ABSTRACT
For both future superpowers, the years following 1921 have often been thought of as a period of isolation. In fact, isolation was by no means complete on either side: indeed, each had a concept of world order including itself but tending to exclude the other. At a time when old rules of international relations had been broken and new rules scarcely devised, let alone established, there was certainly much concern among the other powers about the global roles to be played in international relations by both USA and USSR, as more new world orders were proclaimed to confront older empires. Italy from 1922, Japan from 1931 and Germany from 1933 all put forward plans for expansion threatening to upset, in a more violent manner than either the USA or USSR, the pre-war status quo which Britain and France in particular strove to maintain.
