raharris1973
Well-known member
The more one takes the long view of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, the more it appears it was oriented towards solving problems that turned out to not be very salient in later decades, and offered poor protection against those problems that did emerge, or in some cases, made them worse.
It was designed first and foremost to contain naval arms races, which had been seen as a global prior security problem in prior decades during the Anglo-German and Anglo-French naval races.
Looking forward, it sought to solve for an Anglo-American-Japanese naval race, since the Germans and Russians were now out of the picture.
It was correct in diagnosing that Japanese fleets could come to blows with rivaling American and British fleets, but never generated enough consensus legitimacy on all sides to be observed on all sides. For the purposes of preventing the conflict of Japan versus the rest, it was undone by its own backlash, with the unequal limitations of the treaty itself becoming a source for militant agitation in Japan.
The treaty authors were incorrect in assuming that Anglo-American naval arms racing was an equal risk alongside with either of those two powers coming to blows with Japan. This fear was greatly misplaced.
First of all, none of the USA, UK, or Japan had the budgetary means (or would summon the political will to raise the budgets) to fully fund their full naval programs, a certain 'self-control' of arms was going to be inevitable.
Secondly, even if the USA or UK get past one another, it is a political choice and largely an academic question, since they're exceedingly unlikely to use their fleets coercively against each other, much less go to war.
Britain could well decide to not compete with the USA. And then what's the harm?
If Britain let's a naval arms control treaty not happen because America is displeased with it keeping its Anglo-Japanese alliance, then America continues off to the naval building races, and Britain doesn't compete, where is the danger to Britain?
Britain's position could be that it decided it finished with fighting the Americans in 1815 and doesn't have plans to do it again. Just because America is dissatisfied the Anglo-Japanese alliance still exists, and its own Navy building is not treaty limited, does that compel Washington to develop hostile political ambitions and intentions against Britain and the British Empire?
Does an arms race, especially a one-sided one, force hostile relations all by itself? What will America's particular anti-British agenda consist of?
Will Washington covet Britain's Caribbean, African, Pacific, or Far Eastern colonies for itself?
I doubt it. The 1920s U.S. didn't seem inclined to absorb more non-white populations.
Will Washington go about supporting independence movements in the British Empire?
Also doubtful, with the U.S. reverting back to isolationism, caring little for the rest of the world, and with the one part of the British Empire having a solid American constituency, Ireland, having won it's independence.
Will Washington threaten Canada?
I would certainly hope, and honestly think, that by 1922 Americans recognized it was self-governing, not a mere appendage of Britain, and had no interest in stirring up trouble in their northern neighborhood just for grins or just out of pique.
-----
Of course all the questions I raised about the UK having, but not exercising, its true range of choice were based on leaving an assumption that guided OTL's calculation unchanged, namely that the US was going to be such an obtuse, unthinking hulk about the Anglo-Japanese alliance.
It's only fair if I question the British for not telling the Americans off, that I question the Americans about the stridency of their position, and ask, what if they read freaking Anglo-Japanese treaty, saw that it was nullified by Article 4 and the Anglo-American Arbitration Treaty, took a chill pill, and moved on. That's an even better, simpler, PoD.
Heck, in the end, the U.S. probably gave up more in the ultimate WNT in agreeing to not fortify its western Pacific territories than it dubiously "gained" in terms of forcing the end of the Anglo-Japanese alliance.
The nine-power treaty to protect the territorial integrity of China, including the restoration of the Qingdao leasehold and provisions for eventual restoration of tariff autonomy was laudable, but was undone by its own backlash from an insecure Japan.
The Washington Naval Treaty ended the Anglo-Japanese alliance, which, by itself, wasn't a source of international threat, but rather left Britain feeling less secure in dealing firmly with challenges from Germany and Italy.
Britain gave up the Anglo-Japanese alliance under pressure from the U.S., but the U.S. concerns that the alliance was, a) a security threat aimed at them, or b) a plot to exclude America from the markets of Asia, were, even if sincerely believed, rather dumb and bogus.
Article 4. of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance Treaty as revised in 1911, meant that the joint war making clauses of the treaty cannot apply against the United States, because of the Anglo-American arbitration treaty (it gave Britain and Japan an escape clause from having to go to war with any country they had an arbitration treaty with). Additionally, there were no commercial clauses to the agreement.
Imagine instead Britain held onto the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and this scuttled the Washington Treaty. Then Japan avoids two historical "slights". It has no treaty-codified naval inferiority, and it doesn't have its alliance with the (at lease once) greatest white power abandoned. However, it can well face a USA racing ahead to build battleships and internal Navy lobbying to maximally build up its own.
This will be fiscally ruinous. Maybe Japan can go bonkers on naval spending between February 1922 and September 1923, but the labor and materials costs may become unsustainable even before then. There could be both labor unrest and tax revolt. And then on September 1, 1923 there is the great Kanto earthquake, and Japan has a whole lot of other expenses while its revenue plummets.
What's the effect on Japan psychologically if it doesn't have treaty limits to bitch and moan about? All things being equal, they are probably positive. And how does that influence the moods of its navy and army and politicians throughout the 20s, 30s and 40s?
And, if the Japanese spend themselves into ruin or peak too early with naval expansion in the 1920s, where does that leave them materially/industrially and economically in terms of being able to build and maintain a state-of-the-art carrier fleet in the 1930s and 1940s, and being able to support an infantry army massive enough to sustain a protracted war in China in the 1930s and 1940s?
I mean in a hopeful scenario, a less diplomatically isolated and psychologically wounded/triggered Japan will be less crazy and more responsible, but there's no guarantee. Japan could go off the deep end anyway, even with the AJA in technical force.
One would think that Britain and the Dominions at least would have been in their rights to demand that the Americans substitute an alliance offer of their own to the British Empire to replace the AJA if it were dropped, to reduce imperial worries about two-ocean wars, but that was never offered.
There is also a strangely persistent view that continued AJA = inevitable Anglo-American War.
The question is, over what?
It's not like the USA is going to suddenly decide to go all in funding and arming the Indian independence movement, and decide Canada is made up of nine states and two territories that should be part of the Union, nor is Britain going to declare certain happenings in 1776 to be an unlawful UDI and the resulting country illegitimate.
Getting back to the Washington Naval Treaty, it imposed building limitations that could eventually be broken (by Japan) while imposing offsetting limitations on fortifications of western Pacific bases, increasing the long-term vulnerability of Guam and the Philippines.
Now, if there had not been a Treaty, would the middle decades have been ones of sweetness and light for the Pacific? We can't guarantee that for sure. There's a chance that human greed, nationalism, and imperialism paves a path to hell in the Pacific, but they would have to pave it differently from OTL, where the WNT definitely shaped the particulars.
It was designed first and foremost to contain naval arms races, which had been seen as a global prior security problem in prior decades during the Anglo-German and Anglo-French naval races.
Looking forward, it sought to solve for an Anglo-American-Japanese naval race, since the Germans and Russians were now out of the picture.
It was correct in diagnosing that Japanese fleets could come to blows with rivaling American and British fleets, but never generated enough consensus legitimacy on all sides to be observed on all sides. For the purposes of preventing the conflict of Japan versus the rest, it was undone by its own backlash, with the unequal limitations of the treaty itself becoming a source for militant agitation in Japan.
The treaty authors were incorrect in assuming that Anglo-American naval arms racing was an equal risk alongside with either of those two powers coming to blows with Japan. This fear was greatly misplaced.
First of all, none of the USA, UK, or Japan had the budgetary means (or would summon the political will to raise the budgets) to fully fund their full naval programs, a certain 'self-control' of arms was going to be inevitable.
Secondly, even if the USA or UK get past one another, it is a political choice and largely an academic question, since they're exceedingly unlikely to use their fleets coercively against each other, much less go to war.
Britain could well decide to not compete with the USA. And then what's the harm?
If Britain let's a naval arms control treaty not happen because America is displeased with it keeping its Anglo-Japanese alliance, then America continues off to the naval building races, and Britain doesn't compete, where is the danger to Britain?
Britain's position could be that it decided it finished with fighting the Americans in 1815 and doesn't have plans to do it again. Just because America is dissatisfied the Anglo-Japanese alliance still exists, and its own Navy building is not treaty limited, does that compel Washington to develop hostile political ambitions and intentions against Britain and the British Empire?
Does an arms race, especially a one-sided one, force hostile relations all by itself? What will America's particular anti-British agenda consist of?
Will Washington covet Britain's Caribbean, African, Pacific, or Far Eastern colonies for itself?
I doubt it. The 1920s U.S. didn't seem inclined to absorb more non-white populations.
Will Washington go about supporting independence movements in the British Empire?
Also doubtful, with the U.S. reverting back to isolationism, caring little for the rest of the world, and with the one part of the British Empire having a solid American constituency, Ireland, having won it's independence.
Will Washington threaten Canada?
I would certainly hope, and honestly think, that by 1922 Americans recognized it was self-governing, not a mere appendage of Britain, and had no interest in stirring up trouble in their northern neighborhood just for grins or just out of pique.
-----
Of course all the questions I raised about the UK having, but not exercising, its true range of choice were based on leaving an assumption that guided OTL's calculation unchanged, namely that the US was going to be such an obtuse, unthinking hulk about the Anglo-Japanese alliance.
It's only fair if I question the British for not telling the Americans off, that I question the Americans about the stridency of their position, and ask, what if they read freaking Anglo-Japanese treaty, saw that it was nullified by Article 4 and the Anglo-American Arbitration Treaty, took a chill pill, and moved on. That's an even better, simpler, PoD.
Heck, in the end, the U.S. probably gave up more in the ultimate WNT in agreeing to not fortify its western Pacific territories than it dubiously "gained" in terms of forcing the end of the Anglo-Japanese alliance.
The nine-power treaty to protect the territorial integrity of China, including the restoration of the Qingdao leasehold and provisions for eventual restoration of tariff autonomy was laudable, but was undone by its own backlash from an insecure Japan.
The Washington Naval Treaty ended the Anglo-Japanese alliance, which, by itself, wasn't a source of international threat, but rather left Britain feeling less secure in dealing firmly with challenges from Germany and Italy.
Britain gave up the Anglo-Japanese alliance under pressure from the U.S., but the U.S. concerns that the alliance was, a) a security threat aimed at them, or b) a plot to exclude America from the markets of Asia, were, even if sincerely believed, rather dumb and bogus.
Article 4. of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance Treaty as revised in 1911, meant that the joint war making clauses of the treaty cannot apply against the United States, because of the Anglo-American arbitration treaty (it gave Britain and Japan an escape clause from having to go to war with any country they had an arbitration treaty with). Additionally, there were no commercial clauses to the agreement.
Imagine instead Britain held onto the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and this scuttled the Washington Treaty. Then Japan avoids two historical "slights". It has no treaty-codified naval inferiority, and it doesn't have its alliance with the (at lease once) greatest white power abandoned. However, it can well face a USA racing ahead to build battleships and internal Navy lobbying to maximally build up its own.
This will be fiscally ruinous. Maybe Japan can go bonkers on naval spending between February 1922 and September 1923, but the labor and materials costs may become unsustainable even before then. There could be both labor unrest and tax revolt. And then on September 1, 1923 there is the great Kanto earthquake, and Japan has a whole lot of other expenses while its revenue plummets.
What's the effect on Japan psychologically if it doesn't have treaty limits to bitch and moan about? All things being equal, they are probably positive. And how does that influence the moods of its navy and army and politicians throughout the 20s, 30s and 40s?
And, if the Japanese spend themselves into ruin or peak too early with naval expansion in the 1920s, where does that leave them materially/industrially and economically in terms of being able to build and maintain a state-of-the-art carrier fleet in the 1930s and 1940s, and being able to support an infantry army massive enough to sustain a protracted war in China in the 1930s and 1940s?
I mean in a hopeful scenario, a less diplomatically isolated and psychologically wounded/triggered Japan will be less crazy and more responsible, but there's no guarantee. Japan could go off the deep end anyway, even with the AJA in technical force.
One would think that Britain and the Dominions at least would have been in their rights to demand that the Americans substitute an alliance offer of their own to the British Empire to replace the AJA if it were dropped, to reduce imperial worries about two-ocean wars, but that was never offered.
There is also a strangely persistent view that continued AJA = inevitable Anglo-American War.
The question is, over what?
It's not like the USA is going to suddenly decide to go all in funding and arming the Indian independence movement, and decide Canada is made up of nine states and two territories that should be part of the Union, nor is Britain going to declare certain happenings in 1776 to be an unlawful UDI and the resulting country illegitimate.
Getting back to the Washington Naval Treaty, it imposed building limitations that could eventually be broken (by Japan) while imposing offsetting limitations on fortifications of western Pacific bases, increasing the long-term vulnerability of Guam and the Philippines.
Now, if there had not been a Treaty, would the middle decades have been ones of sweetness and light for the Pacific? We can't guarantee that for sure. There's a chance that human greed, nationalism, and imperialism paves a path to hell in the Pacific, but they would have to pave it differently from OTL, where the WNT definitely shaped the particulars.