シンガポール艦隊派遣問題とイギリスの極東戦略 -一九三九年を中心として-

抄録

For the British strategists the “Ten Year Rule”—that there would be no war in the Far East within the next ten years—was no more than an illusion. The mounting anxieties and difficulties both in the Far East and Europe forced them to reconsider their whole strategy. The problem, however, was that they had little resources, economic as well as military, to counter these adversities. With this as a background, the issue of the dispatch of capital ships to Singapore came up to the surface. And it meant, in effect, a touchstone of Britain's strength as a maritime power, in other words, one of the numerous instances in which whether she could influence situations as she had hitherto done was put to the test.
There is no denying that Far Eastern affairs were of secondary importance for Britain; she had other troubles to wrestle with much closer to her—Italian expansion into the Mediterranean and German overriding of Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. And yet, the ominous threats in the Far East—Japan's intention, to establish a “new order” and her subsequent advance southward—, too, could not possibly be overlooked. Britain had to do her utmost, without the American backing, to restrain Japan's activist policy, using the Singapore base as a deterrent. With that the reinforcements of Singapore became a matter of urgent concern.
How could she strengthen the Singapore base ? Almost all her capital ships had been earmarked for the home and Mediterranean waters; and funds were also too scarce to build new ones. With the dispatch of a fleet rejected halfheartedly, Singapore remained unsafe and vulnerable. Even the “Tientsin crisis” in June 1939 failed to bring forth any change in her Far Eastern strategy; and she, too, remained passive and simply hoped it would be settled in due course. Thereafter she did not pay, to be more exact, did not afford to pay, much attention to what was going on in the Far East. Against this her strategy revolved round. And she could not find a way out until the autumn of 1939 when the outbreak of war in Europe relieved her, if temporarily, of the burdens in the Far East.