Fletcher Christian said:

“Britain had its back to the wall – and acted as it had to, and the USA took over the leadership of the world; which was the whole point of the exercise. And just to make the result more certain, the USA took two years to join in the fight against two of the worst dictatorships in Earth’s history.”

It had nothing to do with the fact that the U.S. Army in the late ’30s was almost on par with Belgium’s. That, in addition to still recovering from the Depression (along with most of Europe, granted), was still strongly isolationist. It hadn’t been all that long since 1918. In 1940 in the Louisiana war games, we were using trucks with broomsticks mounted to represent the tanks we didn’t yet have. Yeah, we’d have made such a difference in 1939 and ’40.

Forgot about Lend Lease, it seems. American ships pitching in on escort duty for British ships hauling cargo out from Canada; does the name “Reuben James” ring any bells? You didn’t seem to mind taking over a couple dozen old four-stacker destroyers from our Navy, either.

Your lot weren’t seeing Imperial Japan as nearly as much a threat as we were at the time, watching their construction of their “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”. USS Panay, in 1937, not to mention Manchuria and Nanking. I guess Singapore rang an alarm, though.

Too inconvenient for your argument, I guess. Sorry ’bout that.