Histories of war–and particularly global wars–are often narratives on a grand scale, focusing on a grand strategy. In these narratives, smaller players and their more modest strategies are often overshadowed. This paper explores such a strategy in Australia’s shift from appeasing Japan to deterring it and efforts to secure US military commitment to the Pacific. Since the establishment of a legation in Washington in 1940, Australia was attempting to convince US policymakers of overlapping US-Australian security interests in East and Southeast Asia–the Singapore Naval Base in particular. However, by early-1941, with this strategy proving ineffective and the Japanese army moving through Southern Indochina, threatening Malaya, Thailand and the Netherland East Indies, a different approach was needed. This paper argues that a coordinated economic policy with the US, rather than military, offered Australia the greatest opportunity to tie its vital interests in Pacific affairs with those of the US. This paper will examine the 1941 rescindment of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation, the US concurrent economic embargo against Japan, and the parameters of Australia’s willingness to cooperate. This paper speaks to how Australia saw itself in relation to the great powers and their grand strategies.