Which alternate Presidents in 1929-1933 would react more firmly to Japanese aggression than Hoover?

Which alternate Presidents in 1929-1933 would react more firmly to Japanese aggression than Hoover?

  • a) Coolidge

  • b) Curtis

  • c) Lowden

  • d) Dawes

  • e) Hughes

  • f) McAdoo

  • g) FDR

  • h) Cox

  • i) Pat Harrison

  • j) Al Smith

  • k) none of the above


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raharris1973

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1) Which alternate Presidents in 1929-1933, Coolidge, Curtis, Lowden, Smith or McAdoo, or FDR react more firmly to Japanese aggression than Hoover?


a) Coolidge

b) Curtis

c) Lowden

d) Dawes

e) Hughes

f) McAdoo

g) FDR

h) Cox

i) Harrison

j) Smith

k) none of the above
 
I'm not a great Hoover admirer but on this issue I'll go to bat for him. In 1929-1933 IOTL you had, first,
very strong & very widespread isolationist sentiment in the US. Second, you had that nasty economic
downturn known as The Great Depression which had the effect(among other things)of making Americans
quite uninterested in problems abroad. These circumstances would have stopped ANY POTUS- as they
indeed stopped Hoover- from doing anything more than uttering strong words. (It should also be kept in mind that then, unlike now, a POTUS did not have virtually unlimited power in foreign affairs, "The Imperial Presidency" being very much a post-Hoover phenomenon). As the noted historian Richard Hofstader commented:

"The historical reputation of any statesman caught between domestic crisis and foreign aggression is
bound to suffer. If Hoover had taken a belligerent stand against Japanese aggression, critics would have been quick to insinuate that he was trying to use friction abroad to distract attention from a crisis at
home."*

*- THE AMERICAN POLITICAL TRADITION, p. 402(continuation of footnote from previous page), of the 1974, Vintage paperbacks edition. First published in 1948. This is a book everyone who is interested in American history should read.
 
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None... the US was isolationist and if they didn't care about Europe they certainly wouldn't have cared about what would have been seen at the time as a bunch of non white people
 
None... the US was isolationist and if they didn't care about Europe they certainly wouldn't have cared about what would have been seen at the time as a bunch of non white people
No one starts a war out of the goodness of the heart for purely humanitarian reasons. An attack on the Philippines or a clash like the sinking of the Panay could still bring the US into a war for reasons of relative power and prestige. I suspect that geopolitical self-interest generally would override racism.
 
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