raharris1973
Well-known member
My personal interpretation, or "take" on the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, is that it was a solution to a problem that was more apparent than real.
What was the apparent problem? That without arms control, unlimited warship building would consume national budgets and lead to mutual Anglo-American-Japanese hostility and probably naval war.
Why was the problem more apparent, than "real"? Because it was a "self-solving" problem. 1. None of the three powers could have afforded an unlimited battleship race. All three had a somewhat popularly responsive representative government that would have restrained spending before it crowded out too many other private sector and public sector priorities even without a treaty. For at least one of the powers,Japan, the Navy's 'wants' for its expansion program was likely beyond the capacity of its industrial base in a physical sense. That is even before we count the surprise reconstruction bill imposed by the Great Kanto earthquake. 2. Internationally unregulated battleship building need not cause war nor hostility at all. To paraphrase the NRA, 'battleships don't kill people, political leaders deploying navies offensively kill people'. Anglo-American tensions in the post-WWI decades centered on how much access they would grant to each other's markets. They never rose to a level of hostility where military force was threatened or contemplated to resolve that problem. Both countries having unlimited numbers of battleships would not have conjured up a military/naval confrontation or war between the two. Tariff wars and naval wars operated on a separate plane by the twentieth century, at least where great powers capable of defending themselves (as opposed to small banana republics) were concerned.
I challenge anybody to come a scenario where lack of naval arms control turns the peaceful Anglo-American naval equation on its head, and we end up suspending our disbelief and calling it plausible.
People may have bought into the idea at the time, but they were shallow, not systematic thinkers, allowing the extremely vague equation of competition/disagreement over markets + competition in #s of warships = naval war. That equation is completely unproved without doing the homework of defining several intermediate variables.
What was the apparent problem? That without arms control, unlimited warship building would consume national budgets and lead to mutual Anglo-American-Japanese hostility and probably naval war.
Why was the problem more apparent, than "real"? Because it was a "self-solving" problem. 1. None of the three powers could have afforded an unlimited battleship race. All three had a somewhat popularly responsive representative government that would have restrained spending before it crowded out too many other private sector and public sector priorities even without a treaty. For at least one of the powers,Japan, the Navy's 'wants' for its expansion program was likely beyond the capacity of its industrial base in a physical sense. That is even before we count the surprise reconstruction bill imposed by the Great Kanto earthquake. 2. Internationally unregulated battleship building need not cause war nor hostility at all. To paraphrase the NRA, 'battleships don't kill people, political leaders deploying navies offensively kill people'. Anglo-American tensions in the post-WWI decades centered on how much access they would grant to each other's markets. They never rose to a level of hostility where military force was threatened or contemplated to resolve that problem. Both countries having unlimited numbers of battleships would not have conjured up a military/naval confrontation or war between the two. Tariff wars and naval wars operated on a separate plane by the twentieth century, at least where great powers capable of defending themselves (as opposed to small banana republics) were concerned.
I challenge anybody to come a scenario where lack of naval arms control turns the peaceful Anglo-American naval equation on its head, and we end up suspending our disbelief and calling it plausible.
People may have bought into the idea at the time, but they were shallow, not systematic thinkers, allowing the extremely vague equation of competition/disagreement over markets + competition in #s of warships = naval war. That equation is completely unproved without doing the homework of defining several intermediate variables.
