the next century’ (p.381).

The US April 1945 attack on the island of Okinawa, the gateway to Japan’s home islands, saw hundreds of US ships carry 183,000 assault troops and 747,000 tons of cargo from eleven ports across the Pacific, crucially from the west coast of America. At the same time, US forces dominated the post-D Day campaign in western Europe, where the British played a junior role.

There is so much more to Scorched Earth but Chamberlin’s underlying theme throughout is the US drive towards post-war dominance. We are still living through the new world order America established, weakened as it compared to 1945. I have chosen in this review to concentrate on this central aspect of Chamberlin’s book because I believe it is central to understanding the origins of the war, how it was fought by Washington and its outcome. He achieves that brilliantly.

i Manifesto of the Fourth International on Imperialist War and The Proletarian World Revolution, Adopted by the Emergency Conference of the Fourth International, May 19-26, 1940:

https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/emergconf/fi-emerg02.htm