First of all, my apologies to the list and moderator because I replied to this but apparently failed to clip out all the digest below my reply. I hope the moderator will just delete that (it's hung up now because of its oversized and awaits moderation) and not let it get to the list and let this be my reply to that thread.
I would say the US was both an economic and military power. It was an imperial power with a three-ocean navy. It lacked deployable land forces, but it did have very good forward positioning all over the Pacific It had weak alliances in Europe (as the UK and France didn't defeat the Germans) and a weak alliance in the other three-ocean naval power, the UK, since it was over-extended and didn't defeat the Japanese. No one actually disarmed during the 20s and 30s and a lot of spending most likely went on hidden (I'm thinking of the naval disarmament treaties which were used to limit military spending while re-arming or modernizing). If you look at the activities of the federal government and the traditional land forces (Army, Marines) in the military, preparations for war start well before 1941. Also, US naval forces were fighting on behalf of the UK against German subs before the start of the war, and US forces were involved in China against the Japanese before Pearl Harbor. I know this doesn't answer the questions with alamanac-ready facts about actual spending, but I don't see how anyone could say the US disarmed and was defenceless before the start of WW II. It was the three-ocean naval power that wasn't over-extended.
F
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