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Between November of 1922 and February of 1923, something truly historic occurred.
Representatives of nine nations, the world's largest naval powers, met in Washington DC to
discuss the proliferation of Weapons of War. It was the first major international conference held
in the United States, and the first international arms control conference in history. The Washington
Naval Conference is little remembered today, but it was a seminal moment in US diplomatic history,
a major driver of policy in the period between the World Wars and in the end,
a failure. And the reasons for all of the above, make it history, that deserves to be remembered.
There were many drivers for the Washington Naval Conference and the treaties that followed,
but the simplest driver was that following World War 1, major powers engaged in a
naval arms race that was rather expensive. Despite being allies in the first World War,
the nations that were most affected were the United States, its Pacific rival Japan,
and the greatest naval power at the time, Great Britain. The United States had finished the Great
War as the world's leading industrial power, and with the world's second largest Navy. Realizing
that naval power would give the US a substantial ability to enforce his vision for world alignment,
and wary of the threat that Japanese militarism would offer to US interests in the Pacific,
President Woodrow Wilson had announced an ambitious program to expand and modernize
the American fleet. But the US public was weary of wars, and opposed the huge costs of
naval construction, and the population was moving back towards its isolationist tendencies. The new
Republican Harding administration wanted an agreement to limit the new arms race.
Japan was rediscovering its position as one of the world's great powers, and ambitiously building
new modern battleships and battlecruisers. But their industrial capacity was limited,
and at least some of their leadership knew that they could not succeed in an all-out arms race.
Despite their ambitions, in 1922 the Japanese had only 55% as many capital ships as the Americans,
and just 18% of the GDP. Great Britain had numerically, the largest Navy in the world,
but the fleet was aging and unable to compete with more modern American and
Japanese ships. They had plans to produce more modern vessels, but the war and the
cost of building the fleet they already had, had almost bankrupted the nation.
And so despite their ambitions the major powers all had reason to try to prevent an
arms race. And despite Republican opposition to internationalism, when President Harding
heard that Great Britain was planning on holding a conference, he took the initiative. Great Britain,
Japan, France and Italy were invited to discuss the reduction of naval capacity, while Belgium,
China, the Netherlands and Portugal, were also included to discuss the situation in the Far East.
At the first session, held November 21st 1921, US Secretary of State, Charles Evans Hughes,
provided a dramatic beginning for the conference by stating with resolve, “The way to disarm,
is to disarm”. The conference resulted in three major treaties and several bilateral treaties,
which were ratified in August of 1943. The most significant was the Five Power Treaty,
which placed a ten year moratorium on building capital ships, battleships and battlecruisers.
Limited the total amount of capital ship tonnage each nation could have, based
on ship displacement, with the US and Britain each allowed 500,000 tons, Japan 300,000 tons,
and France and Italy each 175,000 tons. The US and Britain were allowed more tonnage because
they were expected to maintain fleets in both the Atlantic in the Pacific. The nations could not
come up with a similar agreement, regarding total allowed tonnage of smaller vessels,
but did limit the allowed size of such vessels. Although there were discussions of limits on
submarines, no agreement was reached. To allow Japanese concerns, current bases in
the Pacific were recognized, but nations were not allowed to grow, or reinforce, those bases.
Another treaty ended the British-Japanese alliance, and instead, committed the US,
Japan, Britain and France to hold negotiations before military action,
in the case of a crisis in the Far East. And finally all nine conference participants
agreed to the US goal of an open China policy. Agreeing to respect Chinese territorial integrity,
while China in return, agreed not to discriminate against any country seeking to do business there.
The treatise did end the period of battleship construction, and several existing ships,
or ships under construction, were scrapped or converted into aircraft carriers which
were unregulated. The Japanese Battlecruiser Akagi, then under construction for example,
was one of those converted to an aircraft carrier. It was then one of the six carriers used in the
attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th of 1941, and then sunk at the Battle of Midway in 1942.
But in the end we know the treaty failed to
prevent both a naval arms race and a second world war. Why?
First the treaty only placed limits on some classes of ships leading to an arms race in
unregulated classes. There was a significant race to build so-called “Treaty Cruisers”,
for example, that met the size limitations of the treaty, 10,000 ton displacement and 8-inch guns.
Further treaties in London in 1930 in 1936 placed limits on smaller classes of ships, although
Japan and Italy did not sign the 1936 agreement. Second, the conference focused on battleships,
which many argue had already become obsolete. While nations did eventually start building
new battleships, their limited use in naval warfare in the Second World War demonstrated
that the treaty had focused in the wrong place. Third, because of national security concerns,
there was a lack of verification. Nations simply cheated, using creative computations of tonnage,
designing ships where the treaty limited guns, could be easily replaced with larger
guns in times of war, or simply lying. The Japanese Mogami classic Cruiser, for example,
was a full 20 percent larger than the treaty allowance. Fourth, the Japanese naval command
was never satisfied with the treaty, and felt that their smaller allotment was disrespectful.
The resentment eventually led Japan to renounce the treaty, sparking another naval arms race.
One reason, the United States was spying on all the other participants in the Washington Naval
conference, which gave them a substantial advantage in the negotiations. Fully aware
of all Japanese diplomatic communications, the US was able to get them to agree to the lowest
possible number that they would be willing to accept. Finally, the Pacific agreements,
while intended to maintain the status quo, offered Japan an advantage in the early part of World War
Two. The US inability to reinforce Wake Island, Guam and the Philippines invited, some think,
Japanese attack. And certainly impacted early war strategy, and early US losses, in the war.
So would the world have been better off without the world's first arms limitation treaty? The
treaty lulled the US into a false sense of security that allowed Japan to build a fleet
that could contest with the United States in the Pacific, and that made war more, rather than less,
likely. As the treaty did not accurately represent the disparity and industrial capacity between the
two, it certainly disadvantaged the United States in the early part of the Second World
War. And while it would be unfair to say that the Washington Naval Treaty caused the Second
World War, some certainly argue that it pretty much invited Japan to attack Pearl Harbor,
and was the primary reason that Japan was able to score early victories in the
Pacific. It also ended up disadvantaging Great Britain. The original calculation assumed that
the French fleet would counterbalance the Italian fleet in the Mediterranean,
but when the French were forced to capitulate early in the war,
that meant that the limited British fleet had to deal with both the Germans in the Atlantic,
and the Italians in the Mediterranean. One of its most interesting impacts is the way that it
changed fleet composition in the Second World War. The Washington Naval Treaty drove the development
of naval aviation, which became a primary weapon of naval combat, in the Second World War.
While it certainly had its flaws, the treaty and the compromises that it negotiated,
are still studied as a model for arms reduction through diplomacy. And of course an unrestricted
naval arms race in the 1920s and 30s might have made the world a more unstable place,
and certainly would have had significant economic impacts. In the end, the best that can be said,
is that the Washington Naval Treaty was the best that could be accomplished at the time,
and it paved the way for future arms limitation talks, like the Strategic
Arms Limitation talks. It changed the way that nations interact with each other,
and for that reason alone, it is history that deserves to be remembered.
I’m the History Guy and I hope you enjoyed this edition of my series, 5 minutes of history,
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