Arms Control During the Pre-Nuclear Era: The United States and Naval Limitation Between the Two World Wars 9780231878609

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
I. THE STRATEGIC SETTING
II. THE DOMESTIC POLITICS OF NAVAL LIMITATION
III. THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE OF 1921-1922
IV. CONFOUNDED EXPECTATIONS
V. THE LONDON NAVAL CONFERENCE OF 1930
VI. CONFOUNDED EXPECTATIONS AGAIN
VII. THE LONDON NAVAL CONFERENCE OF 1935-1936 AND ITS AFTERMATH
VIII. CONCLUSION
APPENDIXES
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Citation preview

ARMS CONTROL DURING THE PRE-NUCLEAR ERA

ROBERT GORDON KAUFMAN

ARMS CONTROL D U R I N G TUE PRE-NUCLEAP ERA THE UNITED STATES AND NAVAL LIMITATION BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS

L A I

C O L U M B I A U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS

NEW YORK

Columbia University Press New York Oxford Copyright © 1990 Columbia University Press All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kaufman, Robert Gordon. Arms control during the pre-nuclear era : the United States and naval limitation between the two world wars / Robert Cordon Kaufman, p. cm. includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-231-07136-1 1. Arms control—United States. 2. Naval law. 3. War, Maritime I International law) I. Title. JX1974.K37 1990 327.1 '74Ό973—dc20 89-37049 CIP Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are Smyth-sewn and printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper

Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I

Dedicated to Molly, Rebecca, my mother, my father, and the memory of William T. R. Fox—a great scholar and a great man—who gave me the strength and encouragement to persevere with this book when I seemed about to lose my way.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I. THE STRATEGIC SETTING I. II. III. IV. V. VI.

THE RISE OF AMERICAN BRITISH

SEAPOWER

SEAPOWER

J A P A N ' S E M E R C E N C E AS A W O R L D JAPANESE-AMERICAN POLITICAL

POWER

RIVALRY

T H E A M E R I C A N NAVY AND JAPAN T H E J A P A N E S E NAVY AND T H E U N I T E D

STATES

II. THE DOMESTIC POLITICS OF NAVAL LIMITATION I.

THE UNITED

II.

GREAT

III.

JAPAN

STATES

BRITAIN

III. THE WASHINGTON C O N F E R E N C E OF 1921-1922 I. II. III.

PRELIMINARIES THE

CONFERENCE

RATIFICATION

IV. CONFOUNDED EXPECTATIONS I. II.

NAVAL P L A N N I N G A N D DEPLOYMENT

DOCTRINE

viii

Contents III.

P O L I T I C A L D E V E L O P M E N T S IN T H E F A R

IV.

VERIFICATION AND C O M P L I A N C E

V.

T H E G E N E V A N A V A L C O N F E R E N C E OF

EAST

1927

V. THE LONDON N A V A L C O N F E R E N C E OF 1 9 3 0 I. II.

HOOVER AND STIMSON PRELIMINARIES

III.

THE

IV.

RATIFICATION

CONFERENCE

VI. C O N F O U N D E D E X P E C T A T I O N S AGAIN I. T H E U N I T E D II.

GREAT

III.

JAPAN

STATES

BRITAIN

VII. THE LONDON N A V A L C O N F E R E N C E OF 1 9 3 5 - 1 9 3 6 A N D ITS A F T E R M A T H I. II. III.

PRELIMINARIES THE

CONFERENCE

BREAKDOWN AND

BREAKOUT

VIII. C O N C L U S I O N I. II.

FINDINGS NAVAL ARMS L I M I T A T I O N AND ARMS CONTROL TODAY

APPENDIXES A.

T O N N A G E A L L O W E D U N D E R THF. T R E A T I E S O F AND

B.

193O

T O N N A G E O F C O M P L E T E D S H I P S IN 1Ç22 S C R A P P I N G BY

C.

NAVAL BUILDING PROGRAMS,

D.

U.S.

AND J A P A N E S E A I R C R A F T

1932-1939

NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHIC BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

NOTE

AFTER

TREATY 1922-1939 PRODUCTION,

IÇ22

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe an enormous debt to many individuals who helped me greatly in this endeavor. My family deserves special mention for their patience, encouragement, and perseverance. So do Professors Fox and Puchala, who graciously rendered their invaluable insight and assistance without any obligation to do so. Professor Hilsman also served me well with his timely and encouraging comments on my drafts. This study benefited mightily from the consummate dedication and assistance of my advisor, Professor Schilling, who deserves much of the credit and none of the blame for this book. Special thanks go likewise to Mike Franc, Mr. James J. Dowd, and Professor Douglas MacDonald for reading and commenting insightfully on the drafts of this study, to Kathy Firth for typing it, to the Firth family for enduring my demands on Kathy's time so patiently, to E. Susan Magill, the housefrau, for the countless and uncompensated hours she spent xeroxing and mailing this manuscript. Equally, I am indebted to the diligent and helpful research personnel at the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the Washington Navy Yard. In this regard, Dr. Dean Allard and Martha Crawley deserve special mention. So does the great Dr. Mondou.

ARMS CONTROL DURING THE PRE-NUCLEAR ERA

INTRODUCTION "People need to be reminded more often than they need to be reintroduced." Dr. Johnson.

Arms control remains something of a national paradox. Virtually everyone supports arms control in principle. Yet the negotiations and their outcomes have evoked passionate criticism from all sides of the political spectrum. W h e r e conservatives blame the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks ( S A L T ) for anesthetizing the democracies to the realities and ramifications of the Soviet Union's relentless military buildup, 1 liberals consider the negotiations too slow and the results disappointingly modest. 2 It is important, therefore, to reappraise the theory and practice of arms control. This book attempts to take a useful step in that direction. It analyzes, systematically and from the American point o f view, the first extended effort to limit arms in the history of the United States: the naval arms control process of the interwar years, which culminated in the Washington Treaties of 1922, the London Naval Treaty o f 1930, and the London Naval Treaty of 1936. T h e Washington Conference of 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 2 produced a series of agreements intended to end the naval competition among the United States, Great Britain, and Japan and to stabilize the political situation in the Far East. T h e Washington Naval Treaty established ratios in tonnage for battleships and carriers among the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France, and Italy. Although the treaty failed to limit the number of auxiliary craft and submarines, it did impose qualitative limitations and set m a x i m u m displacements for all categories of surface vessels. T h e United States, Great Britain, and Japan also agreed to build no more fortifications on certain of their possessions in the Western Pacific.

2

Introduction T h e negotiators linked the naval settlement with the political settlem e n t reached at Washington. T h e Nine Power Treaty committed the signatories to uphold the Open Door and the territorial integrity of China, but contained no enforcement mechanism. T h e Four Power Treaty replaced the Anglo-Japanese Alliance with a consultative pact among the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and France that imposed no military obligation. Under the Mandates Treaty, the United States recognized Japan's mandatory authority over former German colonies in the Northwestern Pacific. T h e London Treaty of 1930 extended the ratio system to include cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, but only among the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. France and Italy refused to sign, because France would not accept either parity with Italy or allotments in auxiliaries as low as the British and the Americans proposed. T h e Second London Naval Conference (1935) ended in failure when Japan refused to accept anything less than numerical parity in tonnage for all categories of warships with Great Britain and the United States, which the British and the Americans refused to concede. All the London Naval Treaty of 1936 could do was establish qualitative limitations on and set m a x i m u m displacements for all categories of surface vessels. T h e treaty also contained an escape clause in the event that Japan refused to abide informally by its provisions. W h e n , in the spring of 1938, the Japanese still declined to assure the Americans and the British that their new battleships complied with the qualitative limitations of the naval treaties, efforts to limit naval armaments collapsed entirely. W h y study the history of naval limitations? What is the rationale for yet another work on arms control? T h e answer is, in the first place, to expand arms control theory's shallow empirical base. Having as their first principle the idea that the advent of nuclear weapons marks a great divide in international politics, most arms controllers have focused mainly on the single episode of the Soviet-American, or relied purely on deductive reasoning. 3 Doubtless, nuclear weapons have changed strategy and politics significantly. But what strikes the author and others as equally important are the continuities in international politics, pre- and post-1945. 4 T h e contents and arguments of this book rest, then, on the premise that a disciplined study of prenuclear ideas and events can yield valuable theoretical and practical lessons for arms control in any age. A study of the interwar naval treaties also serves as a useful point of departure to address two heretofore neglected areas in the literature on

Introduction arms control: the effect of domestic politics on the negotiations, and the politics of breakdown of and the breakout from an arms control process. Specifically, it allows us to test and reappraise the hypothesis of Steven Miller, one of the few scholars who has analyzed the domestic politics of arms control systematically: that the American political system inclines American negotiators to intransigence and "thus constitutes in a large part the explanation of why the harvest of arms control has been disappoint"5 ing. In the third place, there are surprisingly few comprehensive studies of the interwar process of naval limitation. 6 Diplomatic historians have covered various aspects of the treaties episodically. 7 Some have drawn preliminary though largely flawed parallels between the Anglo-American dimension of arms control and Soviet-American arms control in the nuclear age. 8 What few comprehensive studies exist address different questions and give different answers from this one, which focuses on the following from the vantage point of American decisionmakers: • T h e interplay of ideas and events which motivated American statesmen to pursue naval limitation 9 • American decisionmakers' hopes and expectations for the treaties • How, why, and to what effect the principles of parity and ratio emerged as the underpinnings of the treaty system. • T h e politics of verification • T h e impact of naval limitation on naval doctrine and deployment • T h e affinity between democracy and naval amis control 1 0 • T h e effect of structural differences between the American and Japanese political systems on the course and outcome of the negotiations 11 • How and why the process of naval arms control broke down Five major themes run through this study, each of which will receive more elaborate analysis in the text itself. One is how thoroughly events confounded the hopes for and assumptions underlying the process of naval arms control and the treaties. The naval treaties failed to achieve their intended result of ending the naval race and freezing the naval balance indefinitely. Similarly, the action-reaction theorem of the arms race that drove the American position on naval arms control failed utterly to account for why Japan kept building warships prodigiously even when the United States slowed down its buildup program considerably. The triumph of Japanese militarists during the 1930s and the policy of relentless expansionism that followed also falsified the optimistic political and strategic assumptions on which the treaty system rested. American naval planners

3

4

Introduction made their share of miscalculations too. World War II in the Pacific exposed the fallacy of battleship supremacy—the regnant doctrine underpinning not only the treaty system, but naval operations and weapons procurement throughout the interwar years. The second theme is the primacy of politics in arms control: that arms control will fail without corresponding political détente. No formula, no yardstick sufficed in itself to bring about the naval agreements. Politics, not technologies, caused their breakdown. In the 1920s, political détente made naval arms control possible. In the 1930s, Japan's determination to dominate China made failure inevitable. The third theme is that arms control can aggravate the difficulty of reconciling ends and means, of meshing defense strategy and foreign policy commitments with the formal limits of arms control treaties and the indirect inhibiting effect of an arms control process on defense spending. The Nine Power Treaty of 1922 codified America's expansive interpretation of the Open Door in China, just as the naval treaties made their enforcement in practice out of the question. Granted, the process of naval arms control largely reflected rather than caused Anglo-American naval weakness. In certain instances, the treaties may actually have stimulated American support for naval building. Overall, though, the process of naval arms control reinforced and prolonged the reluctance of Presidents and Congress to build up even to treaty limits. The fourth theme is that democracies face major structural disadvantages in negotiating arms agreements with more closed societies, particularly in the critical areas of verification, compliance, defense spending during the treaties' duration, and the politics of breakdown of and breakout from an arms control process. In peacetime, democratic governments regard arms control not only as a virtue, but a necessity—to satisfy public opinion and to relieve pressure on their own defense budgets. Often, their formidable arms control lobbies not only demand unilateral concessions, but have the capacity to enforce such demands. Democratic statesmen tend likewise to place great faith in the ability of arms control negotiations to improve the climate of international relations. Closed societies operate differently. There, treaties tend not to encourage arms control by example. The leaders of closed societies can and may manipulate democracies' enthusiasm for arms control negotiations to serve expansionist ends. The experience of naval arms control highlights these problems and the possible consequences. Largely because of asymmetries between open and closed societies, the United States failed to detect or

Introduction respond effectively to Japan's systematic violations of the naval treaties. In the United States, the treaties strengthened antinaval sentiment; in Japan, they stimulated the Imperial Navy's demand for more building. During the 1930s, Japan used the naval negotiations to conceal its naval buildup and to undermine popular support in the United States for a countervailing buildup. In this way, the Imperial Navy secured a crucial head start in the post-treaty naval race that culminated in the Great Pacific War. T h e fifth theme is the importance of a vigorous building program in being for bargaining leverage in arms control negotiations—a paradox democratic statesmen and their electorates often fail to grasp. Obviously, such a study has some important limitations. Two deserve special mention. First, therê is the danger of false analogy. 12 Every historical situation is in some way unique. So are arms control endeavors of the nuclear age. Too often, scholars and statesmen have foundered on flawed parallels and poor historical analysis." Yet to ignore history is even more dangerous. What happened in the past does have some constructive relevance for our own times. It is the task of scholars to identify those lessons carefully and discern flawed historical analysis or inappropriate analogies when applied. Second, any case study can draw only preliminary and tentative conclusions in relating past to present. Indeed, it should raise more questions than it answers. Even so, the experience of naval arms control is a story worth telling: any generation of arms controllers ought to listen. T h e book proceeds chronologically when possible, topically when necessary. Chapters 1 and 2 lay out the strategic and political background to naval arms limitation as a whole and the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-1922 in particular. Chapter 3 deals with the preliminaries of and the negotiations at the Washington Naval Conference. Chapter 4 discusses the way naval arms limitation may have affected naval doctrine and deployment, then moves on to consider certain problems relating to verification. Chapter 5 deals with the negotiation and ratification of the London Naval Treaty of 1930. Chapter 6 surveys the background to the London Naval Conference of ¡935-1936. Chapter 7 analyzes why the conference failed and how naval arms limitation ended. Chapter 8 offers some concluding remarks about naval limitation and its theoretical and practical relevance for arms control of any age.

5

THE STRATEGIC SETTING

I. THE RISE OF AMERICAN SEAPOWER T h e Washington Naval Conference of 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 2 had its origins in a complex of strategic, technological, and political developments. There was, to begin with, the dramatic and unprecedented increase in American naval power and ambitions since the 1890s. Until then, the United States Navy had developed slowly and confined its mission mainly to the defense of the Western hemisphere. 1 Events began to unfold, however, that would recast American naval policy and thought. T h e writings of Alfred Thayer Mahan inspired a generation of decisionmakers who linked America's destiny with colonies and seapower. Then the Spanish-American War of 1898 seemed to validate Mahan's vision of the United States as a global seapower. By acquiring the Philippines, the United States assumed new responsibilities in the Far East, just as the McKinley administration's support for the Open Door in China seemed to offer new commercial and strategic opportunities. America's growing involvement in the affairs of Asia also began to focus the attention of naval planners on the possibility of war with Japan in the Western Pacific. Meanwhile, the American Navy also had become even more worried about Germany, whose naval building, expansionism, and global commercial aspirations American naval planners considered potentially menacing to the Monroe Doctrine. 2 President Theodore Roosevelt pressed vigorously to transform the United States into a major naval power. An ardent Mahanian, he initiated a program, beginning in 1903, for laying down two capital ships a year.

8

The Strategic Setting W h e n Roosevelt left office in 1909, the American Navy had grown to rank second in capital ships only to Great Britain. 3 T h e Taft administration failed, however, to keep up with the pace of naval building brought on by the Anglo-German naval race. In 1914, the United States Navy ranked third, with a fleet deficient in cruisers and other auxiliaries. Then came World W a r I. During 1914-1915, President Wilson resisted the demands of the General Board and various preparedness groups for a navy second to none. 4 The United States remained adamantly neutral; the President still hoped for peace without victory—a negotiated settlement in Europe brought about by the mediation of United States. 5 By 1916, mounting outrage over the conduct of U-boat warfare, the belligerents' flagrant disregard of neutral rights, the stalemate on the Western Front, and Japan's expansion in Asia at China's expense had changed the minds of President Wilson and the vast majority of Americans on the importance of seapower. Accordingly, the Naval Act of 1916 called for a fleet equal to the most powerful navy in the world and allocated the resources to match. It provided for 156 ships of all classes by 1919, at a cost of approximately 600 million dollars. 6 W h e n the United States entered the war in April 1917, Germany's U-boat campaign directed against the North American trade routes forced the United States to defer the 1916 program and concentrate, instead, on building merchant ships and destroyers. W h e n the war ended, the Wilson administration proposed to resume the 1916 program. In 1919, the Navy asked for even more. T h e General Board recommended a supplemental three-year program that would give the United States the most powerful navy in the world. 7

II. B R I T I S H S E A P O W E R British decisionmakers viewed the American naval program with anxiety if not alarm. W h e n World War I ended, the Royal Navy appeared as dominant as ever: 42 capital ships to 16 for its closest rival, the United States; 1300 combatant ships to the American Navy's 250. Yet these numbers conveyed a misleading impression of Great Britain's naval strength. Thirteen of the Royal Navy's capital ships had become obsolete because of age; the Battle of Jutland had exposed nine more as unfit for the battleline. If the United States completed the naval programs of 1916 and

The Strategic Setting 1919, then it would have a fleet of 50 modern capital ships, many superior in firepower, durability, and design to those of Great Britain. 8 Indeed, the rise of American naval power symbolized why British naval strength had eroded inexorably since the 1890s. For centuries before, the Royal Naval had withstood any and all challenges to its naval supremacy. Great Britain maintained a fleet capable of dominating European waters, maintaining the lines of communications between its vast network of foreign ports and colonies, and defending its interests throughout the world. 9 By the turn of the century, the rise of transoceanic naval powers, the United States and Japan, forced the British to abandon the quest for naval supremacy in the Western hemisphere and the Far East. Germany's rapidly growing navy accelerated this trend. If Great Britain intended to maintain a two-power standard relative to the naval powers in Europe (a navy greater than or equal to the combined strength of the second and third largest continental navies), then it would need political arrangements outside of European waters to substitute for British naval power. T h e Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 allowed Great Britain to concentrate its navy in h o m e waters to meet the German menace, but conceded de facto Japan's naval supremacy over the Royal Navy in the Western Pacific. Simultaneously, the British sought to improve relations with the United States. During the Spanish-American War, Great Britain encouraged the United States to annex the Philippines. In 1903, it conceded to Washington exclusive control of the Isthmian waterway that would become the Panama Ganal. As part of a strategy of concentrating the fleet in home waters, Great Britain began the next year to remove its fleet permanently from Jamaica and thus recognized American naval supremacy in the Caribbean. 1 0 Although President Wilson and British leaders disagreed often about neutral rights and freedom of the seas, the United States and Great Britain drew even closer during the First World War. T h e sympathies of the President and most Americans lay firmly with the Allies. T h e President also recoiled at the prospects of an authoritarian and militaristic Germany winning the war. W h e n his efforts to mediate failed and the Germans determined to resume unrestricted U-boat warfare, he decided to end the war by bringing victory to the Allies. 11 After the armistice, however, Anglo-American relations began to deteriorate. Great Britain emerged from the war anxious to retain its naval

9

IO

The Strategic Setting supremacy, while President Wilson and his naval advisors believed that the United States needed the greatest navy in the world, should no League of Nations come into existence, and parity with Great Britain, should a League materialize. 12 T h e Paris Peace Conference produced several sharp clashes over naval policy. President Wilson tied any reduction in naval building to Great Britain's support for the League of Nations as he envisioned it. Were Great Britain to refuse, he spoke menacingly of a naval race. Disagreements arose, too, on how to dispose of the German fleet. Drawing selectively from the neomercantilist theories of Mahan, Wilson's naval advisors at Paris believed that commercial rivalry constituted the primary cause of war. Hence, they identified the Royal Navy as a possible enemy. At one point, Admiral William Benson, Chief of Naval Operations, threatened Walter Long, the First Lord of the Admiralty, with a stark alternative: either parity or war. 13 Whether or not Benson typified the views of Wilson and most American naval planners, his remarks did convey the intensity of feeling that existed in the United States for a navy second to none. In April 1919, the United States agreed to suspend the 1919 building program in return for British support of a reservation to the League covenant excluding the Monroe Doctrine from its jurisdiction. The Senate's rejection of the League left this agreement in doubt, how14

ever. By 1918, trade had also become a source of Anglo-American tension. Having lost many of its overseas markets during the war, Great Britain sought to recapture its commercial dominance. Even before the armistice, it had introduced a series of imperial preferences aimed to freeze out competition with the Empire trade. In April of 1918, the British sent Maurice De Bunsten to Latin America, with the clandestine object of negotiating a trade agreement with Brazil as the first step in restoring Great Britain's prewar position on the South American continent. Similarly, in the months following the armistice, the politics of oil aroused suspicion on both sides. Where the United States complained bitterly of British attempts to monopolize the oil supplies of the Middle East, Great Britain objected no less to the activities of American oil companies in a region long regarded as a British preserve. 15 By the end of the war, the debate over the terms of Irish independence resumed with its customary ferocity. In the United States, British policy regularly provoked outrage and invective from the large and articulate Irish-American community, plus the influential Hearst press. 16

The Strategic Setting Yet in assessing Anglo-American relations in the years preceding the Washington Conference, it is important not to exaggerate the problems out of proportion to their extrinsic or relative seriousness. Although Great Britain and the United States did not cooperate, they did not expect to fight each other either. On the British side, civilians and naval planners alike considered war with the United States unthinkable. Most had recognized long before the Washington Conference the community of interests that existed between Great Britain and the United States born of free institutions and complementary objectives in world affairs. Even in the spring of 1919 as Prime Minister Lloyd George told the Americans that Great Britain would spend its every last guinea to retain naval supremacy, he knew better: Great Britain had neither the resources nor the inclination to engage the United States in an unrestrained naval race. 17 By the autumn of 1919, the government of Lloyd George no longer contested America's claim to parity in battlefleets. By December of 1920, the Admiralty had come around to this view. By the summer of 1921, the Imperial Conference, composed of Great Britain and its Dominions, had established the one-power standard (a navy at least as large as any other power) globally and two-power standard for Europe: the basis of British naval policy until naval arms limitation ended for good in 1938. 1 8 Nor did President Wilson contemplate the notion of war with Great Britain seriously. He fought the Central Powers to save democracy, not destroy it. Most Americans also abhorred the idea of armed conflict with England. Even in the naval debates of 1919 and 1920, Theodore Roosevelt and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (R.-Mass.) led a group of distinguished Americans who challenged advocates of a fleet second to none to explain why the United States needed a navy equal to Great Britain's. 19 True, Anglo-American views on naval matters hardly had become harmonious. T h e General Board would continue to stress the importance of a navy second to none and trade rivalry as a cause of war. Throughout the negotiations to limit naval weapons, Great Britain would attempt to disguise its ambitions for naval supremacy in the concession of battlefleet parity. Yet neither Great Britain or the United States considered the other an enemy. T h e neutrality legislation of the 1930s and the Baldwin Government's flirtations with the idea of appeasing Japan at the Second London Naval Conference of 1936 marked the outer bounds of AngloAmerican discord. By the Washington Conference, American naval planners regarded the Royal Navy as a model to strive against only in sport,

11

12

The Strategic Setting not in combat. 2 0 Meanwhile, Japan, not Britain, had become the American Navy's "inevitable" enemy.

III. JAPAN'S E M E R G E N C E AS A W O R L D P O W E R T h e rise of American naval power coincided with a period of extraordinary dynamism in Japan. Japan entered the nineteenth century a preindustrial society: deeply conservative and distrustful of foreigners. 21 In the 1850s, however, the West forced Japan to end 250 years of self-imposed isolation from European society. Having suffered this ignominity, a large portion of Japan's ruling class determined to adopt Western techniques necessary to ensure Japan's independent survival. 22 T h e Meiji Restoration of 3 January 1868 abolished the shogunate and returned sovereignty to the Emperor with the object of making Japan a "rich country, strong army." 2 3 Over the next 50 years, Japanese leaders initiated a wide-ranging program of modernization that transformed Japan into a world power. Japan's dynamism showed itself not only in the extraordinary rate of economic growth, but in an ambitious policy of imperial expansion. Like their Western mentors, the Japanese associated empire with power and status. 24 Japan also faced a Malthusian dilemma: a rapidly increasing population, not enough land to feed them, and a lack of natural resources essential for industrialization. 25 By the late nineteenth century, most Japanese regarded territorial expansion on the Asian continent as the nation's manifest destiny. China and Russia lay in the path of such expansion. In 1894, Japan attacked China and won a decisive victory: China withdrew from Korea and ceded Formosa, the Pescadores, and Port Arthur to Japan. When the joint intervention of Germany, Russia, and France forced it to surrender Korea and Port Arthur, Japan responded by doubling its army, tripling its navy, and negotiating an agreement with Great Britain calling for mutual support should either party become involved with more than one enemy over China or Korea. 2 6 Then Japan prepared to deal with Russia, whose railroad building program and activities in Korea and Manchuria alarmed Japanese leaders considerably. In 1904, Japan struck Russia without warning. In the fighting that followed, Japan won convincingly on the battlefields of South Manchuria and annihilated the Russian fleet in May 1905 at the battle of the Tsushima strait. T h e Treaty of Portsmouth, ending the Russo-Japanese war, let Japan retain most of what its army and navy had achieved in battle: Southern Sakhalin, Russian leased territory in the Liotung Penin-

The Strategic Setting sula, Port Arthur, and the Russian railway in South Manchuria. 2 7 Japan thus emerged from the Russo-Japanese war commercially ascendant in Manchuria and strategically dominant in Korea. In 1911, it annexed the latter. World War I offered Japan a "providential" opportunity to establish hegemony in East Asia. Although, nominally, Japan entered the war on the side of the Allies, the Japanese Government exploited the distractions and vulnerabilities of both sides to great advantage. In October 1914, Japan occupied the German colonies in the Caroline, Marshall, and Marianas Islands. Germany surrendered Shantung later in the fall. At the beginning of 1915, Japan confronted China with a list of 21 demands, which, collectively, amounted to a Japanese protectorate over the country. A year later, China recognized, under duress, Japan's predominance in Shantung and its special rights in Inner Monglia. China granted Japan two more railway concessions in secret agreements of 1917 and 1918. Also in 1918, Japanese forces moved into Siberia with the object, many suspected, of annexing vast stretches of Russia's Far Eastern territory. Nevertheless, the European powers, fighting a desperate struggle for survival, could do little to resist Japan's advance. In 1917, Japan extracted from Great Britain and France an agreement recognizing the Japanese as heirs to Germany's former rights in China and the German islands of the northern hemisphere of the Western Pacific. 2 8

IV. J A P A N E S E - A M E R I C A N P O L I T I C A L R I V A L R Y Initially, the United States welcomed Japan's emergence as a major power. President Theodore Roosevelt admired the Japanese people and, like the British, considered Japan a valuable counterweight to Russia in the Far East. He thus supported Japan diplomatically during the Russo-Japanese War. At the request of both belligerents, he even mediated the Treaty of Portsmouth that brought about the peace. Still, the magnitude of Japan's victory stunned the President and worried the American Navy, which henceforth began to identify Japan as a threat to American interests in the Pacific. 2 9 In the next decade, relations between the United States and Japan deteriorated badly. Japan's expansionism on the Asian continent clashed with the American policy of maintaining the Open Door and preserving the territorial integrity of China. T h e rise of Japanese power complicated the task of defending the Philippines. America's discrimination against its

13

14

The Strategic Setting Japanese aliens also provoked outrage in Japan. In 1 9 0 6 , the Japanese G o v e r n m e n t protested bitterly the decision o f the S a n F r a n c i s c o S c h o o l Board to segregate Oriental c h i l d r e n . A l t h o u g h t h e G e n d e m e n ' s Agreem e n t o f 1 9 0 8 quieted the controversy, the matter o f r a c e would c o n t i n u e to embitter Japanese-American relations until the end o f the Pacific W a r . 5 0 W o r l d W a r I hardened further A m e r i c a ' s attitude toward Japan's policy o f Asian expansion. A l t h o u g h neither President W i l s o n n o r the A m e r i c a n p e o p l e considered A m e r i c a ' s interests in the F a r E a s t worth a war, the U n i t e d States constantly opposed Japan's advances. In August 1 9 1 4 , President W i l s o n sought unsuccessfully to keep t h e G r e a t W a r o u t o f the Pacific. W h e n Japan set forth the 21 D e m a n d s , the U n i t e d States responded with a policy o f n o t recognizing any a g r e e m e n t that violated the O p e n D o o r . A m e r i c a ' s entry into t h e war forced the President to c o n c e n trate o n the struggle in E u r o p e a n d m o d e r a t e his hostility toward Japan. T h e Lansing-Ishii A g r e e m e n t o f O c t o b e r 1 9 1 7 a c h i e v e d a r a p p r o c h e m e n t o f sorts: the United States recognized Japan's special rights in C h i n a ; in return, the Japanese affirmed the principle o f the O p e n D o o r in a secret protocol t o the A g r e e m e n t . " Events soon overwhelmed this compromise. W h e n W o r l d W a r I ended, the U n i t e d States intensified its opposition to Japan's e x p a n s i o n i s m . President W i l s o n revived President Taft's idea o f a four-power c o n s o r t i u m to block Japan's bid for m o n o p o l y in C h i n a . T h e U n i t e d States sent troops t o Siberia to thwart Japanese designs on Russian territory. H e e d i n g t h e warnings o f his naval advisors, the President r e m a i n e d u n r e c o n c i l e d to Japan's possession o f t h e former G e r m a n islands in the N o r t h e r n P a c i f i c . 3 2 A l t h o u g h the President sought to deny Japan its w a r t i m e gains, the Japanese attained m o s t o f their objectives at the Paris P e a c e C o n f e r e n c e o f 1 9 1 9 . T h e Paris P e a c e T r e a t y failed to endorse the O p e n D o o r in C h i n a as the President and the C h i n e s e delegates to the c o n f e r e n c e had h o p e d . T h e c o n f e r e n c e also c o n f i r m e d Japan's position in S h a n t u n g . T h e p e a c e treaty granted the Japanese m a n d a t o r y authority over t h e c a b l e island o f Y a p a n d other former G e r m a n islands in the N o r t h e r n Pacific. N o r did it establish any procedures for verifying Japan's pledge n o t to fortify t h e islands." Japan still lost in its attempt to secure a pledge for racial equality in t h e L e a g u e o f Nations C o v e n a n t , British a n d the A u s t r a l i a n s . ' but feared,

4

thanks mainly to the opposition o f t h e Similarly, the Japanese n o t only resented,

the growing efforts o f the United States t o block

Japan's

The Strategic Setting manifest destiny in Asia. 55 As 1920 approached, enmity between Japan and the United States also continued to manifest itself in another dimension: naval rivalry.

V. T H E AMERICAN NAVY A N D JAPAN Writing near the turn of the century, Admiral Mahan linked the destiny of the navy and the nation to the outcome of the emerging struggle in the Pacific between Teutonic and Asiatic powers. He envisaged China as playing a crucial role in this struggle, with Manchuria as the crossroads for clashing and irreconcilable interest. Mahan's synthesis of racialism and idealism fit nicely with his ideas about seapower to justify America's expansion across the Pacific. If the United States aspired to dominate the trade and commerce of the Orient; if it wished to ensure the triumph of the civilized West against the militarism and barbarism of the East, then American decisionmakers would have to adjust their foreign policy and plans for naval building accordingly. Thus, Mahan regarded America's commitments in Asia—the Philippines, G u a m , and the Open D o o r — not only as a virtue, but as a necessity. As of 1900, he identified Russia as the enemy in the impending struggle between West and East. Ironically, he classed Japan as a Teutonic power because of its willing conversion to Westernization. He revised his analysis, because of the rising emnity between Japan and the United States that followed. By 1910, Mahan had identified Japan as the "problem state of Asia." 5 6 Long before the Washington Conference, most American naval officers had become enthusiastic Mahanians. Throughout the interwar years, they looked on Japan as the primary enemy, partly, because the Japanese Navy's growing might menaced the Philippines and cast doubt on the credibility of the Open Door. 5 7 Yet their antagonism sprang from more than a hard-headed analysis of Japanese capabilities: it flowed logically from their views about Japan's intentions and America's interests in Asia. Japan's expansionism during World War I had convinced American naval planners that the Japanese intended to dominate the entire Far East. In the spirit of Mahan, the American Navy regarded America's commitments in the Western Pacific as vital interests worth the costs and risks of war. If Japan were to attain hegemony in China, naval planners worried that it would develop into an economic and political entity too strong to challenge anywhere. Worse, in their thinking, Japan's system of government

15

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The Strategic Setting —Prussian, militaristic, authoritarian—made aggression inevitable. If Japan would yield only to superior force, then the United States needed a fleet powerful enough to defeat the Japanese Navy in the Western Pacific.' 8 Again, Mahan influenced American naval planners in their choice of strategy. He deprecated the idea of passive coastal defense and commerce raiding so prevalent in American naval thinking before the 1890s. Instead, he believed in waging war "aggressively, offensively, searching out the enemy's forces." For Mahan, the essence of naval strategy lay in command of the seas, the concentration of seapower capable of destroying the enemy's battlefleet and seaborne trade. He regarded the battleship as the ultima ratio of seapower. In his scheme of things, victory turned on the relative strength of the battlelines engaging one another in the theatre of decisive encounter. 5 9 Yet the spectre of a transoceanic advance against Japan raised immense difficulties for naval planners. Even in the age of sail, distance amounted to a certain number of ships. Developments in naval technology between 1890 and 1918 had increased the perils of operating in distant seas. 40 With the advent of steam-powered fleets, the need for fuel circumscribed the radius of effective fleet action. O n e widely held maxim discounted the efficiency of the battlefleet 10 percent for every 1000 miles it travelled; 41 another held that a steam-driven fleet could operate effectively only within 2500 miles of a major base. 42 In a war with Japan, naval planners expected an immediate attack on the Philippines, 7000 miles from the West Coast of the United States and almost 5000 miles from Hawaii. T o defeat the Japanese Navy in the Western Pacific, the American battlefleet would need bases for refueling in Hawaii, in Guam, and in the Philippines. If the United States hoped to win a short war culminating in a decisive encounter beiween rival battlefleets, the bases in the Philippines would need to be strong enough to hold out against a Japanese attack for four months until the battlefleet could come to the rescue. W h e n World War I ended, however, G u a m and the Philippines lacked adequate bases and defenses to support a trans-Pacific advance. Many naval authorities believed that not even a well-defended base on the Philippines could withstand a determined Japanese attack long enough for the battlefleet to arrive. In 1911, naval planners began to devise War Plan Orange, a scenario for a War against Japan that sought to grapple with the problem of defending the Philippines. 45 As of 1920, the General Board refused to write off the possibility of defending the Philippines

The Strategic Setting successfully and thus continued to lobby hard for construction of fortifications and a naval base on the Philippines, on Hawaii, and on G u a m . 4 4 Politics reinforced the American Navy's commitment to the scenario of a short war in the Pacific. Few naval planners doubted that with adequate time and the requisite degree of alarm, the United States could defeat Japan. Some worried, however, that the American people lacked the stamina to fight a prolonged and costly war of attrition for American interests in the Far East. Others worried that if Japan attacked the public would demand an early and swift rescue of the islands, regardless of the costs or risks. Hence, the American Navy refused to abandon entirely its plans for a short, spasmodic war until well into 1930s. 45 Nor was defending the Philippines the only problem facing naval planners who contemplated the prospects of war with Japan. Emerging technologies complicated vastly their calculations of the degree of superiority necessary to ensure victory after a transoceanic advance. During the Great War, Germany unleashed a campaign of unrestricted U-boat warfare that nearly defeated the Allies. Germany's astonishing success with the submarine evoked fear and revulsion in Great Britain and the United States. Submarines upset the traditional distinction in warfare between civilian and combatant. German U-boats struck without warning against merchant ships and civilian liners. Being small and vulnerable, submarines could not rescue survivors. At the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, representatives of the Royal and American Navies discussed eliminating the submarines altogether, although the negotiations foundered ultimately because of French opposition. 46 Despite their concern, British and American naval planners believed that a combination of Asdic (SONAR), aviation, and the convoy system diminished the threat submarines posed to commerce. 4 7 Also, the American Navy believed that the American people would forbid the resort to unrestricted U-boat warfare. Nor, until the late 1930s, did American warplans with respect to Japan anticipate fighting a long war of attrition in which the submarine's mission as a commerce raider would prove most useful. Consequently, most interwar naval planners tended to define the tactics and mission of the submarine to fit with the regnant doctrine of battlefleet supremacy. In their view, the submarine would serve best as a scout and a shield for the battlefleet. 48 Similarly, naval planners everywhere reached flawed conclusions about potentialities of the aircraft carrier. So did most civilian strategists, even Bernard Brodie, the sage of the missile age:

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The Strategic Setting So long as the energy of impact of the aerial bomb is dependent upon the force of gravity, so long will it be relatively ineffective against armored surfaces. . . . Moreover, the warship's defense against aerial attack may be expected to improve further. The capital ship already has a high degree of invulnerability. . . . It would seem that it is as adjunct to the fleet that the carrier has the greatest future. . . . The carrier, however, is not likely to replace the battleship. . . . The carrier can strike over a unit range and at most swiftly moving targets, but she cannot strike with the accuracy and forcefiilness that is characteristic of the large naval gun within the limits of its range.49 When the Great War ended, the debate began about the significance of aircraft for future wars. Brigadier General William Mitchell emerged as the most prominent advocate of air power. As he saw it, aviation not only rendered the battleship, but all surface craft, obsolete. He regarded the land-based bomber as the primary index of national power.50 A few prominent naval officers agreed with Mitchell that aviation rendered the battleship, although not the battlefleet, obsolete. Admiral William Fullam, long prominent in the naval reform movement, Admiral William Sims, retired Commander of U.S. naval forces in Europe during World War I, Admiral Bradley Fiske, President of the Navy War College, and Rear Admiral William Moffett, Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics during most of 1921—1933, led the ranks of Mitchell's naval supporters. This group predicted that the aircraft carrier would become the mainstay of the fleet. These advocates of airpower represented, however, only a tiny minority. In American naval circles, most assumed that the battleship would remain the primary index of naval power.51 In the spring of 1921, the debate came to a head when Mitchell got his chance to have his planes drop 200-pound bombs on the Ostfriesland, an obsolete German battleship anchored off the coast of Virginia. His aviators proved, in a stunning display, that aircraft could indeed sink battleships. Naval authorities disparaged the test as unrealistic. The vessel had no crew, and did not maneuver or fire antiaircraft guns.52 Still, the experiment convinced the Navy that aircraft had become an important if secondary weapon of the battlefleet.53 As with the submarine, however, the General Board considered aircraft carriers chiefly as auxiliaries and carriers foremost as scouts for the battlefleet.54 Naval planners everywhere did recognize that aircraft and the submarine complicated the task of engaging the Japanese Navy in the Western

The Strategic Setting Pacific. These weapons made conducting transoceanic operations and operations in the narrow seas of the local fleet extremely perilous. Aircraft and the submarine posed another danger to a transoceanic advance: attrition. In any war between the United States and Japan, naval planners expected that Japanese submarines, destroyers, and aircraft based on the Mandated islands would strike the American battlefleet with the object of eliminating its margin of superiority by the time the fleet reached the Western Pacific for the decisive encounter. 5 5 This is why President Wilson objected so strongly to giving Japan control of these islands that stood athwart the American Navy's line of advance across the Pacific. W h e n naval planners calculated the margin of superiority necessary to defeat Japan in the Western Pacific, they would have to take into account the destruction Japan's advance units could inflict on the battlefleet. T h e American Navy also would need sufficient numbers of auxiliary craft— cruisers, destroyers, submarines, carriers—vital to shielding the battlefleet's advance. Distance gave the Japanese another potential advantage: design. If the United States intended to conduct a transoceanic advance, then it needed to design its ships with abundant space and tonnage for fuel, water, and housing. If the Japanese chose to sacrifice cruising radius for added compartmentalization and armor, then Japanese vessels would have superior battlepower, ton for ton, to their American counterparts. 56 Assuming that the United States established a defensible base in the Philippines, the General Board calculated, as of 1921 and throughout the interwar years, that the American battlefleet would need a ratio of at least 10 to 5 to defeat the Imperial Navy in the Western Pacific. 57 Yet this formula conveyed a false sense of precision. Were naval planners' assumptions about the rate of attrition realistic? Were the battleships of the American Navy the equal of Japan's in firepower, accuracy, endurance, and efficiency? Did the submarine and the aircraft carrier render the battleship obsolete? How would these new weapons affect the design and performance of the battleship? Notwithstanding these imponderables, the American Navy determined to build a fleet capable of defeating the Imperial Navy in a short, decisive encounter in the Western Pacific. T h e programs of 1916 and 1919 called for ships with the endurance to conduct transoceanic operations and with gunpower equal or superior to that of any potential adversary. 58

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The Strategic Setting

VI. THE J A P A N E S E N A V Y A N D THE U N I T E D S T A T E S Meanwhile, Japanese naval thinking mirrored that of its American counterparts. Japan's victories against C h i n a in 1895 and at Tsushima in the war against Russia impressed upon its leaders the importance of seapower. There, too, M a h a n supplied the doctrine and the rationale for Japanese navalism. By the early 1900s, Sato Tetsutaro, the M a h a n of Japan, had written a treatise on naval power that put the arguments of his mentor in Japanese terms. His writings created a generation of M a h a n i a n disciples within the Japanese Navy. 5 9 After the Great War, Admiral Kato Kanji emerged as Japan's most influential naval exponent of navalism and expansionism. He argued, too, that seapower determines the rise and fall of nations. Echoing the logic of many American naval planners, he also believed that the contest for trade and naval supremacy put Japan and the United States on a collision course. Although, before 1914, the Japanese Navy regarded Russia as the primary antagonist, the Great W a r darkened the Imperial Navy's assessment of the United States. America's opposition to Japan's expansionism convinced Japanese naval planners that the United States was the rival nation with which a clash of interests was most likely. From then on, the Japanese Navy looked on the United States as the primary antagonist. 6 0 Yet one must not take the mirror image metaphor too far. Clark Reynolds argues compellingly that Japan and the United States faced each other operating from fundamentally different strategic imperatives: whereas the United States epitomized what geostrategists mean by a classical maritime power, essentially, Japan pursued a continental strategy, notwithstanding its status as an island nation. Neither the Japanese Navy nor its concerns ever escaped their subordinate status to that of the Army. To the end, the Asian rimland, not transoceanic imperialism, remained the object of Japan's expansionism. 6 1 The Japanese Navy would strive accordingly merely for sea denial: a fleet capable of denying the U . S . fleet control of the Western Pacific so that the Japanese Army would win the war on the Asian continent. If, conversely, the United States hoped to thwart Japan's program of Asian expansion, then it needed sea control: a fleet capable not only of defeating the Japanese fleet in the waters of the Western Pacific, but of projecting sufficient American power to thwart Japanese expansion on the Asian Continent. These clashing strategic

T h e Strategie Setting

imperatives would drive Japanese and A m e r i c a n naval p l a n n i n g for the next two decades. By the end o f the G r e a t W a r , t h e n , Japan had begun to develop, systematically, its version o f W a r Plan O r a n g e . Japanese naval planners operated on the same doctrinal premises as their A m e r i c a n counterparts: the supremacy o f the battleship,

the clash o f rival battlelines in

the

decisive fleet e n c o u n t e r , the subordinate roles o f aircraft and the s u b m a rine, the failure to grasp the effectiveness o f submarines as c o m m e r c e raiders. T h e i r vision o f a Pacific W a r mirrored that o f W a r Plan O r a n g e . Japan would seize the Philippines and G u a m . T h e n Japanese submarines would harass the advance' o f the A m e r i c a n battlefleet across the Pacific; carriers, cruisers, and aircraft based on the Mandated islands would join the attack. W h e n the attrition phase c o n c l u d e d , the Japanese Navy would then engage the A m e r i c a n fleet in the seas near Japan and destroy it as the Imperial Navy had destroyed the Russian fleet at T s u s h i m a . 6 2 Japanese naval planners calculated that an approaching armada would need a n u m e r i c a l superiority o f at least 50 percent over the defending fleet. T h i s m e a n t that the Japanese Navy would have to be at least 7 0 percent the size o f the A m e r i c a n force to assure victory. Although s o m e believed that a 6 to 10 ratio vis-à-vis the A m e r i c a n s would suffice, particularly if the United

States lacked well-fortified bases in the

Western

Pacific, the idea o f a 7 0 percent ratio had b e c o m e axiomatic in Japan's naval thinking by the t i m e o f the W a s h i n g t o n C o n f e r e n c e . 6 ' O n o n e h a n d , Japanese planners stressed the i m p o r t a n c e o f bringing about the decisive e n c o u n t e r early in the war before the United States could bring its superior industrial potential to bear; on the other, they recognized that Japan would have to prepare for a long war o f attrition that it would surely lose if the United States had the will and the stamina to w i n . 6 4 Japanese naval planners began during the early 1920s to debate the implications o f the paradox that Japan must prepare to fight the type of war with the United States that it could afford to fight the least. Kato Kanji advocated that Japan must maintain a fleet in p e a c e t i m e capable o f defeating the United States in the decisive e n c o u n t e r , prepare for a war o f attrition, and rely on America's lack o f stamina for victory. 6 '' If Japan could harness the resources o f the C h i n e s e c o n t i n e n t to its e c o n o m y , then it could m a t c h the United States in industrial potential. If Japan could secure an a l l i a n c e with a strong power hostile to the United States, then it could deter A m e r i c a n opposition to Japan's expansionism in Asia.

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T h e Strategic Setting

Admiral Kato Tomosaburo, the Naval Minister for Prime Minister Hara, reached a different conclusion. He and the so-called moderate faction within the Imperial Navy worked no less than Kato Kanji for Japan's emergence as a great power, indeed the predominant naval power, in Asia. They believed, however, that the unrestrained navalism would trigger a war with the United States before Japan had the resources for such a contest. Kato Tomosaburo advocated that Japan maintain a navy commensurate with its limited economic strength and avoid an all-out naval race with the United States. He believed that Japan could ensure its naval supremacy in the Western Pacific through arms limitation. 6 6 Even so, Japan emerged from the Great W a r determined to build a Navy more than the equal to the Royal or American Navy in the waters of the Western Pacific. Accordingly, on 29 July 1920, the Imperial Diet approved funds for a massive and comprehensive naval buildup. T h e 8 - 8 Fleet Expansion Program called for 4 battleships, 4 battlecruisers, 12 cruisers, 32 destroyers, 28 submarines, 6 fuel tankers, 103 ships in all. 6 7 As 1921 approached, therefore, informed opinions on both sides of the Pacific worried increasingly about the possibility of war between the United States and Japan. Anglo-American relations still rankled from disputes over naval matters. If, however, the Great W a r served as a catalyst for tension, then it also unleashed domestic forces within the United States, Great Britain, and Japan intent on avoiding war and achieving naval limitation.

II THE D O M E S T I C POLITICS OF NAVAL LIMITATION

I. THE U N I T E D STATES In the United States, support for arms limitation had arisen periodically even before the aftermath of the Great W a r . As early as 1817, the United States and Great Britain reached an a g r e e m e n t — t h e Rush-Bagot Treaty — t h a t limited the n u m b e r and types of naval craft either party could maintain on the Great Lakes. T h r o u g h o u t the nineteenth century, peace societies offered various schemes for eliminating armaments and settling international disputes amicably. By the turn of the century, growing public support in the United States for a policy of naval and territorial expansion stimulated unintentionally the emergence of an influential and aggressive peace m o v e m e n t dedicated to the idea of disarmament. C o n gress expressed its support for naval limitation in principle in the forms of the Bennett (1910) and Hensley (1913) resolutions, both of which called for the convocation of an international conference to limit arms. In the spring of 1914, President Wilson tried to negotiate a naval agreement among G e r m a n y , the United States, and Great Britain in the hope of ending the Anglo-German naval race and averting war. 1 Despite the growing support for disarmament, prewar plans to limits arms yielded nothing but futility. T h e two Hague Conferences on which peace societies placed such great hopes ended in "fiasco." 2 As American concern about the Great W a r m o u n t e d , the d e m a n d for preparedness overwhelmed the desire of disarmament. T h e Naval Bill of 1916 reflected the logic of the Imperial R o m a n maxim: to ensure peace, prepare for war.

D o m e s t i c Politics of Naval L i m i t a t i o n

Although Congress approved a variant of the Hensley Resolution as an amendment to the 1916 program, it linked arms limitation to the establishment of an international organization capable of preserving the peace. 3 America's entry into the war halted the movement for disarmament, but only temporarily. T h e armistice unleashed a popular movement for arms limitation unprecedented in scope, intensity, or influence. President Wilson set the movement for naval limitation in motion. Even before the United States entered the Great War, the President told the Senate that "the question of armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most immediate and intensely practical question connected with the fortunes of nations and m a n k i n d . " 4 He reiterated this sentiment a year later in Point Four of the Fourteen Points. Largely through the President's inspiration, Article 8 of the League of Nations Covenant "recognized that the maintenance of peace requires the reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement of common action by international obligation." President Wilson conditioned his support for arms limitation on the establishment of a League of Nations with a force strong enough to thwart any and all aggressors. If the United States joined such a League, then disarmament would become practicable; otherwise, the United States would need a navy second to none. 5 T h e President failed to persuade his opponents in Congress of the virtues of linking the League with arms limitation or of the need for a naval buildup if the league failed. W h a t commentators describe as "the popular revolt against navalism" manifested itself first in opposition to the programs for naval expansion called for in the naval bills of 1919 and 1920. Wilson's opponent stressed the themes of economy, debt, taxes, war, and the need for naval limitation, regardless of the League's fate. By 1920, Wilson's plans for naval expansion faced serious trouble on the domestic front. In 1919, Congress made no provision for additional ships beyond the 1916 building program and allocated the Navy less than 600 million dollars, a fraction of the Navy Department's original request. T h e appropriations for 1 9 2 0 - 1 9 2 1 fell to 442 million: an amount less than the Navy's Prewar figure taking into account inflation, higher costs for personnel, and the rising cost of naval technology. 6 Then, in the winter of 1920-1921, a complex of events transformed a heretofore inchoate sentiment against naval building into a potent, positive movement for naval limitation. In the fall of 1920, the League of Nations began to consider the matter of disarmament. Throughout these meetings, Japan charged repeatedly that the failure of the United States to

D o m e s t i c P o l i t i c s of Naval L i m i t a t i o n join the League blocked any practical resolution for arms limitation. W h e n the League invited the United States to take part in these discussions in a consultative capacity, President W i l s o n replied again that the United States could not participate in any forum o f disarmament until it joined the L e a g u e . 7 President Wilson's rebuff catalyzed public demand for action. O n 11 D e c e m b e r 1 9 2 0 , Senator T h o m a s W a l s h , a M o n t a n a D e m o c r a t , introduced a resolution requesting the President to appoint a delegate to the League C o m m i s s i o n on D i s a r m a m e n t , but a coalition of Isolationists and big navy supporters defeated the m e a s u r e . 8 T h r e e days later c a m e the Borah R e s o l u t i o n . 9 W i l l i a m Borah, a Progressive Republican

Senator

from Idaho, defined the fundamental problem, not as armaments in general, but as competition in naval building a m o n g Great Britain, the United States, and Japan. As he described it, America's naval building program forced the British and the Japanese to respond with large building programs o f their own. W a r n i n g o f the peril o f such a naval competition, Borah invoked the analogy of the A n g l o - G e r m a n naval race in the years before the Great W a r : just as naval building in Great Britain and G e r m a n y forced each to build against the threat o f the other and thus caused the "deluge of 1 9 1 4 , " so the naval race will bring war with Great Britain and Japan "unless we can c o m e into the conference and reach an a g r e e m e n t . " Quoting the remarks o f Japan's Viscount Ishii made at the League disarm a m e n t talks in the fall o f 1 9 2 0 , Senator Borah predicted confidently that the Japanese would curtail their building program and agree to naval limitation if only the United States would do the same. H e proposed that the G o v e r n m e n t s o f the United States, G r e a t Britain, and Japan reach agreement to reduce their naval building and expenditures 50 percent over the next five years. M e a n w h i l e , Borah r e c o m m e n d e d , the United States should encourage restraint in naval building by e x a m p l e . 1 0 In virtually all segments o f public opinion save the Navy, the Borah Resolution evoked passionate support. Religious organizations, peace groups, and women's organizations deluged Congress with telegrams demanding naval limitation. 1 1 M a n y businessmen welcomed the Borah Resolution as a way to reduce spending and lower taxes. Generally, the press also c a m e out enthusiastically in favor o f naval limitation. Borah's resolution appealed, likewise, to many o f his fellow Isolationists because it promised arms reduction without the liability of entangling alliances or the League. 1 2 Even a few s o l d i e r s — G e n e r a l J o h n " B l a c k j a c k " Pershing, C o m m a n d e r o f U . S . Armed Forces in E u r o p e during W o r l d W a r I the most prominent

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Domestic Politics of Naval Limitation among them—responded warmly to the idea o f a naval conference. O n e newspaper poll of all senators and senators-elect to the 67th Congress, completed 3 January 1921, revealed that 9 8 percent of the next Senate favored some form of naval l i m i t a t i o n . " W h e n Congress reconvened in the winter of 1 9 2 0 - 1 9 2 1 for the final session of the 66th Congress the movement for naval limitation gathered more momentum. In January and February of 1921, the House Naval Affairs Committee conducted extensive hearings on disarmament and its relation to the naval building program of the United States. General Pershing conveyed the dominant view among the witnesses that the time was ripe for a disarmament conference. Equally, he warned of dire consequences of war and indebtedness if the United States descended into an unrestrained naval race. Notwithstanding the strong sentiment for naval limitation, the hearings raised questions regarding the scope, the objectives, and the timing of a naval conference. Should the conference limit its agenda solely to naval limitation? W h a t nations should participate? Should the United States complete its naval buildup or suspend construction of new vessels altogether pending the outcome of the conference? Whereas Josephus Daniels, Wilson's Secretary of the Navy, continued to define the alternatives as an arms limitation agreement including practically all nations or a navy second to none, most favored a conference limited to the principal naval powers with an agenda confined to naval limitation. Unanimously, however, the committee and its witnesses recommended that the United States continue its building program unabated until a conference reached agreement. T h e y also recommended that Congress give the incoming Harding administration a free hand to determine when and how to conduct the negotiations. 1 4 T h e outcome of the hearings failed to satisfy Borah or his supporters. As his resolution wound its way through the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate and the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House, the Senator carried the fight for naval limitation to the debate over the 1922 Naval Bill. Throughout the winter of 1921, Borah and Admiral Fullam corresponded extensively about the future of the battleship, in the course of which they struck up alliance of convenience. Having reached the conclusion that the battleship had become obsolete, the Admiral wanted the Navy to concentrate its building, instead, on submarines, aircraft, and carriers. Conversely, Borah and his supporters in Congress wanted an excuse to justify a freeze on naval building. 1 5 O n 25 January 1921, the Senator introduced a resolution to suspend all naval building for six

Domestic Politics of Naval Limitation months until Congress determined fully what constitutes a modem navy. 16 T h e General Board's reply stressed once more that the battleship formed the backbone of the fleet, but that the aircraft carriers and submarines could serve as useful auxiliaries in the future. T h e Board called for the construction of two aircraft carriers and opposed any slowdown in the pace of the 1916 program. Despite Borah's challenge, the naval committees in both the House and Senate acted on the General Board's assumption that the battleship remained the supreme arbiter of seapower. Nevertheless, the Board's recommendations for spending and building encountered serious Congressional opposition. 1 7 O n 2 February 1921, the House Naval Affairs Committee reported a bill for FY 1922 that reduced the Navy Department's request to $395 million from 680 million. 1 8 Even though the $90 million earmarked for construction amounted to less than half of what the Navy asked for, authorized n o new funds for construction, and provided no funding for bases in the Western Pacific, the bill failed to satisfy advocates of disarm a m e n t . T h e House Committee on Naval Affairs also reported favorably an a m e n d m e n t to freeze the $90 million for new construction until the President sent out invitations for a naval conference. 1 9 In the debate that followed, two rival philosophies of naval limitation collided head on. Defenders of the 1916 program argued that continued naval building would help, not hurt, the cause of arms limitation. If the United States built a fleet the equal of the Royal Navy, then the President would have the bargaining power to persuade Great Britain to accept naval limitation based on the principle of parity. If, however, Congress suspended naval building, then Great Britain would retain superiority and have no incentive to concede parity in arms limitation negotiations. More militant advocates of naval limitation countered that naval expansion would incite the arms race, n o t lead to arms limitation. By suspending new construction, they argued, the" United States would induce Great Britain and Japan to practice similar restraint. A combination of big navy Republicans and Republicans unwilling to tie the hands of an incoming President defeated this a m e n d m e n t . 2 0 Thanks to the efforts of big navy Republicans, the Senate Naval Affairs Committee added 100 million dollars to the House bill. Their version not only continued the 1916 program, but provided funds for two additional aircraft carriers and bases in the Western Pacific. 21 Senators Borah, Walsh, William King ( R . - U t a h ) , Robert La Follette (R.-Wisconsin), and David Reed ( R . - O r e g o n ) , led the opposition against the Senate Naval Affairs

27

28

Domestic Politics of Naval Limitation Committee's proposed increases. This group offered several amendments to the naval bill which, though differing in their particulars, aimed to force a conference. Senator Walsh wanted the conference to limit all types of arms—land, sea, and air—and favored inviting France and Italy. Naval arms formed the crux of the problem, according to Senator Borah. He argued, therefore, that the conference ought to confine its agenda to naval limitation. He opposed the participation of France and Italy, because he distrusted France's agenda in any such conference. He warned that France would wreck any progress on naval limitation by linking the talks with the question of land armaments and political guarantees of French security in Europe. Although these amendments to force a naval conference failed, Borah killed the naval bill with a filibuster that blocked a vote before the session expired. 22 When President Harding took office on 4 March 1921, he faced a popular movement clamoring for naval limitation and a Congress divided on how to achieve it. What would the President do? Few had even a clue before the inauguration. President's Harding's strength, his interests, lay in the realm of domestic politics. O n matters of foreign policy and national defense, he cultivated ambiguity. 2 ' In the Senate, he had championed the cause of a big navy. Campaigning for the Presidency, he had made several favorable references to the idea of arms limitation: by 1920 a gesture mandatory for national candidates of both parties. T h e Republican Party over which President Harding presided comprised an amalgam of loosely aligned, fractious, and overlapping constituencies: Internationalists in favor of a modified League of Nations, Irreconcilables opposed to the League of Nations in any form, advocates of a big navy, disarmers, tax and budget cutters. Candidate Harding avoided making any firm commitments on foreign policy or national defense. His reticence paid off. 24 In the November election, he won a smashing victory against a Democratic opponent identified with President Wilson's uncompromising stand on the League. After the election, the President remained cautious and noncommittal about the policies he intended to pursue. His public remarks oscillated between support for a navy second to none and advocacy of disarmament. On one hand, he declared the League dead; on the other, he chose a Secretary of State linked to the internationalist wing of the Republican Party and committed to arms limitation. Privately, the President displayed stronger big navy sentiments. Judging from the editorial views of his own newspaper, the Marion Star, Harding

Domestic Politics of Naval Limitation regarded the completion of the naval building programs of 1916 and 1919 as the sine qua non of any naval agreement; only then would Great Britain agree simultaneously to reductions and parity. 25 Tacitly, in the winter of 1920-1921, he endorsed the efforts of big navy Republicans in Congress to block the Borah Resolution and Idahoan's various schemes for a naval freeze. He endorsed, too, the decision of Senator Lodge and his supporters on the Senate Naval Affairs Committee to restore funding for the construction of capital ships, bases, and aircraft carriers. Yet whatever his sentiments for a big navy, President Harding lacked either the conviction or the temperament to make the issue a priority for his administration. As early as December of 1920, he and Senator Lodge had discussed the possibility of calling a Washington Conference to limit the navies of the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. His opponents would discover felicitously that the President had a very low threshold of resistance when it came to naval building and arm limitation; that is to say, he did not care enough about building a navy second to none to fight long or hard for it. 26 W h e n Congress convened on 12 April 1921, the debate focused on how, not whether, to limit navies. President Harding disclosed his support for the 1916 program and his reluctance to limit armaments until 1924 when the United States had completed the 1916 Program. Senator Borah reintroduced his resolution for an early naval conference among the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. T h e arguments of both sides remained the same: what the administration thought necessary for arms limitation, Borah considered an incitement to the arms race and a threat to peace. What Borah sought as a way to end the naval race, the administration construed as a signal of weakness and a prescription for perpetual inferiority in naval strength. 27 In April of 1921, the debate seemed to go the administration's way. After defeating several amendments to make naval building contingent on calling a conference, the House passed a naval bill identical to the one it had passed in the previous session. Similarly, the Senate reported a bill with an increase of 100 million over the House version and no reference to the Borah Resolution. Whereupon Senator Borah once more brought public pressure to bear on behalf of his resolution and disarmament. Public interest groups, the press, the clergy, disarmers in Congress agitated public opinion and mobilized support for the cause of naval limitation. T h e administration conceded without much of a fight. O n 25 May, the

29

30

Domestic Politics of Naval Limitation Senate approved the Borah resolution by a vote of 74 to 0; in exchange, the Idahoan did not resist the $100 million increase in naval spending over the House bill. 2 8 Thereafter, Congressional support for naval building eroded steadily. T h e conference between the House and Senate produced a naval bill eliminating the sum and substance of the Senate's more generous version: it reduced the Senate's total by 91 million, eliminated the two aircraft carriers, and cut out funding for a naval base at G u a m . T h e President declined to interfere on the Navy's behalf. W h e n Billy Mitchell's aviators sunk the Ostfriesland in June of 1921, Congress relented partly by restoring funds for one of the carriers. 2 9 W h a t the outcome of the debate over naval spending highlights, nevertheless, is the motives of many a Congressional critic of the battleship. Whatever their shortcomings in foresight about the implications of airpower for naval strategy and tactics, the General Board had asked for more carriers than critics of the battleship would give. W h a t accounts for this paradox? For Borah and most civilian opponents of the battleship, their argument of obsolescence, their lavish praise of airpower and of the submarine, veiled their animating motive: to stop naval building altogether. 3 0 W h a t the course and outcome of the naval debate, 1918-1921, highlights, too, is the confluence of ideas and interests that motivated American citizens and their civilian leaders to support naval limitation so enthusiastically during the interwar years. If no single motive or interest explains wholly the inspiration for and strength of America's postwar movement for naval limitation, then four stand paramount among them. 3 1 First, the appeal of naval limitation stemmed in a large part from popular conceptions about the causes of war, the conditions of peace, and the dynamics of the arms race. By 1921, many Americans had come to regard the arms race as the basic cause of the Great War and war in general. In their minds, the naval competition among the United States, Great Britain, and Japan began ominously to resemble the Anglo-German naval race in the years before 1914. By their logic, the United States had forced the pace of the naval race with the program of 1916 and 1919. This gave Great Britain and Japan no alternative but to react by spending more in their own self-defense. Accordingly, more arms produced fear, not security, which in turn would provoke another action-reaction cycle, more spending, and so o n / ' 2 Left uncheckcd, the naval lace would lead inexorably to militarism, insecurity, and war. If, however, the United States stopped building, then so would Great Britain and Japan. Or, in

Domestic Politics of Naval Limitation the words of one popular epigram of the day: "big ships cause big wars, little ships cause little wars, no ships cause no w a r s . " " Second, the demand for economy also spurred the demand for naval limitation. Even if naval limitation did not lead to peace, it seemed to offer a promising way to satisfy the public's longing for reduced taxes and economy in government spending. In the 1920s, especially, the preKeynesian economic philosophy then regnant stressed the importance of balanced budgets and fiscal restraint. Business and labor, Democrats and Republicans, looked on naval spending as a drain on the nation's resources and a threat to sound fiscal policy. 34 Third, naval limitation meshed well with the climate of opinion in which the United States conducted diplomacy during the interwar years. President Wilson and the American people had fought World War I as a war to end all wars. Despite the Senate's repudiation of Wilson's vision of the League, Americans shared his optimism about the possibility of abolishing war as an instrument of national policy. Throughout the interwar years, peace schemes proliferated by the hundreds. Statesmen not only reacted to the public's desire for peace, but often shaped or even incited it. Mirroring their attitudes about war and peace to others, many assumed, too, that public opinion everywhere would operate effectively as a deterrent to any government contemplating the illgitimate use of force. Accordingly, American diplomats would work tirelessly to establish a perpetual peace without the sanction of force: whether by disarmament, pacts of friendship, nonaggression treaties, or even by outlawing war itself (the Kellogg-Briand Treaty of 1928). Thus, naval limitation constituted just one element of America's peace policy of the interwar years—a policy leading Republicans, particularly Irreconcilables, envisaged as a partial substitute for the League, but without the cost or risk of war. 55 Naval limitation also meshed well with another interwar postulate of American foreign policy: isolationism. In the words of Professor Adler, American isolationism coupled a determination to stay out of foreign wars with an unwavering refusal to enter alliances. 36 Although not all Isolationists extended their aloofness to Asia, some of the leading spokesmen for the cause believed that an insular country like the United States needed a navy sufficient only to defend the Western hemisphere. In their view, reducing or limiting naval weapons would deprive statesmen of the means, thus the temptation, to involve the country in a war abroad. 37 Fourth, the movement for naval limitation owed its success partly to the nature of American institutions. Arms control negotiations are rooted

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32

Domestic Politics of Naval Limitation in democracies' style oí politics. Normally, in peacetime, the dynamics of politics in democratic societies favor those coalitions averse to greater spending on national defense.' 8 Decisionmakers have to justify their defense budget to an electorate inclined to prefer reduced taxes, economy in government, or spending on social programs as an alternative. Often, they look upon defense spending with greater hostility than even their constituents." All this is not to deny the significance of the particulars that created and sustained America's support for naval limitation: fear of the arms race, isolationism, geography, economics, a traditional distrust of large standing armies, a desire for peace. Nor does it mean that only democracies will engage in arms limitation. It does mean, however, that, in peacetime, democracies generally will face greater political constraints on defense spending and more intense political pressure to negotiate arms reductions than more closed societies. 40

II. G R E A T B R I T A I N Although, by the summer of 1921, domestic pressure had reconciled Harding to calling a naval conference, the President and his administration regarded the problem of naval limitation as more complicated than Borah and the American people understood it to be. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, the dominant force at the Washington Conference, recognized the vital connection between naval limitation and the problems of the Pacific and the Far East. Whether or not naval limitation would succeed would depend likewise on Great Britain and Japan. By the summer of 1921, Great Britain wanted an agreement to limit naval weapons almost as much as the American Congress. Even in Japan, civilians chose not to resist the pressure for a naval agreement. T h e movement for naval limitation in Great Britain shows once more that affinity of democracy and arms limitation. T h e British movement for naval limitation sprang from ideas and interests identical to those of its American counterpart: the belief that rationality had triumphed in international affairs, faith in the moral weight of public opinion, the demand for economy, the belief that because arms races caused wars that arms limitation ensured the peace. 41 Great Britain also emerged from the Great War lacking the resources and the will to match the United States in a cycle of unrestrained naval building. It owed the United States an enormous sum because of debts incurred to finance the war effort. Then, too,

Domestic Politics of Naval Limitation

the war had altered the dynamic of British politics to the advantage of domestic constituencies advocating some form of welfare state. The leaders of all the major parties supported more spending for housing, unemployment insurance, pensions, and education. During the interwar years, the consensus for increasing domestic spending set limits on the Royal Navy's claim on government expenditure to an extent unparalleled in the United States, even after the advent of the New Deal. 42 Great Britain's budgetary system and the ten-year rule reinforced the trend toward parsimony in naval spending. Following the reigning orthodoxies of the day, Prime Minister Lloyd George and his successors throughout the 1920s pursued deflationary policies aimed at balancing the budget. Between the wars, the Treasury had the authority and the support of the Government to reduce spending at the Royal Navy's expense; indeed, Captain Roskill has described the Treasury's authority over naval spending as virtually all-powerful. Under the British system, the Board of Admiralty lacked the authority to submit its estimates for naval spending directly to the full Cabinet. The Secretary of the Treasury could and did modify its recommendations. Nor did the Royal Navy possess the advantage of American admirals, who could plead their case for spending face to face in hearings on authorization and appropriations bills. Captain Roskill has described, too, how the 10-Year Rule, enacted in 1919, affected Great Britain's naval policy in significant ways. From 1919 until its abrogation in 1932, the rule directed service departments to base their estimates on the assumption that Great Britain would not engage in any great war during the next 10 years. Whenever the Royal Navy put forth proposals calling for an increase to building or spending, the Treasury could defeat them merely by invoking the 10-Year Rule. 4 ' If Great Britain hoped to preserve its naval supremacy by resort to naval limitation, then it had no intention of contesting America's demand for parity when faced with the threat of a naval race. In 1919-1920, the Government of Lloyd George suspended all capital ship construction save for the Hood in the hope that the United States would reciprocate. By the fall of 1920, however, Admiralty began to press for a resumption of capital ship construction because, according to its estimates, the United States and Japan would have 23 and 14 battleships, respectively, by 1925, to Great Britain's 1 and none building.44 The Admiralty proposed accordingly to build four capital ships annually for each of the next five years. This plan encountered stiff opposition. Journals across the political spectrum condemned the futility and expense of a naval race with the

33

Domestic Politics of Naval Limitation United States. Politicians warned of the consequences naval building would have for peace and domestic spending. In the winter of 1920— 1921, debate resumed on the implications of Jutland and the lessons of the Great War for future naval strategy and tactics. What began as an investigation of why the Royal Navy failed to win decisively burst into a full-scale assault on the value of the battleship. Champions of aircraft and the submarines insisted that these weapons rendered the battleship obsolete. T h e Royal Navy clung to the doctrine of battlefleet supremacy, with the battleship as the ultimate naval weapon. In the end, Parliament conceded the premises of the Royal Navy on weapons and doctrine. Nevertheless, the debate gave disarmers, the Treasury, economizers, and advocates of domestic spending a compelling rationale to oppose increases in naval building. 45 In February of 1921, Lord Lee of Fareham, unabashedly pro-American, replaced Walter Long as First Lord of the Admiralty. Admiral Beatty, his First Sea Lord, called on the Lord Lee shortly thereafter to make the case for resuming naval building. His logic would strike a familiar ring with his American counterparts: new construction would improve the chances for naval limitation by strengthening Lloyd George's bargaining leverage. T h e Government compromised. In March, Lloyd George approved the construction of four new ships of the Hood type, but ordered the Royal Navy to decommission eight more capital ships. 46 Meanwhile, Lord Lee moved to spur the Harding administration to action. First, he wrote his old friend Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., Harding's Assistant Secretary of the Navy, to suggest talks between Great Britain and the United States on naval limitation and expressed the conviction that neither man would allow naval matters to imperil Anglo-American friendship. Roosevelt responded in kind. He stressed in his reply that the American Navy posed no threat to Great Britain; on the contrary, the United States "wished to uphold the ideas for which Great Britain had the Royal Navy to support." "For this reason," Roosevelt went on to assure Lord Lee, "our naval programs must of necessity depend not so much on your program as on the programs of certain other nations," i.e., Japan. 47 Then, speaking before the British Institute of Naval Architects on 16 March 1921, Lord Lee announced that his government supported naval limitation on the basis of parity and urged Washington to call on naval conference for this purpose. In April, he enlisted the aid of Adolph Ochs, the publisher of the New York Times and an advocate of Anglo-American

Domestic Politics of Naval Limitation friendship, to underscore Great Britain's interest in any project for naval limitation the United States might initiate. 48 T h e Government of Lloyd George removed a major obstacle to a naval conference with Lee's public and forthright acceptance of the principle of naval parity between Great Britain and the United States. By the summer of 1921, the British had weakened on another obstacle to a naval treaty: the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. T h e Alliance of 1911 ran for ten years and would run on automatically thereafter, subject to the right of either party to terminate it upon giving one year's notice. Throughout 1920-1921, the British and Japanese had tried to assure the Americans that the alliance would not operate if either Great Britain and Japan found itself at war with the United States. 49 This failed to satisfy Washington. Even though most naval planners discounted the possibility of an Anglo-American War arising from the alliance, the General Board insisted that only its outright abrogation would allow the United States to accept a fleet less than the combined strength of the British and Japanese fleets. Civilian decisionmakers discounted altogether the threat of Great Britain joining Japan in a war against the United States. Unanimously, however, they regarded the alliance as an anathema, because it gave Japan a cover for its aggression against China during and after the Great War. Throughout the spring of 1921, Secretary Hughes and his advisors confronted Great Britain repeatedly with the demand for the complete, early, and unequivocal termination of the alliance. 5 0 T h e government of Lloyd George agreed with the Harding administration's analysis of Japan's conduct in East Asia. T h e British Foreign Office identified Japan's intentions as imperialistic and expansionist, as menacing to and fundamentally irreconcilable with British interests in the Far East. What divided Great Britain and the United States was not whether, but how best to contain Japan. In the early 1920s, sentiment in the Foreign Office leaned strongly in favor of renewing the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in some form. In the view of Lord Curzon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the alliance would give Great Britain at least some leverage to restrain Japan's expansionism. T h e Foreign Office and the Admiralty emphasized that Great Britain would not afford to maintain a powerful fleet in the Far East to counteract Japan. If the United States would act jointly and unequivocally with Great Britain in the Far East, then they would have no qualms about abrogating the Alliance. If, however, the United States remained unwilling to join the League or unite with Great

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Domestic Politics of Naval Limitation Britain in resisting Japan in the F a r East, then the British needed the Anglo-Japanese A l l i a n c e to e n s u r e Japan's friendship. Ideally, the F o r e i g n Office advocated s o m e form o f tripartite arrangement a m o n g G r e a t Britain, the U n i t e d States, a n d Japan covering the F a r East.

Otherwise,

Britain must rely o n the n e x t best a r r a n g e m e n t : alliance with J a p a n . 5 1 T h e resolve o f Lloyd G e o r g e ' s g o v e r n m e n t to m a i n t a i n the alliance eroded steadily, however, over the n e x t 1 8 months.

In early

1921,

a

special c o m m i t t e e c o n c l u d e d that G r e a t Britain should d r o p the a l l i a n c e and,

if possible,

replace it with a tripartite a g r e e m e n t . T h e

members

warned that the a l l i a n c e jeopardized the p a r a m o u n t objective o f British foreign policy: c o o p e r a t i o n with the United States. N o r did they believe that the alliance had restrained Japan's aggression. Although, in the spring o f 1 9 2 1 , the C a b i n e t still favored renewal, the g o v e r n m e n t put off a final decision until the Imperial C o n f e r e n c e o f July 1 9 2 1 . S c h o l a r s have a n a lyzed this c o n f e r e n c e in great detail. It suffices to say here that its o u t c o m e demonstrates yet again that G r e a t Britain regarded the U n i t e d States as its closest and m o s t i m p o r t a n t friend, n o t as a potential e n e m y . E v e n t h o u g h the prime ministers o f G r e a t Britain, Australia, and N e w Z e a l a n d c o n sidered the alliance a success and all favored renewal,

the logic and

tenacity o f Arthur M e i g h e n , C a n a d a ' s P r i m e Minister, w o n out: whatever the merits o f the a l l i a n c e , G r e a t Britain and D o m i n i o n s c o u l d n o t afford to a n t a g o n i z e the U n i t e d States. Accordingly,

on

1 July 1 9 2 1 ,

Lloyd

G e o r g e agreed to M e i g h e n ' s idea for a Pacific C o n f e r e n c e , w h i c h would abrogate the a l l i a n c e in a way, if possible, so as not to offend J a p a n . 5 2

III.

JAPAN

As pressure for a naval c o n f e r e n c e m o u n t e d in the U n i t e d States and G r e a t Britain, Japan's civilian leaders had b e c o m e m o r e receptive to the idea o f naval a r m s limitation. O n e m a j o r t h e m e o f this study is the intimate link between a r m s limitation and open societies: h o w the dyn a m i c o f politics in d e m o c r a c i e s creates, sustains, and endows t h e coalition favoring a r m s limitation with the resources and i n f l u e n c e to set priorities and shape policy. Japan's record o n naval limitation n o t only illustrates this t h e m e , but the converse; n a m e l y , that m o r e closed societies do not operate with t h e s a m e sets o f constraints as d e m o c r a c i e s d o w h e n it c o m e s to defense spending and a r m s limitation. N o brief s u m m a r y c a n c o n v e y the n u a n c e s and complexities o f Japan's

Domestic Politics of Naval Limitation politics for the period that spanned between the Meiji Restoration of 1867 and the end of the Pacific War in 1945. Japan's structure of government during those years defies easy or precise classification. T o understand what led statesmen in Japan to support naval arms limitation during the 1920s; to understand why naval arms limitation ultimately broke down during the 1930s; to understand why Japan kept building after the naval treaties even when the United States slowed down its building program considerably—it is important, first, to grasp something of the fundamentals of decisionmaking in prewar Japan. Japan's system operated on premises and within a framework of institutions vastly different from its counterparts in the United States and Great Britain. T h e Meiji Constitution of 1889 combined Prussian theories of the state with more traditional Japanese concepts of Confucian hierarchy, veneration for the military, and reverence for the Emperor. T o paraphrase Professors Borton and Reischauer, the Meiji Constitution represented a compromise between statism and liberalism, with a strong preference for statism. Indeed, it gave tangible expression to the first principles of Japanese political theory: that the individual is subordinate to the state, that the military and military concerns ought to weigh heavily in the institutional arrangements of the states, that no distinction exists between ethics and politics, that government by men is superior to government by law, that a patriarchal family is the ideal state. 55 In theory, the Meiji Constitution recognized the authority of the E m peror as absolute. T h e Emperor had legislative superiority over his parliament, the Diet. He had the right of supreme command over the military, beyond the control of his Cabinet or the Diet. Only the Emperor could amend the Constitution. He had the sole right to appoint and dismiss his ministers, to conclude treaties, to make war or peace. In reality, however, the Emperor had a more limited influence on policy than his authority under the Constitution implied. What the Meiji Constitution established was a system in which nonparlimentary elites could dominate national politics legally. 54 T h e Cabinet and the Privy Council had a vast range of power and accountability only to the Emperor. Within the Cabinet, the military held a special position of privilege and advantage. Under the Constitution, the military had direct access to the Emperor. Indeed, the ministers of War and the Navy had to come from the ranks of the armed services. 55 This requirement limited the independent power of the Cabinet severely. In the words of Professor Borton:

?7

38

Domestic Politics of Naval Limitation If the military leaders or any strong clique in either the Imperial Navy or the Army opposed the policies of the Prime Minister or his cabinet, the Minister of War or the Navy threatened to resign. If the Government failed to heed the warning, the minister would resign and cause the downfall of his whole cabinet. T h e small group of officers eligible for these cabinets posts were then ordered not to serve on any future cabinet until a Premier acceptable to the military was selected. Consequently, if a Premier wanted to stay in power, he had no choice but to bend to the wishes of the military. 56 T h e Meiji Constitution freed the Cabinet from effective control of the legislative branch. T h e Diet consisted of a House of Representatives, the only elective body in the national administration and a House of Peers, composed of nobility and Imperial appointees. Although the Constitution stipulated that every law had to have the consent of the Imperial Diet, the Cabinet could act effectively against its wishes. If the Diet Failed to pass a budget, the previous year's budget automatically came into force. The Emperor could dissolve the Diet and determine the length of its sessions. 57 When the Diet was out of session, the Emperor could make law by ordinance. Until the 1920s, a body of elder statesmen known as the Genro chose the Prime Minister. Selected by the Emperor, this extraconstitutional group intervened in every major policy decision from the 1880s until the 1930s. 58 Robert Scalapino has analyzed how Japanese institutions and the philosophy that inspired them acted as powerful deterrents to the growth of liberal, massed-based political parties. 59 Japanese society had no tradition of limited government or individual rights. Nor did Japan of the Meiji Era have the tradition of laissez-faire capitalism so important to the evolution of democratic parties and principles in the United States and Great Britain. 6 0 Even at the high point of their esteem and effectiveness, the political parties of prewar Japan failed to attain the legitimacy of their Western counterparts. They suffered gravely from corruption, factionalism, lack of popular support or clear ideology, and a failure to cooperate against the antiparty opposition. Yet, whatever their shortcomings, the party movement of prewar Japan represented the forces in favor of democracy at home and a more conciliatory policy abroad. In the battle for supremacy between military and civilian, advocates of military expansion and international cooperation, the Japanese constitution placed the elements of moderation at a severe disadvantage. 61 As of 1921, however, several developments in Japanese politics created

Domestic Politics of Naval Limitation conditions conducive to naval limitation. O n e was the emergence of a genuine if truncated system of parliamentary government. While, directly after the Great War, age and attrition weakened the authority of the Genro, the popular movement for democracy strengthened the forces working for party government. In 1918, Hara Kei became the first Prime Minister to head a majority party cabinet and hold a seat in the lower house. His selection foreshadowed an era in which strong Party Cabinets and the Imperial Diet reached the peak of their influence. By 1921, too, the prestige of the military and popular support for military solutions to security problems both reached an all-time low, because of the intervention in Siberia, the rise in the democratic movement, and growing resentment over military spending. Although the legal and extralegal authority of the military remained intact, the growing strength of the parties and parliamentary institutions strengthened the hand of civilian, commercial, and more liberal elements in Japanese politics that favored a more conciliatory and cooperative policy toward the United States and China. 6 2 Not so much ends, but means, distinguished the foreign policies of the moderates from the militarists. In the view of both groups, the imperatives of geography, strategy, and economics required Japan to retain special and paramount interests in China. Similarly, both regarded Japan as a "have not" nation in contest with the so-called status quo powers of the West. The proponents of what became known as Shidehara Diplomacy believed, however, that Japan could best promote its interests without resort to force: bv diplomacy, bv international cooperation, by economic penetration. 65 ' Despite this growing support for democracy at home and cooperation abroad, Prime Minister Hara began the year 1921 committed to a huge increase in naval spending. Under his proposed budget, national defense would consume 50 percent of total government expenditure. 64 Although many military and civilian extremists regarded the Prime Minister as too moderate, initially his positive foreign policy inclined more to expansionism and reliance on force than to moderation. 6 5 What followed highlights how changes in Japanese politics since 1918 shifted the balance in favor of accepting some kind of naval limitation. In the winter of 1920-1921, the Prime Minister and Admiral Kato Tomosaboro, his minister for the Navy, had reason for confidence that their demand for naval expansion would encounter no serious resistance. Neither the press, nor his own party, nor the opposition, challenged the logic of Hara's naval program: Japan needed a large fleet to defend against

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Domestic Politics of Naval Limitation disorder in Asia, maintain good relations with other powers, and improve Japan's bargaining position with the United States. In February of 1921, however, japan underwent its own revolt against navalism. Ozaki Yukio, a democrat and a maverick in the spirit of Senator Borah, not only led Japan's movement for naval limitation, but emulated the Idahoan's tactics. On 10 February 1921, he introduced a resolution calling on the Hara government to reach a naval agreement with the United States and Great Britain. Both parties in the Diet opposed the resolution and passed Hara's budget overwhelmingly. At this point Ozaki launched a nationwide campaign for disarmament. He stressed the same themes as Senator Borah: naval building meant militarism, waste, bankruptcy, and war. Anns limitation would bring peace, prosperity, and free resources for more needy social programs. Although Ozaki's campaign had a more limited influence on policy than the popular movement for naval limitation in Great Britain and the United States, it did stimulate the interest of the press, business, student groups, and intellectuals in the cause of naval limitation. 66 In analyzing why Japan came to accept naval arms limitation, authorities have stressed the importance of economics. By the middle of 1921, the Japanese economy had plunged into a postwar recession. Many Japanese feared that as the weakest of the three naval powers economically, Japan could endure the burdens of an unrestrained naval race the least. In the 1920s, economic considerations did indeed lead Japanese civilians to support naval limitation. 67 Yet simple economics does not explain the record of naval arms limitation in Japan any more than it does for Great Britain or the United States. Why did economics force Japan to pursue naval limitation seriously in the 1920s, but not in the 1930s when the Japanese faced economic problems no less severe? T h e answer lies in Japan's changing political circumstances and the changing view of its elites toward economics. In the 1920s, economic considerations could drive the Japanese to negotiate naval limitation seriously because the political system protected and encouraged the civilian, moderate, and commercial forces opposed to a naval race. In the 1930s, conversely, Japan responded to the economic hardship by repudiating the naval treaties and embarking on a full-fledged naval race because the military's viewpoint had won out, to wit, economic autarchy and expansionism, not cooperation with the United States and Great Britain, could best solve the problems of territory, population, and empire. Equally, the movement for naval limitation in Japan profited from Admiral Kato Tomosaburo's tenure as Minister of the Navy. His views of

Domestic Politics of Naval Limitation naval limitation and the United States contrasted sharply with those of Admiral Kato Kanji and his disciples in the Fleet Faction. Kato Tomosaburo believed that naval limitation could ensure Japan's naval supremacy in the Western Pacific without the costs and risks of a naval race only the United States had the resources to win. 68 By the summer of 1921, then, a combination of economic pressure, increasing democratization, and a sense of opportunity had reconciled Prime Minister Hara and Japan's leading admiral to naval limitation. T h e time thus seemed ripe for a major initiative on naval arms limitation. O n 10 July 1921, President Harding invited Great Britain, Japan, France, Italy, and China to a conference, at Washington which would discuss arms limitation and the problem of the Par East. With that invitation, one phase of naval arms control had just ended; another had just begun.

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THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE OF 1921-1922

This chapter continues the story of naval limitation by analyzing, from the American point of view, the preparations for the conference, the negotiations of the treaties themselves, and the politics of ratification. It attempts to answer the questions raised at the outset of this study. W h o made the decisions and why? What did they hope or expect naval arms limitation to achieve? How did the American proposal originate? What assumptions about doctrine and the arms race underpinned the proposal? What influence did the navy have in its formulation? What did decisionmakers mean by parity? What operational significance did this concept have for strategy and operations? How did decisionmakers resolve the matter of verification? How did they envisage the relationship between naval limitation and a political settlement in the Far East? The answers to these questions lie largely in the views and actions of Charles Evans Hughes. No one did more than Hughes to influence the agenda and the outcome of the Washington Conference. Indeed, the Secretary dominated the proceedings. He devised the essentials of the plan that became the basis for the naval agreement. He also did more than anyone to shape hopes and expectations for the naval treaties. Throughout the negotiations, President Harding deferred to Hughes' expertise and judgment. Hughes' vision of the interdependence between naval arms limitation and broader political détente, his vision of the desirable and the possible in the Far East, his vision of America's role in this region, conditioned America's response to and expectations for the political settlement worked out at the conference. It is appropriate, therefore, to begin

The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 with some observations about Hughes' views on international relations and arms limitation. 1

I. PRELIMINARIES Hughes' approach to foreign affairs drew heavily from his training as a jurist and his wide experience in domestic politics. Hughes did not indulge in the pacifism or unbridled utopianism of many of his contemporaries. He regarded war as an essential part of international politics and sanctioned the right of self-defense. For him, foreign policy depended "not on abstractions, but on practical conceptions of national interest arising from some immediate exigency or standing out vividly in historical perspective." 2 He believed in the significance and practicality of piecemeal, gradualistic reform, that foreign policy ought to gear itself to the possible, that partial agreement was better than no agreement at all. 1 Although strains of political realism run through his thought, Hughes remained essentially an optimist and an idealist. He approached international politics in the spirit of the American tradition, legally and morally. He assumed that rationality would triumph in international affairs, that reasonable men could always agree to compromise, that nature guarantees progress. He also discounted the importance of power in international politics. As Hughes saw it, reason and enlightened self-interest, not force, ensured order. As Secretary of State, he would promote arbitration, conciliation, mediation, and the codification of international law in the expectation that these measures would contribute slowly but surely to the evolution of a harmonious order among individuals and nations. 4 His approach to naval limitation flowed naturally from his philosophy of gradualism and optimism in political affairs. He intended a confercnce with a specific and limited agenda. He wanted partial arms limitation, not total disarmament. In the same vein, he recognized that nations must preserve their capacity for legitimate self-defense. He sought not to limit all armaments, but only "provocative armaments" that threatened aggression, bred mistrust, stimulated competition in arms, and led to war. 5 Although Hughes favored limiting land armaments, he agreed with Senator Borah that the Washington Conference should focus on the more pressing and practicable problem of naval arms limitation. 6 Nevertheless, Hughes had great expectations for the conference. He sought an agreement on naval limitation that would end the naval race

The Washington Conference of 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 2 and freeze the naval balance indefinitely. He regarded the arms race not only as a cause, but as a sympton of political tension: "Competitive armaments is an outward sign of political distrust and will go on until confidence replaces fear and suspicion. It is said that there must be mental and moral disarmament, by which is meant that nations must feel secure and cease to think of war." 7 Although Hughes did not subscribe wholly to the view that arms and arms races caused wars, he operated on premises about the dynamics of the naval race similar if not identical to those of Borah and his supporters: We have seen the former race in armaments, unaffected by the resolution of the Hague Peace Conference, culminate in the greatest war in history. After the brutal bloodshed of that war had been called to a halt, it was natural that a civilized nation should have learned the tragic lessons of the previous year, and that the great race in preparation for war should be curbed. . . . T h e competition in armaments did not stop with the end of bloodshed, however. On the contrary, it continued with vigor. Especially was this evident in the race for naval armaments. T h e Great Powers did not slacken their building programs upon the cessation of the war. Japan had her 8-8 program. T h e United States had her program aimed at building the greatest navy on earth. . . . Yet all the reasons why these great navies should exist has ceased. They were not fitted to the exigencies of the time. What were they for? T o fight one another: that seemed to be the only possible answer. Why was it necessary to keep these self-imposed programs? Simply because others were building. How was it possible to stop this mad race? By an international agreement for the limitation of armaments. 8 What did Hughes foresee as the consequences of this "wasteful and senseless" naval race? Quoting Lord Grey of Fallodon: T h e increase in armaments, that is intended in each nation to produce a consciousness of strength, and a sense of security, does not produce these effects. On the contrary, it produces a consciousness of the strength of other nations and sense of fear. F ear begets suspicion and the distrust and evil imaginings of all sorts, till each nation feels it would be criminal and a betrayal of its own country not to take every precaution of every other government as evidence of hostile intent. . . . T h e enormous growth in arms in Europe, the sense of insecurity and fear caused by them—it was these that made war inevitable. 9

The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 Hughes also blamed the United States, mainly, for initiating "this foolish naval race." In his view, the naval program of 1916 gave Great Britain and Japan no choice but to respond with naval building program of their own. 1 0 Hughes thus regarded arms limitation as "the foremost international question of the day. " " A naval agreement would create a psychology of peace. It would demonstrate a "non-aggressive purpose" and thus "furnish, in an important sphere, an illustration of the practicality of avoiding provocative armaments." 1 2 It would "absolutely end the naval race" and thereby reduce the risk of war. 15 O n top of that "the lifting of the economic burden through the curtailment of expenditure on armaments would be the greatest boon that could be conferred on the vast masses of people, not simply because of relief in taxation, but because of the peculiar waste involved in such expenditures and in the putting of the irreplaceable products of nature to the least advantageous use." 1 4 Yet Hughes realized that the problem of naval limitation involved more than just weapons. He concluded that the success of naval arms limitation depended on a political settlement in the Far East. Here, too, the Secretary's instincts for gradualism and optimism shaped his vision of the desirable and the possible. He saw China as the crux of the problem. Although Hughes lacked Wilson's zeal and sense of moral mission to save the Chinese, he shared the ex-President's sanguine view of China's capacity to establish a democratic government and the efficacy of the Open Door to achieve it. Whatever the range of opinions among his advisors, Hughes sought a political settlement in the Far East that would deprive Japan of its special position in China. He sought specifically to transform the Open Door into a principle of international law by binding Japan to respect the territorial integrity of China. T o Hughes, the Open Door precluded spheres of influence or claims to special privilege. He refused to legitimate Japan's special position in either Manchuria or Shantung. He also wanted the Japanese out of Siberia. 15 Although Hughes did not consider America's interest in China worth the costs of risks of war with Japan, the problem of relating capabilities to commitments did not arise for him. He saw no reason why the United States and Japan would fight.16 He admired the Japanese as a people. 17 T h e growing influence of the moderates in Japanese politics encouraged him. Indeed, he assumed that the principle of equal commercial opportunity applied to China would satisfy Japan once a naval treaty put to rest the dangers inherent in a

T h e Washington Conference of 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 2 spiralling arms race. For Hughes, the gap between U . S . capabilities and its interests in the Far East was not a liability, but an asset: It is apparent that in considering the appropriate limits of defensive armaments, we meet, at the outset, questions not simply of military strategy, but of governmental policy, or political questions in a broad sense. An illustration may be found in the earnest desire, expressed by some of our strategists, that we should fortify the Philippines and Guam. Yet is was plain that the adequate fortifications of these islands, and the maintenance of naval establishments absolutely securing them, would of necessity be provocative and constitute a menace to Japan. . . . W e have no policy of aggression in the Far East. Why should we act as we had, arousing suspicion and creating counterpreparation? . . . There are better ways of promoting peace, and of providing suitable measures of defense, than by creating provocative armaments. 1 8 Despite Hughes' regard for the necessity of some kind of linkage between a naval settlement and a political settlement in the Far East, it is, nevertheless, important to recognize his order of priorities. He regarded naval limitation as the most important objective of the Washington Conference. In deciding on a plan for naval limitation, he would subordinate all else to his goal of ending the naval race. Hughes dominated the preliminaries and planning for the conference. As soon as the Harding administration had taken the initiative on naval limitation, he turned to the task of making the conference a success. He dealt first with the problem of relating the political and naval aspects of the conference. The British wanted a preliminary conference among themselves, the United States, and Japan to discuss the problems of the Far East. 1 9 Conversely, Hughes' agenda raised fears among Japanese civilian leaders that the United States planned a concerted attack on Japan's policy of Asian expansionism. Though welcoming the call for a naval conference, the government of Prime Minister Hara sought to exclude Japan's territorial gains from World War I from the scope of the discussions. 20 The British and Japanese preferred alternatives struck at the core of Hughes' conception of the Washington Conference. A preliminary conference jeopardized his plan to give naval limitation priority. Yet he believed, too, that reaching agreement on naval arms limitation depended on the conference addressing the problems of the Far East. T h e Secretary thus stood firm in demanding that the conference take up political and

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The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 naval questions simultaneously. Faced with the choice of a conference on Hughes' terms or no conference at all, the Japanese and the British yielded. T h e Hara Government felt itself in no position politically to assume responsibility for wrecking the conference. 2 1 For the government of Lloyd George, the benefits of a preliminary conference did not outweigh the costs of antagonizing the United States. 22 Having resolved this matter to his satisfaction, Hughes moved on to the task of selecting delegates. He learned well from President Wilson's failure to win ratification of the League. His selection of Senator Lodge, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Oscar Underwood, the Committee's ranking minority member, assured bipartisan support for any treaty the conference produced. His exclusion of naval personnel from the official delegation ensured that the civilian viewpoint would guide America's approach to naval limitation. Wisely, the Secretary excluded the mercurial Senator Borah from the delegation. 2 ' By selecting Elihu Root, Hughes appealed at once to the internationalist wing of his party and to the Japanese: Root admired the Japanese and sympathized with Japan's policy toward China. 2 4 Next, Hughes faced the problem of devising a concrete plan for naval limitation. O n 1 September 1921, he wrote to Edward Denby, Secretary of the Navy, to solicit his views on "a yardstick by which to measure the existing armaments and which can also be applied as a standard of measure in any general plan of reduction." 2 5 T h e Navy had anticipated Hughes' request. O n 27 July 1921, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., Assistant Secretary of the Navy, instructed the General Board to submit its opinion as to (1) "what constitutes a naval unit" and (2) "the equitable relativity in strength of the various navies of the powers that will engage in the limitation of Armament Conference." 2 6 In preparing its recommendations, however, the Board operated from premises vastly different from those of Secretary Hughes or Congressional advocates of naval limitation. T h e Board dissented from the popular view that arms races caused wars. Nor did it subscribe to mechanistic, actionreaction explanations of the arms race. T h e Board argued, to the contrary, that arms preserved the peace in a world divided between nonaggressive and predatory nations. 2 7 Accordingly, the Board regarded America's naval buildup not as provocative, but as the very condition that brought Japan and Great Britain to the conference table in the first place. Unlike the Secretary of State,

The Washington Conference o f l 921 - 1 9 2 2 the Board doubted whether naval parity in itself would stop the arms race or contribute to peace: Peace is not necessarily preserved by an equalization of armaments. An aggressive essentially autocratic nation, situated close to the theatre of operations, would, with equal armaments, be able to pursue a selfish policy regardless of the views of the democratic nonaggressive nations situated at a much greater distance; as, for example, in the case of Japan and the United States. Had Germany been equal to Great Britain in naval armaments during the World War it is probable that today all Europe would have been dominated by Prussian ideas and that eventually America might also have fallen. 2 8 T h e Board also dissented firom Hughes' views about the relationship between force and diplomacy. T h e United States could not and should not, in its view, rely on Japan's good will to maintain the territorial integrity of China; on the contrary, the Open Door, properly understood, depended on an American Navy strong enough to enforce it. Similarly, the Board dissented from Hughes' order of priorities: to the Board, a political settlement in the Far East that stripped Japan of its wartime gains and codified the U.S. interpretation of the Open Door was absolutely necessary as a preliminary for any naval agreement. 2 9 Operating on these premises, the Board prepared an elaborate analysis, divided into several parts, that addressed the issue of naval arms limitation in all its dimensions. Part I assessed the relationship between national policies and naval policies. T o the Board, intentions counted as much as capabilities. Indeed, its recommendations reveal the intimate link between its political assessment of Great Britain and Japan, on one hand, and its strategic analysis, on the other. T h e Board attached great importance to democracy as an ameliorating condition in Anglo-American relations, just as its image of the Japanese government as militaristic and authoritarian shaped its hostile assessment of Japan. Though envisaging commerical rivalry and Great Britain's desire to dominate world commerce as a potential source of rivalry, the Board discounted the possibility of an AngloAmerican War because the United States and Great Britain shared democratic institutions and common traditions. Hence (assuming, of course, that the British ended the Anglo-Japanese Alliance), the United States could settle for parity with Great Britain.' 0

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The Washington Confeience of 1921 - 1 9 2 2 Conversely, the Board portrayed the problems between the United States and Japan as deep-rooted and intractable: In controversies arising between governments of dissimilar foundations . . . the differences are far more difficult of solution as they involve questions of national character as expressed in forms of government. . . . O n one side will be a government represented by free individuals controlled by constitutional law; on the other, a government dominated by centralized class control, and looking at world problems with different eyes from ours. T h e adjustments of controversial problems with governmental planes so wide apart is difficult, cannot be permanent, and will be maintained only by force. Even formal alliances entered into where one of the contracting parties is a monarchy, have less permanent strength than the much looser association of constitutional governments. As the seat of these controversies will be in the Far East and far removed from our shores, giving the one government whose foundations are unlike ours a favored position, equality in seapower with this government will serve only to defend our shores; it will not make our policies prevail, or settle the trouble at its source. Great Britain's former ratio of 2 to 1 is the only safe ratio for the United States to maintain toward Japan until such time as she adopts a government similar to ours and is actuated by ideals in harmony with our o w n . " For the Board, then, "it was only by an unchallenged superiority of force that a democracy such as the United States could hope for consideration of its policies by a military oligarchy" like Japan. If, unwisely, the United States settled for less, then Japan would continue its policy of relentless and ruthless expansionism on the Asian Continent and across the South Pacific. For the United States to restore the status quo ante would require a long and costly war of attrition with no assurance of success: if, as the Board warned once more, Japan consolidated its military position in China, its military position would become "almost impregnable.'"2 As for France and Italy, the Board did not regard either as an actual or potential threat to the United States. T h e Board assumed that the French envisaged naval discussion merely as a means to a higher end; namely, to draw the United States and Great Britain into a military alliance that guaranteed France's strategic border on the R h i n e . " Having outlined its views on the politics of naval limitation, the Board dealt with the problem of translating the concept of ratio into numbers

The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 and kinds of ships. T h e Board cautioned, first, that no yardstick could accurately measure the "strength of the navies of the world." Calculating the relative naval strength of nations involved more than a comparison of the strengths of various types of ships: the number of ships necessary to establish an equitable naval balance depended, too, in its view, on such things as the availability of bases, the evolution of naval technology, national policies, and the probable locations of war. "To establish a composite unit for measuring naval strength," therefore, "would probably lead to false and possibly dangerous conclusions." T h e Board cited the naval balance between Great Britain and the United States as a case in point. Outside the Western hemisphere, parity in battlefleets between the American and Royal Navies would mean superiority for the latter in light of Great Britain's worldwide array of bases and the strength of its merchant marine fleet, while the United States could still defend the Western hemisphere even at existing levels of naval strength. 54 If the concept of parity proved useful, then, it was not because the concept has any operational significance in respect to Great Britain. Then why did the American Navy continue to insist on numerical parity? T o the Board, as the author sees it, parity in numbers meant prestige. It also served to justify larger naval budgets, because the American Navy had yet to achieve numerical equality with the Royal Navy. Perhaps, too, it served the purposes of those intent ultimately on achieving superiority: why provoke Congress or Great Britain by demanding superiority outright when the American Navy still ranked second? Why not appeal instead to the sentiment of equity and fairness that the concept of parity implies? Notwithstanding its disclaimers on the value of a yardstick, the concept of ratio epitomized the Board's thinking about naval warfare. " T h e Board affirmed its long-standing view that the relative number of capital ships (battleships and battlecruisers) would decide the outcome of any future naval war. 36 The displacement tonnage of such ships less than 20 years of age formed the basis of the Board's estimate of what constituted an equitable ratio of naval strength.' 7 Using this index of naval strength, the Board went on to recommend that the United States should complete its building program in progress, but lay no more keels after November 11, 1921. 58 Thereafter, the parties to the treaty could replace any vessel having reached 20 years of age, but such replacements could not exceed the largest capital ship then under construction, or 43,000 tons. T h e Board's plan would give the United States nearly 1,000,000 tons of modern capital ships by 1927 at a level of parity with Great Britain,

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The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 provided, of course, that the British abolished the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. If the alliance remained in effect, then the United States would need a fleet equal to the combined naval power of Great Britain and Japan. For Japan, France, and Italy, the Board recommended an equitable ratio of 5:10 relative to the capital ship tonnage allocated to the United States and Great Britain. T h e Board would allow them 600,000 tons of capital ships each, however, because the American superiority in modern capital ships would give the United States Navy the equivalent of a 2:1 advantage over their Japanese counterpart. In respect to auxiliary craft, the Board proposed to limit the British and the Americans to 500,000 tons of cruisers and destroyers, 100,000 tons of submarines, and 100,000 tons of aircraft carriers. T h e Board's plan allowed the Japanese, French, and Italians 60 percent of the tonnage in these categories allocated to the other two. 39 Lastly, the Board's plan stressed the importance of establishing fortified bases in Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines so that the Navy could operate effectively against Japan in Far Eastern waters. Thus the Board recommended that the United States make no agreement that would leave these bases undefended. In reality, then, the Board's plan sanctioned a major arms buildup and the quest for unassailable naval superiority over Japan. 40 Notwithstanding the popularity of the Board's plan in naval circles, it contradicted Secretary Hughes' hopes and expectations for naval arms limitation. 41 Nor was naval opinion unanimous in support of the Board's plan. Gaptain (soon to be Admiral) Pratt, then a member of the General Board who would influence America's planning for the Washington and London Naval Conferences more than any other naval officer, regarded the particulars of naval limitations secondary to the paramount objective of achieving a rapprochement with Great Britain. Also, he accepted the idea popular among civilians that arms races would lead invariably to war; whereas naval limitation would contribute to peace. T o the dismay of his naval comrades, Pratt would help to fashion an alternative repudiating the logic and advice of the General Board. 42 What happened was this. Anticipating Hughes' rejection, Secretary of the Navy Denby disavowed the Board's plan as he passed it on to the Department of State. 45 Simultaneously, he directed the Board to devise an alternative that more faithfully reflected Secretary Hughes' desire for naval limitation. On 14 October 1921, the Board responded with a revised plan. It reduced to

The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 820,000 from 1,000,000 capital ship tonnage allocated to the United States and Great Britain, but permitted the other three naval powers only a 1:2 ratio of such tonnage relative to the British and American fleets. On other matters, the revised plan retained the essentials of the original. 44 The Board argued for the change in the ratio because the plan required the Navy to scrap four of the new 43,000 battleships on which depended the fighting equivalent of a 2:1 ratio over Japan. An improvement in the ratio would compensate for the adverse impact that lower levels of capital ship tonnage would have on the stability of the balance from America's standpoint. Under War Plan Orange's scenario for a Pacific War, the United States Navy would incur losses through attrition when engaged in their transoceanic advance. If the Japanese fleet suffered no countervailing losses, each American ship lost would affect the ratio more adversely at lower than at higher ratios. 45 The revised plan failed to satisfy Secretary Hughes. Henceforth, the Secretary of the Navy shifted the responsibility for planning to three advisors more tractable than the Board: Captain Pratt, Admiral Coontz, Chief of Naval Operations, and Assistant Secretary Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. This group soon produced a plan, without the Board's knowledge, aimed at reducing the tonnage of American capital ships, which Secretary Denby approved. It restored the 5:5:3:3:3 ratio for all categories of vessels, scrapped 7 of the 15 capital ships currently under construction pursuant to the 1916 program, and reduced American capital ship tonnage to 725,000. 4 6 Secretary Hughes considered even these levels too high. He bristled at the Navy's talk of national needs and the imperative for superiority in the Pacific. Hughes wanted an arrangement that would assure Japanese security in the Western pacific, not menace it. 47 To Hughes, the principle of existing relative strength, not national needs, served as the only realistic basis for an agreement. Acutely sensitive to public opinion, he believed than any proposal "must be sufficiently drastic in nature to prove the honesty of our intentions to the counhy, and place us, therefore in a position where, if any refusa! comes on the part of any European powers, Congress and the Senate would be behind the Administration's plans." 4 8 Consequently, he rejected the Board's and Denby's plans and proposed an alternative he expected "would absolutely end the naval race": "Stop Now." 4 9 The United States would abandon its entire construction program for capital ships in exchange for the other naval power making an

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The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 equivalent sacrifice. O n 25 October 1921, Hughes asked Denby to determine what ships Great Britain and Japan would have to scrap "as a condition for such action on our part. " 5 0 Hughes accepted the Board's judgment that the capital ship stood as the yardstick of naval strength to which all other auxiliaries stood subordinate. He also accepted its recommendation for parity with Great Britain. An estimate of existing capital ship strength depended, however, on the method of calculation. Taking capital ships completed as the measure and using U.S. naval strength of 100 as an index, the Board calculated relative naval strength, as of January 1922, thus: Great Britain, 139; Japan, 68; France, 37; and Italy, 22. 51 Measuring capital ships built and building, the American Navy's position relative to Japan improved to 100 to 49. S2 Taking into account capital ships built, building, or authorized, Japan's tonnage would reach 98 percent of the American total by 1928, unless Congress authorized more naval building." Actually, the United States had a significant advantage relative to the other naval powers. Stop Now would require the United States to scrap 15 modern ships, 2 of which were already launched, several of which were at least 80 percent complete, all of which were under construction and due for completion by 1924. 54 Japan had only 7 capital ships under construction. Admiral Kato Tomosaburo believed, moreover, that Japan would never build the eight other capital ships authorized. 5 5 Great Britain had no capital ships building and only 4 authorized. 5 6 Hughes would not exploit, however, the U.S. advantage to the fullest. Working with figures supplied by the General Board, Hughes, Roosevelt, Pratt, and Coontz setded on a plan that not only stopped all capital ship building, but also scrapped many older ships in service. Their method did not take full account of America's capital ship program in progress. Instead, the plan returned to the idea of a 5:5:3 ratio among the United States, Great Britain, and Japan at levels much lower than either the Board or the Advisory Group had recommended: 18 capital ships for the American Navy (501,000 tons), 22 (604,000 tons) for the Royal Navy, and 10 (300,000 tons) for the Japanese. Initially, Great Britain would retain a larger amount of tonnage than the United States to compensate for the American Navy's superiority in numbers of more modern and powerful capital ships; gradually, as Great Britain replaced its overage vessels (capital ships more than 20 years of age, subject to a 10-ycar holiday on the building of all such ships), its numbers and overall tonnage

The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 would come down to American levels. But no replacements could exceed 35,000 tons. 57 T h e plan retained the Board's suggested numbers and ratios for cruisers and destroyers. Displaying little grasp and even less interest in the potentialities of the carrier, he reduced the Board's recommendations for carrier allotment to 80,000 tons each for the United States and Great Britain, 48,000 for Japan, 28,000 for France and Italy. Hughes set the maximum displacement for carriers at 27,000 tons even though the Board preferred a 35,000-ton carrier. He did exempt existing aircraft carriers from the 10year holiday, however, by classifying all such tonnage as experimental. 58 Nor did Hughes heed the Board's advice on fortifications in the Pacific or on the Mandated Islands. He would concede the right to fortify American bases in the Western Pacific and recognize Japan's Mandatory authority over the former German islands in the Western pacific if only Japan would reciprocate by agreeing not to fortify the islands. 59 T h e Secretary's plan clashed less with the Board on the matter of the submarine. He, too, favored its retention, regarded the weapon as valuable for coastal self-defense,and dismissed the idea of its abolition as unrealistic. 60 T h e Stop Now plan allocated 90,000 tons each for the United States and Great Britain, 54,000 tons each for the other three naval powers. 61 Hughes' Stop Now plan appalled the General Board. Again, the Board warned Secretary Hughes that a 5:3 ratio at such low levels "would reduce our Navy to a point where Japan would feel that the United States would be impotent to restrain her aggressive plans in the Far East." T h e Board issued a similar warning on the effect of the plan on auxiliaries: because "such a reduction in capital ships tends toward a war of auxiliaries," genuine parity with Great Britain would require a major American buildup in cruisers, at great expense. 62 In the Board's view, scrapping the 15 battleships currently building would make the fleet even more vulnerable to attrition than even the lower levels of capital ship tonnage implied. Submarines and aircraft could operate more effectively against the older, slower, and less powerfully armed capital ships of the existing fleet.6' Hughes decided to go ahead with Stop Now anyway. In this decision, he had the support of the civilian members of the American delegation, President Harding, and, to a large extent, his naval advisors. T h e Secretary argued powerfully that whatever the outcome of the conference, Congress would not appropriate funds to complete the American ships. He and Senator Lodge also argued that Congress would prove no more

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The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 forthcoming on the matter of fortifications in the Western pacific. 64 Evidently, this line of reasoning persuaded his naval advisors. Yet such agreement masked some fundamental differences among the delegates as to their motives and objectives for naval arms limitation. Hughes tried to make necessity out of a virtue; Roosevelt and Coontz tried to make a virtue out a necessity. To illustrate the point: Roosevelt conceded that domestic politics made naval arms limitation a necessity; yet he accepted the Board's logic that Japan represented the primary enemy and that the United States needed a naval superiority of "two or even three to one . . . to defeat her . . . in the event of war. " Unlike Secretary Hughes, he had no interest in freezing the military balance or in alleviating Japan's sense of insecurity by removing the naval threat. On the contrary, he opposed any limitation that would constrain the United States from developing and exploiting new offensive weapons, especially the submarine and the carrier. Nor did he have a benign view of Japanese intentions. What he wanted was a treaty that "Japan cannot break as regard to us" without breaking it as regarded others. 65 For the most part, though, Hughes and his naval advisors worked together harmoniously at the conference and during the debate over ratification. When their viewpoints did clash, Hughes generally won out. How did Hughes and the American Navy address the matter of verification? Neither dealt with verification in a detailed or systematic way. Hughes believed that good faith would suffice to ensure verification and compliance, although he did rule out any direct limits on military aircraft because nations could not verify where the civilian aircraft industry ended and military use began. 66 The General Board shared Hughes' view that good faith would have to suffice as a method of verification, although it had less confidence in the good faith of the other naval powers coming to the conference than did the Secretary. Prophetically, the Board objected to giving Japan mandatory authority over the former German islands of the Western Pacific, because the United States could not rely on Japan's assurances not to fortify or build naval bases on these islands. Such a treaty not only would invite clandestine violations on Japan's part, 67 the Board warned, but the Japanese could evade compliance because of the very ambiguity of its critical terms, "fortification," and "naval base": Japan may claim the right to accumulate fuels and stores on any one or more of the ex-German Islands. She may contend that supplies do not constitute a base. She may permit a shipbuilding

The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 and repair plant with a drydock to be erected on one of the islands by private enterprise . . . Japan may contend that the actual use to which a plant is put determines its character; to the American the potential use to which a plant is put determines its character. 68 In spite of these warnings, the Board objected to the idea of on-site inspection. Why? Partly, as Secretary Denby explained later, the Board assumed that "visits of inspection either to ships or bases would do relations among the naval powers more harm than good." 6 9 The Navy thought, too, that such visits "would lose us more by the information we might give out." 7 0 The Board also regarded the capital ship as easy to count and difficult to hide. 71 As the Board saw it, then, verification of the naval provisions of a naval treaty demanded nothing more than the parties' assurances of compliance and a good faith exchange of information among them regarding their naval building and replacement programs. 72 What if the other naval powers cheated on the qualitative limitations of any agreement? Neither the Board nor Secretary Hughes addressed this question.

II. THE CONFERENCE The Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armaments opened on 12 November 1921 with the public uncertain and anxious about the outcome. 73 Hoping to arouse public support for his proposal, the Secretary decided to seize the initiative by unveiling his plan during his introductory address: 74 1. All capital ship building programs, either actual or projected, must be abandoned. 2. Further reductions should be made through the scrapping of certain of the older ships. 3. In general, regard should be had to the existing naval strength of the power concerned. 4. Capital ship tonnage should be used as the measurement of strength for navies and a proportionate allowance of auxiliary craft prescribed. 75 Hughes' plan and his bold presentation of it had their intended effect. The public hailed Stop Now as the end of the arms race. 76 Caught by surprise, overwhelmed by the outpouring of enthusiasm for the plan, all the other delegations endorsed it publicly, although each would attempt to recast Stop Now to suit its particular aims.

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T h e Washington Conference of 1921-1922 British preparations for the conference focused on the issues of the Far East. Essentially, the Admiralty and the C o m m i t t e e on Imperial Defense favored a narrow agreement limiting just the n u m b e r of capital ships, not their size or firepower. Although the British had reconciled themselves to the idea of parity in battleships and carriers, the Admiralty and the C o m m i t t e e of Imperial Defense held that the vastness of Britain's Imperial responsibilities required a fleet larger than anyone else. They opposed limitation of global tonnage, Captain Roskill has explained, "because it would force Great Britain to reduce the size of its capital ships, and so their power, or either to deprive her of a sufficiency of the smaller warships such as cruisers and destroyers."'' T h o u g h favoring the submarine's abolition, they considered such an outcome impractical and unrealistic. Indeed, Great Britain's attitude toward the submarine stands as one of the great paradoxes of naval arms limitation. Its advocacy of abolition contrasts sharply with the Royal Navy's interwar assessment of the submarine's capabilities. Mistakenly, the British assumed that Asdic (SONAR) had diminished the threat of U-boat warfare against c o m m e r c e . 7 8 T h u s , submarine m e n a c e would serve more as an excuse than as a cause for the Royal Navy's refusal to limit the n u m b e r of cruisers and destroyers. Nor did the Admiralty favor the idea of a naval holiday. Freezing capital ship building entirely would erode the nation's shipbuilding industry and create widespread unemployment, according to their estimates. Instead, the Admiralty advocated a steady though small scale of replacement for the duration of treaty. 79 Although the British took a less hostile view toward the Japanese than the American Navy did, the Admiralty indentified Japan's expansionism as the most likely and menacing threat to Great Britain's position in the Far East, especially with the impending termination of Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Operationally, the Royal Navy's situation in the Far East resembled that of the American Navy. In the event of war between Great Britain and Japan, Japanese naval forces in the Far East would possess overwhelming superiority over those of Great Britain. British possessions in the Far East would have to hold out until the Main Fleet could arrive from bases in Britain and the Mediterranean. According to the estimates of the Admiralty m a d e in 1921, Singapore would have to stand a siege of 22 days, Hong Kong one of 46 days, before any such relief from the Main Fleet. T h e Admiralty recommended, in the s u m m e r of 1921, that the G o v e r n m e n t establish a suitable base in Singapore as the principal naval base in the Far East, because of its superior geography, strategic location,

The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 and defensibility. Ultimately, the Royal Navy would also need a base in Hong Kong to prosecute the war successfully in Japan's home waters, although, the Admiralty regarded Hong Kong as indefensible because of its proximity to Japan (1600 miles). 80 If Great Britain and the United States faced similar strategic problems planning for a naval war in the Far East, British and American stakes in the region remained unequal, at least as of 1921. Great Britain had the responsibility for defending its English-Speaking Pacific Dominions. It had the responsibility for a vast but fragile Asian empire. It had a major stake in the economics of Asia, not only in Ghina, but throughout the Orient. T h e Royal Navy thus came to the Washington Conference intent on preserving the option of establishing a powerful base at Singapore. 81 Insofar as naval limitation related to the European powers, the British remained committed to the two-power standard; that is, the Royal Navy's strength should equal or exceed the combined strength of the Continent's two largest navies. Often, Lord Balfour, Britain's chief representative to the Conference, would speak of France's naval pretensions as a genuine menace to the Empire's security. In more sober moments, however, the British treated the French not as an enemy, but merely as a nusiance. 82 T h e Imperial Navy shaped the Japanese government's policy at the Washington Conference in a way that the Royal and American Navies could not. Japan's constitutional system meant that Premier Hara could defy the judgment of the Imperial Navy only at his peril. He thus appointed Admiral Kato Tomosaburo as Japan's representative to the conference. In accordance with the policy of the Government and the Navy, Kato Tomosaburo and his naval advisors came to Washington seeking a naval agreement that would ensure Japan's naval supremacy in the Western Pacific. Japanese naval experts continued to differ among themselves, however, about the ratio necessary to ensure victory against an American Fleet conducting a transoceanic advance. Kato Tomosaburo concluded that Japan could settle for a 6:10 ratio in capital ships, so long as the United States agreed not to fortify its bases in the Western Pacific; whereas Vice-Admiral Kato Kanji, an advisor to the elder Kato at Washington, led the faction adamant in regarding a 7:10 ratio vis-à-vis the United States as the absolute minimum for Japanese security. 8 ' T h e General Board had surmised correctly that France visualized naval limitation in the context of its quest for military protection against future German aggression. T h e French came to Washington intent on reviving President Wilson's conception of naval limitation; namely, that the estab-

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The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 lishment of an international organization with the means of enforcing the peace should precede any limitation on armaments. Like Wilson, they would threaten a naval race with the aim of forcing others to accept their point of view on matters of European security. Like Wilson, they would fail in this endeavor. 84 Prestige, empire, and geography accounted for France's insistence on naval superiority over Italy. Minus the references to empire, the Italians would invoke the same rationale to. justify their demand for naval parity with France. 8 5 Secretary Hughes dealt, first, with the problems of reaching a tentative agreement on capital ships among the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. T h e Americans and the Japanese deadlocked, at the outset, on the matter of ratio and retention of the battleship Mutsu—one

of Japan's new

battleships under construction, but designated for scrapping under Stop Now. Ironically, Kato Tomosaburo had recommended to the Advisory Council that Japan push for a 7:10 ratio and confided the same to his naval advisors, although he and the Council endorsed a policy of flexibility regarding the ratios. Now, Kato's critics invoked his own words to justify their demand for a 7:10 ratio. Possibly intimidated by the assassination of Prime Minister Hara on 4 November 1921, the Advisory Council instructed Kato Tomosaburo to insist on the 7:10 ratio as the absolute minimum for agreement. 86 Kato also insisted that the Japanese retain the battleship Mutsu. He and Kato Kanji argued for the higher ratio not only on the basis of national needs, but from Hughes' own premise that the agreement ought to reflect existing naval strength. By their estimates, Japan could claim a 7:10 ratio based on their more "equitable measure of capital ships in being:" an assessment, which Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. challenged forcibly. 87 Nor would the General Board agree to any further concession on ratios it already regarded as perilous. 88 Although the British supported the Americans unequivocally on 6:10 ratio for Japan, Hughes wavered. He considered the dispute about ratio trivial in relation to his primary objective of ending the naval race. Indeed, Hughes spoke privately of his willingness to concede even a 10:8 ratio if that is what it would take to freeze capital ship building. 89 He withheld this offer from the Japanese, however, possibly because the Navy adamantly opposed it; and probably because he received encouraging information from American cryptographers who had broken the Japanese diplomatic code. 9 0 These telegrams revealed that the Japanese, or more accurately moder-

The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 ate elements, felt they had no choice but to yield on the 10:6 ratio. Kato Tomosaburo warned that only the United States had the resources to win the all-out naval race that would likely ensue if the Conference failed. Confirming the Cenerai Board's logic about what brought Japan to Washington, he argued that the United States would not only complete the 1916 program, but initiate a new construction program; whereas, in his view, Japan lacked the resources even to complete its 8-8 program on schedule. He returned to his earlier view that a 6:10 ratio would suffice to ensure Japan's supremacy in the Western Pacific if the United States agreed not to fortify her bases in the Western Pacific. Although Kato Kanji and his followers remain unreconciled, the elder Kato's line of argument persuaded the Advisory Council. Kato Tomosaburo informed Balfour and Hughes, in early December, that Japan would settle for the lower ratio in exchange for a status quo on fortifications and the retention of the Mutsu. 9 1 Meanwhile, Hughes found dealings with the British more encouraging, if not totally smooth. Balfour had conceded graciously on the principle of parity. He backed the Americans on the matter of ratios vis-à-vis Japan and the method of calculating naval strength. 92 Nor did he object to Hughes' proposal regarding the number of capital ships retained and scrapped. Urged on, however, by the Admiralty and by his naval advisors, he did try to budge Hughes on the naval holiday and on qualitative limitations for capital ships. Hughes strongly opposed British efforts to modify Stop Now. To permit any capital shipbuilding whatsoever would thwart the purpose of a naval agreement as he envisaged it. 93 Felicitously, Kato Tomosaburo's proposal to accept the 6:10 ratio in exchange for a nonfortification agreement and retention of the Mutsu offered the way for Hughes to compromise without seriously undermining Stop Now. Japan could retain the Mutsu, but would have to scrap two of its older ships. T h e British could build two new capital ships, but only within the 35,000-ton limit. T h e United States could complete two ships of the 1916 program in return for scrapping its two oldest capital ships. 94 Japan's demand for a status quo on fortifications gave Hughes the opportunity to justify as necessity what he wanted anyway. Roosevelt conceded on the point because he doubted whether Congress would fund construction for the bases in any event. 95 Disregarding the advice of naval advisors, Balfour went along willingly with the idea of a status quo on fortifications in the Pacific, so long as this limit excluded Singapore.

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The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 Details of the Agreement took several weeks to work out. Eventually, America, Great Britain, and Japan reached an agreement on maintaining the status quo on fortifications and naval bases in the Western Pacific. Article XIX applied this restriction as follows: Great Britain could build no more naval bases or fortifications on Hong Kong or any insular possession that the British Empire held or would hereafter acquire east of the meridian of 110 degrees East longitude, except Singapore and insular possessions adjacent to Ganada, Australia, and New Zealand. T h e United States could build no more fortifications or bases on any insular possessions in the Western Pacific, but for Hawaii, and those adjacent to the coasts of the United States and Alaska (not including the Aleutian Islands). For Japan, the freeze on naval bases and fortifications applied to the Kurile Islands, the Bonin Islands, Amami-Oshima, the Loochoo Islands, Formosa, and the Pescadores, and any insular possession that Japan might acquire, but excluded the home islands. Finally, too, Japan and the United States reached an agreement on the Mandates. In a separate but related treaty of infinite duration, the United States recognized Japan's Mandatory authority over the former German islands in the Northwestern Pacific; the Japanese agreed not to fortify or build naval bases on these islands. 96 Notwithstanding the vehemence of Kato Kanji's antitreaty faction, the capital ship compromise and the nonfortification agreement represented a major triumph for Japan. T h e Americans and the British had conceded, not just in fact but in principle, Japan's naval supremacy in the Western Pacific. Japan had conceded little in return. 9 7 Yet the naval settlement fit in nicely with Hughes' vision of the desirable and the possible for the Far East. Extending the agreement on battleship ratios to France and Italy proved more difficult than Secretary Hughes anticipated. France had no significant building program in progress. Nor did its existing strength in capital ships reach even its 175,000 ton allotment under Stop Now. Yet Foreign Minister Briand and Admiral Le Bon, his principal naval advisor at the Conference, argued for an allocation in capital ships of at least 350,000 tons and superiority vis-à-vis Italy. Briand and Le Bon justified these demands partly as a matter of prestige, partly as a consequence of empire, partly in reference to France's strategic situation in respect to Italy. They stressed, mainly, that Italy could concentrate its naval forces in the Mediterranean athwart France's North African lifeline; while France must disperse its navy because of its two coastlines and its worldwide empire.

The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 In reality, though, French demands stemmed at least as much from disagreements between British and France over European politics—specifically on whether and how to contain Germany. 9 8 Again, the French tried at the third plenary session of the Conference, dealing with land armaments, to win Britain's support for a military alliance to guarantee the territorial settlement reached at the Treaty of Versailles. Again, the British responded negatively to France's pleas for an alliance just as the Americans had done to them in respect to the Pacific and would do again l a t e r . " Rebuffed, Briand and Le Bon demanded an exorbitant allotment of capital ships largely in the hopes of forcing the British to reconsider their views on continental security. 100 In the end, Hughes persuaded a tenacious French delegation to accept only 175,000 tons in capital ships, but not before Briand had tried unsuccessfully to make France's assent on capital ships ratios contingent on the other powers conceding to France's demand regarding cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. Meanwhile, Italy accepted its allotment of 175,000 tons of capital ships gladly because all it wanted from a naval agreement was the right to parity with France. 1 0 1 T h e Franco-Italian dispute foreshadowed things to come. As for the negotiations on auxiliaries, virtually no one grasped the potentialities of the aircraft carrier or the submarine. Negotiators not only tended to fit such weapons into the Mahanian doctrine of battlefleet supremacy, and to envision them merely as adjuncts to capital ships; 102 the Americans and the British, particularly, sought to ensure that the battleship retained its ascendancy over the airplane and the carrier. 103 Indeed, Hughes had no interest in developing the carrier as an offensive weapon. Nor did he concern himself with the particulars of designing such craft with the optimum characteristics. What he wanted was to limit the numbers and the size of carriers at the lowest levels possible. 104 Luckily for the Americans, everyone else regarded Hughes' proposed allocation of carrier tonnage as unacceptably low, although unlike the General Board, the other powers had no objection to restricting the displacement of such ships roughly to 27,000 tons. T h e Royal Navy had planned for more than the three 25,000-ton carriers their overall allotment of 80,000 tons under the Hughes' plan would give them. Japan also objected to Hughes' plan because it could not build even two large carriers with its allotment of 48,000 tons. 1 0 5 Reluctantly, Hughes raised the carrier allotment to 135,000 tons each for the United States and Great Britain, 81,000 tons for Japan, and 60,000 tons each for France and Italy. This

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The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 agreement nearly unravelled, however, on account of a dispute between the British and the Americans over the maximum displacement of carriers. Worried that Congress would fail to appropriate funds for carriers, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. pressed Hughes to revise upward the 27,000-ton limit called for in his initial proposal so that the United States could convert into carriers two of the capital ships slated for scrapping. T h e Navy had estimated, roughly (very roughly as events turned out), that 33,000-ton displacement represented the absolute minimum for such a conversion. Roosevelt recommended this figure as an alternative to the 27,000-ton limit for the converted ships. 106 T h e British agreed in principle to the idea of allowing for conversion of two capitals ships into carriers with displacement of 33,000 tons, but wanted the Americans to allow for converting capital ships scheduled for scrapping to commercial, harbor, or auxiliary use. Hughes balked. If, he warned, each power kept such ships, then the Conference would squander its moral capital with the man on the street, who justifiably would regard the Treaty as a sham. He would thus sacrifice the exception for carrier conversion if that is what it would take genuinely to scrap capital ships and truly to end preparations for war. 107 Shocked, Roosevelt and his fellow delegates pleaded with Hughes to retain the option of converting these ships. Hughes "relented and then persuaded the British to accept the American position. 108 Article IX of the Treaty set the limit on carrier displacement of 27,000 tons provided that the principals could build two carriers of 33,000 tons each and use for this purpose any two ships designated for scrapping. 109 Article VIII classified as experimental and, thus, exempt from the freeze on replacement, all aircraft carrier tonnage built or building on November 1921. In this way, despite Secretary Hughes' diffidence, the United States built the Lexington and the Saratoga, carriers that would prove invaluable during the Second World War; we shall see, however, that controversy would arise even with the 33,000-ton limit. Ultimately, the conference failed to limit the number of other auxiliary craft. Commentators have placed the lion's share of the blame for this outcome on France, but perhaps unfairly. 110 True, France claimed an allocation for such vessels not only wholly at odds with Hughes' plan, but substantially in excess of the force it then possessed: 33,000 tons of crusiers and destroyers, 90,000 tons of submarines. T h e French claims also justified Creat Britain's refusal to limit surface auxiliaries capable of handling

The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 the submarine. And Balfour did call for abolishing the submarine entirely, or failing that, for levels much lower than even Hughes proposed. Even so, the British considered such recommendations unrealistic and less urgent than their public remarks indicated. Neither they nor the Japanese wanted to settle for the numbers and ratios of auxiliary craft that Hughes' plans recommended: the British wanted superiority in cruisers, while the Japanese wanted a ratio of at least 7:10. 111 Nor, like the Americans, did the Japanese or the Italians want to abolish the submarine, which they considered an effective and legitimate weapon of self-defense.112 Whether Hughes would or could have pressed Britain and Japan to accept the ratios and levels he proposed remains an open question. Clearly, Hughes regarded failure to reach an agreement on auxiliaries as a trivial matter compared to the conference's successes. 115 T h e French claims thus concealed a controversy over such vessels that would plague naval arms limitation for a decade. T h e Conference did reach two agreements, however, that regulated auxiliary craft. First, the Washington Naval Treaty set a limit on cruiser displacements (10,000 tons) and armaments (8-inch guns) to preserve the distinction between cruisers and battleships. 1 H Second, the powers approved the Root Resolution, which outlawed submarine warfare against commerce. 1 1 5 Although the submarine treaty never went into force because France refused to ratify it and virtually all the belligerents waged unrestricted submarine warfare during Second World War, the sentiments embodied in the treaty had an impact on naval planning, especially in the United States, where naval planners operated during the interwar years on the assumption that the American people would never tolerate unrestricted submarine warfare. 116 Hughes did succeed, too, in forcing the British to abrogate the AngloJapanese Alliance on terms essentially agreeable to the Americans. T h e British and Japan agreed regretfully to Hughes' Four Power Treaty, which included France as a substitute for the alliance. It pledged each of the four contracting parties to respect the rights of the others "in their insular possessions and insular dominions of the Pacific Ocean," but contained no genuine obligation except for consultation in the event of a dispute involving the rights of the contracting parties thereunder. 1 1 7 What about verfication? No one thought much about the matter. T h e contracting parties agreed unanimously not only that good faith would have to suffice, but that ensuring compliance would require nothing

The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 more. Naval experts considered battleships impossible to hide and on-site inspection an intolerable intrusion on national sovereignty that would cause more harm than good. Nor does the record of the conference reveal any significant concern among the delegates about the possibilities of cheating on the qualitative provisions of the naval agreement. T h e nonfortification agreement and the Four Power Treaty contained no mechanism to facilitate verification, with one exception. Chapter II, Part III obliged the parties to notify each other regarding the characteristics of replacement tonnage permitted under the treaty, although neither this section nor any other provision established a way in which to verify the accuracy of that information. T h e treaty would remain in force until 31 December 1936. If, by that date, none of the contracting powers had given their notice to terminate the treaty, then it would continue to run until two years from the date any power gave such notice. 118 Meanwhile, the nine powers sought to work out a political settlement in the Pacific, with the United States taking the lead. Historians have debated endlessly the meaning and outcome of these negotiations for American diplomacy in the Pacific. Some have interpreted the Nine Power Treaty by which the contracting powers codified the principles of the Open Door as merely a cover for Hughes' plan to effect a strategic retreat from East Asia. 119 Others have commended Hughes for pursuing a political settlement narrowly tailored to match the reality of the naval settlement and America's minor stakes in the Western Pacific. 120 According to still others, the political settlement at Washington increased American involvement and commitments to the region without the requisite force to back it up. 1 2 1 Although this study makes no pretense of being the final word on America's Asian policy between the wars, any assessment of the naval treaties cannot avoid making some sharp judgments about that policy. It seems, to the author at least, that, often, the historians who praise Hughes' approach at Washington impute to him their conception of America's national interest and their estimates on the relationship between force and diplomacy. Indeed, such scholars seem to mistake Hughes' gradualism and legalism for realism. 122 True, the concrete arrangement of the Nine Power Treaty fell far short of ensuring the territorial integrity of China or satisfying the Chinese: Hughes failed to dislodge the Japanese from Manchuria or end Japan's extraterritorial rights there. Similarly, he refrained from pressing these matters to the fullest so as not to jeopardize the naval settlement. The Nine Power Treaty also failed to provide for any sort of collective action

The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 or sanctions in the event that any power violated the Open Door. As Professor Asada has argued, too, the security clause in the treaty gave some plausibility to the Japanese claim that it reserved special rights in Inner Mongolia and Manchuria. This does not mean, however, as Asada and others have implied, that a realistic appraisal of the relationship between force and diplomacy guided Hughes' actions at Washington, or that the Secretary even thought in those terms. 123 To repeat: Hughes saw no gap between a political arrangement committing the United States, in principle, to upholding the territorial integrity of China and a naval treaty that denied the Americans the capacity to enforce it. Rather, he saw such a relationship between force and diplomacy as enhancing the prospects for peace in the Pacific. When his policy advisors confronted him with two radically divergent conceptions of America's policy objectives in the Far East and the nature of the Japanese state, Secretary Hughes chose not one or the other, but the most optimistic assumptions of both. 124 Legalism, gradualism, and the priority he accorded naval arms limitation distinguished him from those in the Far Eastern Division of the State Department who wished to launch a fullscale assault against Japan's position in the Far East. Unlike some proJapanese elements within the Harding administration, however, he refused to accept tacitly either the logic or necessity of Japan's dominance in China. Nor did he accept their pessimistic view of China's capacity for democratic development. All things considered, the Secretary pursued quite an ambitious political agenda at the conference. Doubtless he meant the Nine Power Treaty as a direct repudiation to the idea of special interests or spheres of influence as the Japanese understood it. Both he and Japanese Foreign Minister Shidehara recognized that Article III of the treaty went well beyond the original and more limited meaning of Open Door as John Hay and his contemporaries understood it. 125 Despite his failure to force the Japanese out of Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, he meant for the Open Door to encompass those regions. Later, despite encountering stiff resistance, he forced the Japanese to repudiate the Lansing-Ishii agreement of 1917 that had recognized Japan's special interests in China. 1 2 6 Doubtless, too, he pressed the case for an expansive interpretation of the Open Door with a vigor that alarmed the British. Balfour was inclined to accept a more restrictive interpretation of the Open Door than Hughes wanted, not out of sympathy for Japan's position, but out of fear: Balfour was worried that with the abrogation of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance,

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The Washington Conference of 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 2 Japan's expansionism would come at the expense of the Empire and British interests in China. Although otherwise he might have given some recognition Japan's special rights in China as gesture of appeasement, he deferred to the Americans because Hughes remained adamantly opposed to making such concessions. 1 2 7 In related negotiations, Hughes also compelled the Japanese to accept a compromise on Shantung and extracted from Shidehara an agreement in principle that Japan would withdraw from the Siberian provinces. 1 2 8 Nor does the claim that Japan misconstrued the nature of the Nine Power Treaty have as much merit as Asada claims. If certain members of the American delegation, notably Elihu Root, seemed to endorse Japan's special rights in China, then the thrust of American policy should have put anyone on notice that such views remained unacceptable to Hughes. 1 2 9 T h e Secretary's biographer may have put it best when he wrote that the language of the Nine Power Treaty "could not have been more emphatic in avowing respect for the Open Door and the integrity of C h i n a . " 1 5 u T h e author argues, as the upshot, that the record at Washington supports the interpretation that the Washington Conference created a dangerous gap between force and diplomacy, a gap Secretary Hughes failed to recognize. For the first time, the United States had undertaken formal commitment by treaty to uphold the territorial integrity of China, just as the naval settlement made its enforcement out of the question. Although Hughes had considered the use of force on China's behalf unthinkable under any circumstances, the treaty conditioned American thinking about the Far East. It served as the standard of measure against which Americans evaluated Japanese intentions in the 1930s. True, the United States declined to resist more than rhetorically during the 1930s when the Japanese army stormed first into Manchuria and then into North China. Nor, in 1941, did President Roosevelt risk war with Japan over Southeast Asia mainly for China's sake. What prompted the President was his desire to preserve Britain's Asian empire against a Japanese threat that increasingly he and advisors considered inextricably linked to the Nazi menace in Europe. If, however, the United States determined to fight Japan mainly for Britain's sake and with regard primarily to Europe, Secretary of State Hull would settle for nothing less than Japan's adherence to the Nine Power Treaty as the basis for settlement in the waning days of peace (November 1941). 1 5 1 In reaching this decision, the Roosevelt administration would return to the logic implicit in the General Board's analysis at the Conference: namely, that harnessing the resources

The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 and energies of China to the Japanese state would give an authoritarian and militarist Japan dominance throughout the Far East. 132 Did Hughes have any alternative? Hughes' defenders make their most compelling argument when they say that the Secretary had no choice but to settle for a naval agreement out of phase with America's political goals. They argue rightly that Congress seemed in no mood to pay for fortifications in the Pacific or for the completion of the 1916 program. Nor, as his defenders point out, is it fair to judge the Washington Conference wholly by reference to events two decades after its time. Yet this line of argument does not end the matter. Hughes did more than reflect domestic attitudes on matters of foreign policy and defense: he shaped them too. He also had alternatives, although difficult ones to be sure. He could have pushed forcibly for the United States to build a navy capable of enforcing the Open Door, or advocated scaling down American political goals accordingly. Hughes advocated neither course, not because he did not consider either alternative possible, but because he did not consider either desirable. For him, reason, good faith, and the benign effect of the naval agreement would suffice to moderate Japan's ambition in East Asia and guarantee the Open Door. 153 Ultimately, then, the stability of the settlement reached at Washington depended on the forbearance and success of the Japanese moderates. Equally, it depended on the political stability of China. Hughes' policy worked during the liberal 1920s, but could not survive the turbulent 1930s. When the moderates lost out, when China descended into chaos, then the naval settlement collapsed inevitably. 1,4

III.

RATIFICATION

Few foresaw such difficulties as of February 1922. Hughes epitomized the popular reaction to the treaties when he announced rapturously that the Washington Conference "absolutely ends the race in competition in naval armaments." 1 , 5 The administration amplified on this theme. The American delegation claimed, in its report to the Senate, that the Conference had averted a naval race "distressingly like the race that preceded the war in 1914." 156 Prominent citizens, the clergy, and most of the press made similar claims on behalf of the treaty. Public opinion expected, likewise, that the treaties would end the naval race. 157 The administration made these arguments persuasively during the ratification debate. The Five Power Treaty encountered no serious resistance

The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 in the Senate. 1 , 8 Only the political agreements touched off extensive debate. T h e administration stressed the interrelatedness among all the agreements reached at Washington. T h e political agreements and the naval agreements depended on one another, by their line of argument; striking out the one would unravel the other. Irreconcilables such as Borah opposed the Four Power Treaty as an alliance in disguise. They wanted assurances, too, that the Nine Power Treaty contained no obligation to use force. Eventually, the administration persuaded the Senate to approve these treaties, although the Senate did approve an amendment to the Four Power Treaty reaffirming that it involved no commitment to armed force, no alliance, and no obligation to join in any defense. 159 Only the Hearst Press and the naval establishment opposed the Washington Naval Treaty unequivocally. 140 While the Hearst Press criticized the conference for conceding the British naval superiority, most naval critics focused their complaints on the effects of the treaty in respect to Japan. Their case against the treaty rested essentially on the same propositions that the General Board had invoked earlier in opposition to Stop Now: (1) the 5:3 ratio and the nonfortification agreement, singularly and collectively, gave Japan unassailable superiority in the Western Pacific; (2) the United States had renounced even the option of building a navy capable of interfering against the inexorable expansionism of a militaristic and autocratic Japan. 141 Admiral Pratt dissented from the consensus of naval opinion with a vigorous defense of the Washington Conference that carried great authority with the public and with Congress. His arguments on behalf of the treaty borrowed the logic and the vocabulary of his civilian counterparts: that the treaties had replaced an atmosphere of animosity and tension with one of mutual confidence and trust; that the nonfortification agreement had removed a source of tension that had fueled the arms race with Japan; that the United States had given up nothing because Congress had decided not to develop bases in the Pacific; that the treaties had a salutary effect on Anglo-American relations. In what Pratt's biographer described "as his most fateful misjudgment," he predicted, too, that the treaty would improve the atmosphere for naval building by finally giving the Navy a policy and standard for Congressional appropriations. 142 Publicly, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. also endorsed the Washington Naval Treaty without qualification. Privately, however, he had reached a more somber conclusion on how the treaty would affect naval building in the

The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 United States. 14 ' By making excessive and unrealistic claims, Roosevelt warned, Harding and Hughes had created the erroneous impression in the minds of Congress and the public that the United States could reduce naval spending significandy below public levels. 144 Roosevelt turned out to be a better prophet than Admiral Pratt, although to be fair, the Washington Naval Treaty merely reinforced, it did not create, domestic hostility to naval spending. How did the other powers assess the outcome of treaty? British reaction paralleled that of the Americans. In the spirit of Secretary Hughes, Balfour described all of the treaties as positively an unmixed blessing to mankind. Civilian commentary echoed Balfour's sentiments while naval opinion criticized the outcome of the treaties bitterly. 145 Indeed, British naval critics drew conclusions precisely opposite to their American counterparts. In their view, the Royal Navy had surrendered its naval supremacy at Washington. Some naval commentators who viewed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance as a force for moderation worried, too, that its destruction would radicalize Japan's foreign policy at Great Britain's expense. 146 On the whole, civilian opinion in Japan regarded the treaties an important step toward peace and toward ending the naval race, although their praise tended to be more mixed and more restrained than that in the English-speaking democracies. T h e armed forces reacted bitterly to the treaties. Kato Kanji led the fight against the treaties, for the Navy's part. Again, he condemned the 5:3 ratio as a complete sellout of Japan's minimum needs for security. General Tanaka argued, for the Army's part, that the treaties represented an American effort to emasculate Japanese power in the Pacific and to drive Japan out of China. In the atmosphere of the early 1920s, the government could and did overcome such opposition to approve the treaties. Kato Tomosaburo responded effectively that the combination of the 6:10 ratio and the nonfortification agreement would give Japan security in the Western Pacific. Democratic elements welcomed the tax relief naval limitation seemed to promise. Many Japanese also saw the treaties as an end to the diplomatic isolation for which Japan seemed headed. 1 4 7 Only the French condemned the outcome of the conference unequivocally and unanimously. Their complaints reiterated the same themes Briand and Le Bon had raised at the conference: that the Americans had inverted the proper relationship between security and disarmament by putting the latter first; that Britain had portrayed France's demands un-

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T h e Washington Conference of 1921-1922 fairly; that parity with Italy would mean Italian superiority in the Mediterranean; that peace depended not on naval limitation, but on maintaining the territorial settlement reached at Versailles. 148 As things turned out, France's apprehensions deserved a more sympathetic hearing than either American or British leaders would give them.

IV CONFOUNDED EXPECTATIONS

This chapter covers the interlude between the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and preliminaries of the London Naval Conference of 1930. Part one surveys the evolution of naval strategy and doctrine between 1922 and 1930. As part of a wider effort to explain why Japan kept building warships prodigiously even when the United States slowed down its naval building considerably, part two introduces a subject as fundamental to sound thinking about arms limitation as it is elusive; namely, whether and to what extent the naval treaties affected naval doctrine, vessel design, deployment, and budgetary decisions. Part three highlights certain political developments in East Asia which affected the course of naval limitation. Part four considers some problems with verification and compliance that arose first during the 1920s, then extended into the late 1930s. The final part analyzes briefly why the Geneva Naval Conference of 1927 failed to reach agreement, and the consequences of failure. I. N A V A L P L A N N I N G A N D D O C T R I N E Battleship and battlefleet encounters continued to dominate naval thinking everywhere during the 1920s. Although naval aviation attracted increasing attention—more in japan than in the United States and least of all in Great Britain—Jutland remained the dominant motif for naval strategy and operations, the battleship the navies' ultimate weapon.' The American and Japanese navies continued to look on each other as the primary antagonist. Each oriented their naval planning and programs

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Confounded Expectations accordingly. If, conversely, the Royal and American Navies remained at odds over such things as battleship modernization, cruisers, and the meaning of parity, no one expected them to fight one another either. The American Navy emerged from the Washington Conference dissatisfied with the 5:3 ratio and pessimistic about the ability of the United States to enforce its policies unilaterally in the Western Pacific. American naval planners pressed hard, nevertheless, to transcend the treaties' restrictions. Because the United States could build no more battleships or fortifications on its possessions in the Western Pacific, the General Board concentrated during the 1920s on maintaining the 5:5:3 ratio for all categories of naval vessels, on making the ambitious objectives of War Plan Orange more credible, and on attaining genuine parity with Great Britain. Indeed, the Board called for the development of a navy that, at a minimum, would equal the most powerful navy in the world. With Japan and the operational requirements of a transoceanic advance prominently in mind, the American Navy strove to design and build warships with the maximum endurance, survivability, and cruising radius possible within the constraints of the Washington Naval Treaty.2 The United States continued its program to convert the fuel systems of its battleships from coal to oil, which increased their range and speed.3 Congress approved the Navy's request to raise the gun elevation of American battleships, which made them more powerful.4 Meanwhile, the debate over naval aviation resumed once more. Rear Admiral William Moffett, Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, led the assault against the regnant doctrine of battleship supremacy, which tranditionalists ultimately withstood.5 Yet even the most conservative of American naval planners recognized the growing importance if not the eventual dominance of naval aviation. Following the hearings of the Morrow Board (1926), which assessed the potential impact of airpower on strategy and operations, Congress appropriated funds for a five-year building program for naval aircraft and passed legislation requiring all carrier commanders to be qualified aviators.6 The Navy finished converting the Lexington and the Saratoga into aircraft carriers. By the end of the decade, fleet exercises had begun to reveal the immense potentialities of carrier aviation for strategy and operations. The experimental carrier Langley had demonstrated, in the fleet exercises of 1927-1928, the vulnerability of the Panama Canal to carrier attack and the importance of providing aircover for the battleline.7 When the Lexington and the Saratoga joined the fleet in 1929, carrier aircraft put on an even more impressive display.

Confounded Expectations Fleet Problem IX saw Admiral Pratt use his carrier task force to achieve a devasting surprise attack on the Panama Canal and his opponent's battleline. 8 Despite the carrier's successes in fleet exercises, Admiral Pratt and naval opinion generally continued to regard them merely as auxiliaries to the battlefleet, subordinate to the battleship. 9 Throughout the 1920s, the Board would give priority to cruiser construction during their ceaseless and often futile budgetary battles with Presidents Coolidge and Hoover, and Congress. 10 Similarly, the American Navy geared its submarine program to meet the requirements of a battlefleet conducting a transoceanic advance." The American Navy experimented with large fleet-type submarines designed to maximize cruising radius and endurance. 1 2 Eventually, the American Navy would benefit from several other tactical and technological developments that began during the 1920s. Thanks largely to the work and inspiration of General John Lejeune, the United States Marine Corps began developing appropriate strategies and tactics for conducting offensive amphibious warfare in the Western Pacific. Also, the Navy encouraged developments in radio, acoustics, radar, and engineering, which would serve it well during the Pacific War. T h e Navy would profit, too, from the development and fleet testing of floating drydocks, fleet-trains, and oil tenders, all of which began during the 1920s.n In respect to War Plan Orange, however, the Navy failed utterly to close the gap between expectations and reality. On the contrary, America's reluctance to build combined with Japan's steady naval buildup to widen the gap. Countless fleet exercises demonstrated starkly that the American Navy would lose in any attempt to fight the short, spasmodic, decisive encounter with the Imperial Navy in the Western Pacific called for in War Plan Orange. 1 4 Naval planners also concluded that the Philippines could not hold out against a concerted Japanese attack long enough for the American fleet to arrive to the rescue. 15 T h e Imperial Japanese Navy more than reciprocated the American Navy's hostility. Although Admiral Kalo Tomosaburo controlled Kato Kanji and his Fleet Faction at the Washington Conference, his success proved transitory. Sadao Asada has explained why. It was Admiral Kato Tomosaburo who had deviated from the Navy's long-standing consensus when he accepted the 6:10 ratio at Washington. It was Kato Kanji who represented the mainstream of naval opinion in demanding at 7:10 ratio and identifying the United States as the primary enemy. Even before Kato

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Confounded Expectations Tomosaburo's untimely death in August of 1923, Kato Kanji had begun to repudiate the elder Kato's policy of peaceful cooperation with the Great Britain and the United States under the Washington Treaties. The revised National Defense Policy, issued in February of 1923 and representing the corporate views of both the Japanese Army and the Navy, identified the United States as Japan's primary enemy. The document's blend of "economic determinism," racialism, and its "fatalism" about the inevitability of war with the United States attested to the influence and popularity of Kato Kanji's ideas. 16 Although Russia had traditionally served as the Japanese Army's primary enemy and the Asian continent would remain the Army's primary focus, the Japanese Army, too, would take an increasingly hostile view toward the United States during the 1920s. 17 The ideas and influence of Ishiwahara Kanji—general officer of the Japanese army, military historian, strategist, and pan-Asianist of great influence in Japanese military circles—reflected the ominous trend. Writing in 1929, Ishiwahara envisaged the Japanese-American conflict not only as a clash of interest over China, but as a clash of civilizations whose converging paths would inevitably terminate in cataclysmic war. 18 Again, Japanese naval planning operated from the same doctrinal and operational premises underlying War Plan Orange. Anticipating that the American battlefleet would attempt to relieve the Philippines immediately by taking the mid-Pacific route athwart the Mandates, the Japanese Navy planned to wear down the strength of the American fleet through an initial phase of attrition. Then the Imperial Navy would force an early and decisive encounter with the American fleet in the waters of the Western Pacific. As a substitute for the 7:10 ratio in aircraft carriers and capital ships, Japanese naval planners intended to rely on superior firepower, training, tactics (night fighting), and design. The Imperial Navy also concentrated on developing and exploiting to the fullest the weapons systems that the Washington Conference left unregulated: land-based naval aviation, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. 19 The Japanese produced many excellent aircraft designs which would give them a decisive lead in naval aviation during the 1930s. 2 " The Imperial Navy also converted two heavy cruisers, the Akaga and the Kagi, into aircraft carriers. In their designs of cruisers, the Japanese tried to combine as much firepower, speed, and protection as possible: sometimes within the limits of the Washington Treaty, sometimes in violation of the treaty.21 All Japanese cruisers and destroyers carried an array of torpedoes

Confounded Expectations notable for their range and firepower. T h e Imperial Navy produced large submarines with great range, speed, endurance, and armaments. Like the American Navy, it tended to integrate the carrier and the submarine into existing planning and doctrine rather than to modify planning and doctrine to accommodate these new weapons. 22 Japanese naval planners continued instead to regard the battleship as the ultimate weapon of the fleet. Carrier-based aircraft, land-based aircraft launched from the Mandates, heavy cruisers, destroyers, and submarines would wear down the American battleline, but only the battleships could finish the Americans off. By the early 1930s Japanese naval planners had given credence to the General Board's original demand for a 10:5 ratio. T h e United States would lose half of their fleet during the attrition phase of a transoceanic advance, according to the Imperial Navy's own estimates. 2 ' From the early 1920s on, the strategic planning and programs of the Japanese Army began to take the possibility of war with the United States more seriously. Operational plans contemplated that, in the event of war with the United States, the Army would occupy the Philippines and Guam. Accordingly, planners devoted increasing attention to devising operational strategies and tactics for conducting such amphibious operations in conjunction with the Navy. 24 Meanwhile, the British naval planners continued to define its mission and strategy globally: to maintain the two-power standard in Europe; to defend the Empire's dominions, possessions, and protectorates throughout the world; to defend Great Britain's worldwide oceanic trade routes and lines of communication. Operationally, this meant that the Royal Navy faced the daunting task of devising a way to fight simultaneously in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Far East, or finding political substitutes for British seapower in areas outside of Europe. 2 5 T h e Royal Navy would have only 20 battleships with which to implement such a strategy. British naval planners discounted the United States in their war planning, because they considered war between the two unthinkable. 2 6 Throughout the 1920s, the Royal Navy regarded the potential for war with Japan as thinkable, but not imminent. 2 7 Strategically, though, its position in the Far East relative to Japan compared unfavorably even to that of the United States. Forced to concentrate much of the fleet in home waters and in the Mediterranean, the Royal Navy would need time, a naval base, and tranquility in Europe and the Near East to mount a credible defense against a Japanese attack directed at British possessions or dominions in the Pacific. 28 T h e termination of the Anglo-Japanese Alii-

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Confounded Expectations ance and the corresponding limits on the American Navy's capacity to influence events in the Far East, which the Washington Naval Treaty codified, foreclosed the option of finding a political substitute for British seapower in the Pacific. Although during the 1920s the Royal Navy pushed for the completion of a base at Singapore, it got nowhere. T h e British government suspended work on the base partly because of cost, partly because of doubts about whether Singapore could hold out until the main fleet arrived, partly because of the Foreign Office's reluctance to offend Japan, and partly because of pacifist sentiment. Hence, the safety of British's Pacific interests depended chiefly on the sufferance and success of the Japanese moderates. 29 Despite the resumption of the dispute over the importance of the capital ship, the vast majority of British naval experts continued to regard battleships as the dominant weapon if guarded properly: from submarines by bulges and blisters, from aircraft by added deck armor and antiaircraft guns. T h e Royal Navy geared its planning and programs accordingly. T h e Admiralty began designing the two 35,000-ton Hoods that the Washington Treaty allowed them. Also, the British added 3000 tons to remaining capital ships that the treaty allowed for added protection against air and submarine attack. T h e Royal Navy shifted its attention likewise to auxiliaries that the Washington Treaty left unregulated. Reflexively, naval planners began to design cruisers with the maximum displacement and armament that the treaty allowed (10,000 tons, with 8-inch guns), although, by the middle of the decade, the Admiralty would come to regret this decision when the United States and Japan started building large cruisers themselves. 50 T h e Royal Navy asked, too, for large numbers of smaller light cruisers to meet its global responsibilities for protecting sealanes and trade defense. Although the Royal Navy planned to convert two heavy cruisers into carriers, the development of naval aviation during the 1920s lagged significantly behind that of the United States and Ja-

il.

DEPLOYMENT

Yet the continuities and symmetries in naval planning and doctrine within and among the United States, Britain, and Japan should not obscure the equally significant asymmetries that became manifest during the decade of the 1920s. Contrast, most importantly, the Japanese and American

Confounded Expectations naval building programs between 1922 and 1930. Japan not only began construction on 12? warships, but completed most of them by the London Naval Conference of 1930: 3 aircraft carriers, 20 cruisers, 50 destroyers, and 50 submarines.' 2 At the same time, Congress had authorized construction for only 31 warships: 3 aircraft carriers, 22 cruisers, and 6 submarines. Even these figures vastly overstate the vigor of America's naval effort. The American Navy did not lay its first keel of the 22 cruisers Congress had authorized until 1926. By the London Naval Conference of 1930, the United States had only begun or completed 10 of the 31 warships Congress had authorized: 2 carriers and 8 cruisers. Nor did Congress even authorize construction 18 of these 31 warships until late in the 1920s after the Geneva Naval Conference of 1927 failed to reach agreement to limit auxiliaries." As of 1927, the United States had just 15 cruisers, Great Britain had 62, Japan 29. 5 4 As of 1925, the combined strength of all American Army and Navy airforces totalled less than one third of British air strength and less than one sixth of Japanese strength.' 5 Consequently, Japan's naval strength increased significantly during the 1920s, absolutely and relatively. 56 The Royal Navy's building program fared better than the American program, but lagged behind Japan's. Between 1922 and 1930, Great Britain authorized construction of 67 warships: 2 battleships, 14 cruisers, 25 destroyers, 19 submarines, 6 sloops, and a minelayer. Yet these figures exaggerate the dimension of Great Britain's naval effort. 57 From the armistice on through the Washington Conference, British naval building had proceeded very slowly. Great Britain had emerged from the Great War gravely deficient in auxiliary tonnage, especially when measured against the vastness of the Empire's commitments and responsibilities. Although partly a reaction to the cruiser programs of the Americans and the Japanese, British emphasis on cruiser building stemmed more from the Admiralty's assessment that Great Britain needed a minimum of 70 cruisers for trade defense. Indeed, the Second World War would show that the number 70 fell well below what the Royal Navy needed to protect Imperial trade routes. 38 What accounted for this striking contrast between Japanese and American naval building? Surely the particulars of the time account largely for why Americans placed such great faith in naval limitation and held such hostility for military spending of any kind: widespread popularity of the view that arms, not politics, caused arms races and wars; isolationism, geography, economics, a desire for peace. Surely American institutions

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Confounded Expectations explain partly why the coalitions holding such attitudes wielded so much influence in American politics and why the Navy remained at the margins of mainstream debate; whereas the pace and scope of Japan's naval building owed largely to the nature of Japanese institutions and the special position of the military among t h e m . ' 9 Consider the formidable array of ideas, interests, and institutions hostile to the American Navy's way of thinking about national security. Characteristically, devoting their energies to commerce and daily life during the peacetime of the 1920s, most Americans wanted less government, balanced budgets, lower taxes, and isolation from the problems of Europe and Asia. Naval building not only ranked low in their order of priorities: it also threatened, in their view, to precipitate an arms race, and, thereby, to increase the risks of war. 40 That so many Americans linked naval building with war and naval limitation with peace attested to the strength and influence of the American peace movement during the 1920s. In their quest for disarmament and the outlawry of war, peace groups operated effectively to mobilize opposition against the Navy's plans for concerted naval building, which such groups regarded as an incitement to political conflict and war. 41 Nor, during the 1920s, would the Navy get much support from either the legislative or executive branch. Often, Congress not only reflected, but incited, public sentiment for naval arms control and against naval building. 42 Calvin Coolidge began his presidency less sympathetically inclined to naval building than even his Congress. No president would work for naval limitation with more dedication and oppose the Navy's agenda with more conviction and tenacity than Herbert Hoover. Nor did any president believe more strongly than Hoover in the importance of the moral force of public opinion rather than military force. Thus, as eminent historian Robert Ferrei] records, four things dominated the American diplomatic agenda during the 1920s: arms limitation, the World Court, the debt problem in Europe, and the search to legislate peace without power. 4 ' It is no wonder then that the American Navy fared so badly in its budgetary battles with Congress. Congressional debates during the 1920s mirrored the arguments and the outcome of the debates preceding the Washington Conference. Supporters of naval building argued that the United States would lack any bargaining leverage in future arms negotiations without a major building program to keep pace with the British and the Japanese. Opponents stressed the themes of economy, taxes, war, and the arms race. T h e American Navy weakened its case by justifying its

Confounded Expectations budgetary demands with reference primarily to the Royal Navy. The Navy's congressional critics countered decisively that no one expected the United States and Great Britain to fight. Congress followed the General Board's assumption that the battleship remained the mistress of the fleet. Many Congressmen veiled their opposition to any sort of building, however, in the argument of obsolescence. 44 Then, too, some raised a new argument against naval building: that future treaties to limit arms would make such building unnecessary and wasteful. Invoking the outcome of the Washington Naval Conference as justification for their views, many Congressmen saw no purpose in building more warships that might be scrapped like the battleships building under the 1916 program. 45 Contrast the American Navy's plight with the privileged position of the Imperial Japanese Navy. True, the 1920s marked the interwar highpoint of Japanese democracy and moderate civilian rule. The prestige of the armed services also remained unprecedentedly low. Civilian governments of the decade infuriated the Japanese Army by curtailing its expenditures and reducing from 23 to 19 the Army's number of standing divisions. 46 The Imperial Navy, too, received much less than that branch felt entitled to or necessary. Yet, even during the 1920s, the armed services retained their special place under the Japanese constitution, not only in Japanese politics, but in society at large. Potentially, the Army and the Navy could still topple any civilian government with which it fundamentally disagreed. 47 For their part, civilian leaders lacked either the authority or the inclination of their American counterparts to impose a virtual freeze on naval building. Nor did Japanese leaders have to deal with overwhelming pressure from an electorate aroused on behalf of naval limitation and endowed with the capacity to enforce their priorities. If the Japanese and American naval planners thought alike and planned alike, then only the Imperial Navy had the authority and influence to carry out their convictions. These institutional asymmetries explain largely why Japan kept building warships even when the United States slowed down its building program considerably. The intensity of and reasons for British opposition to naval spending closely paralleled what happened in the United States. Conservatives and Laborites not only demanded economy in government, but gave priority in state expenditure to a burgeoning welfare state that had the sanction of both major parties. Naval building also ran against the regnant view about

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Confounded Expectations force and diplomacy: that moral opinion carried great weight in international politics; that arms races caused war; that arms limitation ensured peace. Great Britain's budgetary system and the 10-Year Rule further weakened the Royal Navy's claim to scarce resources. So did the growing disillusionment among Britons with the outcome of World War 1 and the widespread pacifist sentiment that followed. 4 8 Nor did the Royal Navy have a friend in the Prime Ministers of the decade: Conservative Stanley Baldwin or Laborite Ramsay MacDonald. Baldwin echoed the consensus of the day on virtually everything: from disarmament to the priority of domestic spending, to the foolish distrust of the French, to the correspondingly reckless faith in German reasonableness. 49 MacDonald believed resolutely in disarmament and agitated fervently for the cause, although the spectre of laying off British shipworkers led him to support more naval building than, in his view, Britain's world position warranted. 5 0 That Japan kept building when the United States slowed down considerably, that navies everywhere failed to grasp the strategic and operational significance of naval aviation, that the Washington Naval Treaty failed absolutely to end the naval race or freeze the naval balance indefinitely: each illuminates how events constantly confounded the claims for and doctrines underlying naval arms limitation. Yet, does it necessarily follow that the Washington Treaty and negotiations that followed stand as an independent cause of the American Navy's decline during the 1920s? Or is it possible to attribute the flawed thinking of decisionmakers to the Washington Treaty or the negotiations that followed? Is it possible to make any judgments about so elusive a subject of causation as it relates to arms limitation? Did the process of naval arms limitation actually affect, or merely reflect, doctrinal, deployment, and budgetary decisions brought on by other forces? Did the process of naval limitation actually exert a positive or negative influence on naval deployment? Even if the Washington Treaties foreclosed the option of building a fleet strong enough to defend the Philippines and deter Japan in East Asia, would the United States have built any more vigorously in a world without naval limitation? These questions admit of no easy or precise answers. Any attempt to determine whether the treaties caused a certain result raises immense methodological difficulties and dangers. In the first place, coincidence does not make causation. Ascribing too much to naval arms limitation runs the risk of falling into the fallacy of pars par toto: taking the part for

Confounded Expectations the whole. Surely the naval arms limitation process interacted with and reflected an array of forces, events, and circumstances largely accounting for the slow pace of American naval building: isolationism, popular views about the dynamics and consequences of the arms race, the demand for economy, the normal dynamics of democratic politics in peacetime. Despite these caveats, scholars must attempt to address the issue of causation when it comes to the naval treaties, or to any other arms control endeavor for that matter. Otherwise, arms control becomes the antithesis of policy: a debate over articles of faith bereft of any sound basis for making informed judgments about arms merits or liabilities. T h e historical controversy surrounding the naval treaties offers a case in point. Like most historical controversies, opinion has tended to move in cycles. T h e first generation of naval historians placed the blame for America's interwar naval decline and unpreparedness for the Pacific War squarely on naval arms control. From the early 1940s through the early 1960s, generally, this viewpoint represented the orthodox position. 51 Thinking on the naval treaties changed dramatically, however, during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Several important studies concluded that naval critics of the treaties had confused cause for effect. 52 Others argued that the treaties actually stimulated naval building and development. 53 Both the orthodox and revisionist views of the naval treaties contain large elements of truth. Both miss their share of important points, too. Surely the Navy's interwar decline and unpreparedness at the outset of the Pacific War owe more to other forces operating in American politics than to the naval treaties. Mainly, it was not naval limitation that encouraged the United States to disarm. It was Americans' belief that there would be no war in the future, barring an arms race, that encouraged them to undertake naval limitation. In some instances, the naval treaties did stimulate innovation and certain types of naval building. Yet defenders of the naval treaties also have made a serious mistake by downplaying or ignoring its adverse affects, directly and indirectly, on strategy, doctrine, deployment, and budgetary decisions. If naval critics have exaggerated the effects of naval arms limitation, defenders of the treaties have failed to recognize that, overall, the process encouraged antinaval sentiment in the United States and placed severe limits on how far innovation in naval doctrine and technology could go. Let us examine first the impact of the naval treaties on American warship design and naval doctrine. If their limits on battleships and

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Confounded Expectations fortifications stimulated interest in the aircraft carrier as a partial substitute, then the treaties operated as a real and effective constraint the possibilities of innovation. 5 4 T o repeat: the Washington Conference set the American Navy's aggregate carrier tonnage at 135,000 tons and the maximum displacement for each carrier at 27,000 tons, with the option of converting two battlecruisers into carriers up to 33,000 tons each. T h e London Treaty of 1936 would reduce maximum displacement for all newly built carriers to 23,000 tons. After the converted battlecruisers entered the late 1920s as the Lexington and the Saratoga, the United States had only 69,000 tons left for any additional carriers. How should it distribute this existing tonnage? Should the Navy build fewer large carriers or sacrifice size for numbers? How should designers hade ofF survivability, cruising radius, capacity for carrying aircraft, and speed? Were fewer large units individually more survivable than smaller carriers nevertheless more vulnerable as a fleet than a fleet composed of greater numbers of such smaller carriers? How could designers anticipate the pace and scope of development in military aviation? W h a t types of carriers could best accommodate large numbers of these bigger and faster aircraft? T h e treaty limits on total carrier tonnage and maximum unit displacement vastly complicated such calculations. T h e American Navy needed as many carriers as possible to meet the operational requirements of W a r Plan Orange. Yet conducting a transoceanic advance required that American carriers have great range and durability. T o match the combination of Japanese carrier-based and land-based aircraft that the American fleet would encounter under the transoceanic scenario of Orange, American carriers would have to carry as many high performance aircraft as possible. T h e carriers also would need to be fast enough to elude enemy cruisers. Big carriers could combine all these characteristics better than small carriers. Also, big carriers would impose less constraints on future developments in carrier aircraft than smaller ones. 5 5 In the 1920s, naval designers concluded that 27,000 tons represented the optimal tonnage displacement within the constraints of the Washington Treaty. 5 6 T h e United States had the option of building 27,000-ton carriers, but could not build enough of them given treaty limits. T h e General Board settled, instead, on standard designs for carriers that would allow the Navy to build multiple carriers of the same design within the Washington Treaty ceiling of total carrier tonnage. Accordingly, this meant either three 23,000-ton carriers, four 17,250-ton carriers, or five 13,800-ton carriers 57 T h r o u g h o u t the 1920s, naval planners debated how to strike

Confounded Expectations the trade-off that the treaty imposed—fewer large carriers or a greater number of smaller ones; the consensus was that large carriers were superior to smaller ones. 5 8 Having, however, little in the way of operational experience with carriers, naval planners could only guess roughly as to the margin of supriority large carriers enjoyed over smaller ones. Nor could they anticipate the pace of development in carrier aviation, which gave the large carriers an added advantage. Initially, the American Navy guessed that numbers counted more than the capabilities of individual units. O n 5 November 1927, the Board recommended that Congress construct five 13,800-ton carriers, with relatively slow speeds (29.4 knots), no protection, and only 5-inch guns for armaments. T h e Navy ended up building just one: the Ranger.59 Subsequent fleet exercises would expose glaring shortcomings in the design: too slow, unreliable in rough weather, not enough gunpower, not enough protection. 60 T h e naval treaties continued to influence and constrain carrier design until the 1940s. Disillusioned with the smaller carrier, the General Board determined to build up to treaty limits with larger 20,000-ton carriers: the Yorktown and the Enterprise, both commissioned in 1938. Although the Navy would have preferred carriers of even larger displacement and the 20,000-ton ceiling for their displacement forced some undesirable tradeoffs in design, the Yorktown and the Enterprise performed with distinction during the Pacific War. 6 1 When the Navy decommissioned the tender carrier Langley in the early 1930s, that left approximately 15,000 tons for additional carrier tonnage. Thus, the Navy designed a small carrier, the Wasp, displacing 14,700 tons, but did not finish building it until 1940. T h e Wasp matched the speed, armaments, and aircraft capacity of big carriers. As its "brief" and "illustrious" career demonstrated, however, designers could not provide a carrier of this size with a fully developed system of underwater protection. 62 Even after Congress authorized a 20 percent increase in naval strength above treaty limits on 17 May 1938, the Navy built its next carrier, the Hornet, with a design similar to the Yorktown and with a 20,000-ton displacement. Why? Congress determined that building more carriers was more important than waiting for a new and improved post-treaty design. 6 ' Notably, the first post-treaty generation of carriers, the Essex class, displaced more than 27,000 tons. After 1938, the Navy also renovated many of the treaty-built carriers, with the effect of adding considerably to their tonnage. 64

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C o n f o u n d e d Expectations Nor were undesirable trade-offs in design the only problems the treaties posed for carrier development. T h e limitations on overall carrier tonnage and on the size of individual units ensured that the battleship would remain the mainstay of the fleet until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor devastated the American battlefleet: the naval treaties simply permitted the United States too few of them to displace the battleship. 65 Collectively, the limits on the number and size of carriers, low budgets, and the inherent conservatism of the Navy interacted to create what Thomas Hone has described as a "vicious circle" impeding carrier development. T o resolve the many and significant technical uncertainties surrounding naval aviation, to convince battleship admirals that the carrier had become the dominant type of ship, it was necessary to experiment with as many types of carrier designs and military aircraft as possible. Yet low appropriations and treaty limits "severely restricted" the number of carriers available and the alternatives for design. In an atmosphere of budgetary scarcity, the American Navy refused to squander precious resources designing carriers with the optimum mix of characteristics, but forbidden by the treaties. 66 All this worked against the Navy grasping the full potentialities of military aviation and acting on it. Although American naval planners probably would have favored the battleship over the carrier in any event, the treaties served to reinforce and give plausibility to their conservative instincts. Similarly, the Washington Naval Treaty's restrictions on cruiser displacement and armaments (10,000 tons, 8-inch guns) constrained American cruiser development. As Norman Friedman has observed, fear of exceeding the 10,000-ton limit "led to excessive weight savings in the first two classes of U.S. heavy cruisers." 6 7 Thus, American 10,000-ton cruisers sacrificed speed, armor, and protection for the range and endurance necessary to operate in the Western Pacific relative to their Japanese counterparts. Nor were the first generation of such cruisers build under treaty restrictions balanced designs. Although their 8-inch guns could inflict considerable punishment, such cruisers "eggshell armor" made them especially vulnerable, even to the gunfire of m u c h less powerful ships. T h e Navy did better in designing later generations of treaty cruisers. Still, the Japanese built cruisers with superior arms and armor, partly by cheating. 6 8 T h e naval treaties affected the performance and design of battleships, too. T h e holiday on capital ship construction left the American navy with

Confounded Expectations little choice but to maintain and modernize an existing fleet of capital ships too slow to keep up with the fast-carriers and more vulnerable to attack than the larger, faster, better protected warships scrapped under the Washington Treaty. T h e Navy also found the 35,000-ton limit a tight design even for a satifactory battleship, with the undesirable trade-offs in armor and speed. W h e n naval arms limitation collapsed irrevocably in the late 1930s, the Navy added considerable weight to the battleships of the North Carolina and South Dakota class designed initially within treaty limits. When the United States, Great Britain, and France invoked the escalator clause of the London Naval Treaty of 1936 on 31 March 1938, the Board seized the opportunity to design the Iowa class battleships with the maximum displacement permissible under the Anglo-American-French accord (45,000 tons). T h e Navy had recognized long before that 45,000ton ships enabled designers to improve significantly on the treaty-designed 35,000-ton ships. 69 Even so, the Navy would have built the Iowa even bigger (over 50,000 tons) but for the protocol limiting the increase in displacement over treaty limits to 10,000 tons. 70 Similarly, the London Treaty's restrictions forced the Navy to build destroyers too small to carry out their dual mission of shielding the fleet and hunting enemy submarines. 71 All this weakened considerably the American Navy's ability to fight in the Western Pacific. As for the effect of the naval treaties on American budgetary decisions and deployment, beware the elusive quality of this subject and the tentativeness of any conclusions or hypotheses offered about it. To say that naval arms limitation operated as the sole or primary cause of the American Navy's decline would confuse cause for effect. Surely the naval treaties epitomized more than they caused the antinaval sentiment in the democracies. There is enough circumstantial evidence, though, to make a compelling if not conclusive case that the process of naval arms limitation did more than merely reflect the dominant mood. Those who hold the naval treaties blameless for the Navy's decline commit a logical fallacy of their own: that if the United States failed to build up even to treaty limits, then the treaties had no adverse effect on naval building. This type of reasoning neglects to consider whether the naval arms limitation itself contributed to that result. Or, to put it another way, did the naval treaties exert an indirect influence on the budgetary and deployment process? Was a vigorous naval program possible when citizens and their elected representatives assumed that further naval limitation loomed on the horizon?

Confounded Expectations Is it merely coincidence that the United States began its naval buildup only in the late 1930s when the danger of war increased and the process of naval arms limitation collapsed? O n e commentator has compared the relationship between arms control agreements and the general political situation to the relationship between a flywheel attached to a motor and the car itself. As he put it: "The flywheel is set in motion by the engine but once it has begun to move it prolongs the car's motion in any direction." 72 Perhaps this borrowed metaphor best describes the relationship between naval arms control as approached, 1921-1938, and the other forces operating in American politics that accounted for the slow pace of American naval building. Although the actions of Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt offer more compelling illustrations (See chapters 6 and 7), the metamorphosis of Calvin Coolidge's views on naval limitation illustrates the atmospheric affecte of naval limitation, too. So do Congressional debates during the 1920s about the relationship between naval building and further naval limitation. Throughout the 1920s, Congress refused to sanction any major increases in naval spending so long as the prospects for further arms limitation seemed promising. Virtually every major appropriations bill of the decade called for the President to convene another Washington Conference. 7 ' In the spirit of Charles Evans Hughes, most members of Congress and their constituents believed that unilateral restraint advanced, not harmed, the negotiations for a follow-up to the Washington Treaty. Accordingly, most dismissed as provocative the Navy's argument that the United States needed a major naval building program in order to negotiate from a position of strength. 74 President Coolidge began his term even more adamantly opposed to the Navy's viewpoint than his Congress or constituiente, while he placed great faith in the efficacy of arms limitation. 75 What accounted for the President's pre-Geneva hostility to naval building and his sanguine expectations about naval limitation? He worried that a major increase in naval building would threaten his domestic agenda, which he regarded as paramount: reducing government spending, cutting taxes, and running a budgetary surplus. 76 Like most of his contemporaries, he considered naval building as an obstacle, not an inducement, to further arms limitation. He accepted the regnant viewpoint that arms themselves, not politics, caused arms races and wars. 77 Also, he believed initially that the United States could safely practice arms limitation by example. For "a country so powerful in numbers and wealth, so fortunate in location as our own can

Confounded Expectations and should set an example of moderation in armaments and should induce others to pursue a similar program." 7 8 His actions before the Geneva Conference of 1927 matched these convictions. In December 1924, he failed in his effort to delay Congress' passage of naval bill authorizing the construction of eight cruisers, because it might stimulate "competitive building. " 7 9 Again, in the winter of 19261927, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to stop Congress from appropriating money to begin the last of the three cruisers authorized under the 1924 Act, because the laying of keels "violated the spirit" and jeopardized the favorable outcome of the forthcoming General Naval Conference of 1927.80 Yet the President shifted his position dramatically just a year later when he pushed for the largest increase in naval building since the program of 1916: H.R. 7359. T h e bill called for the construction of 71 ships at an estimated cost of 750 million dollars: twenty-five 10,000-ton cruisers, 5 aircraft carriers, 9 destroyers, and 32 submarines. What accounted for this dramatic change of heart? Surely, it had nothing to do with any changes in his views on economics or on the primacy of his domestic agenda; on the contrary, the President remained steadfast on these matters to the end of his Presidency. It had a great deal to do, however, with the outcome of the Geneva Conference of 1927. Coolidge resorted to naval building largely because the failure of the conference had shaken his faith in the efficacy of arms limitation to bring about further reduction. He admitted as much to Congress: "While the results of the conference were of a considerable value, they were mostly of a negative character. W e know now that no agreement can be reached which is inconsistent with a considerable building program on our part." 8 1 If the ensuing debate over H.R. 7359 illuminates the positive linkage between failure in arms limitation and an improved atmosphere for naval building, then it illuminates the converse: that during the 1920s most Congressmen and their constituents retained too much faith in the potentialities of naval limitation to sanction a major naval buildup. Thus, the 71-cruiser bill evoked widespread and fierce resistance from the start. T h e cost of the program appalled much of Congress, the press, and the public. 82 Although the Navy disclaimed any linkage between the failure of the Geneva Conference and the necessity for a naval building program, many Congressmen refused to believe them. 8 ' Moreover, most considered war with Great Britain too unthinkable to support a bill, which the Navy justified largely by reference to the Royal Navy. Critics of the bill warned that its passage would provoke a ruinous naval race and jeopardize the

Confounded Expectations prospects of further arms limitation. Instead, many a Congressman recommended convening another naval conference as an alternative to naval building. 84 As for public reaction to the 71-Cruiser Bill, Representative Thomas Butler, Pennsylvania Republican and Chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee, lamented publicly that in all his years in Congress he had never witnessed "such widespread hostility to any measure. " Protest came not only from "professional pacifists," but from "all classes . . . church people . . . businessmen." 85 The President and his supporters in Congress relented partially by withdrawing H.R. 7359 and introducing a new bill scaling back the Navy's original building program dramatically. H.R. 11526 authorized the construction of only 16 ships: fifteen 10,000-ton 8-inch gun cruisers, and just one aircraft carrier. Its cost of $274 million amounted to barely more than one third of the amount called for in H.R. 7359. Yet even H.R. 11526 touched off a lengthy and passionate debate. 86 Finally, on 17 March 1928, the House passed H.R. 11526 by a wide margin. T h e bill languished in the Senate, however, as criticism of a major building program mounted. 8 7 Congressional support for H.R. 11526 revived after Great Britain and France reached a compromise on naval armaments during the summer of 1928. Since the Washington Conference, British and French statesmen had clashed repeatedly over the method of limiting naval armaments. T h e British advocated limiting warships strictly by categories, while the French wanted to limit only the overall tonnage of navies so that each nation could build the number, size, and types of warships within such a limit that suited its strategic needs best. Under the Anglo-French compromise, France accepted not only Great Britain's method of limiting warships, but also its preference for limiting only those types of ships—large cruisers and submarines—that the American Navy thought it needed. T h e British agreed, in return, to exclude reserve forces in calculating the strength of land armies should any disarmament conference take up the subject. 88 The Anglo-French compromise angered President Coolidge, who complained that the British and the French had used the naval limitation talks solely to further their own interests at America's expense. Throughout the fall of 1928, the President intensified his campaign to win passage for H.R. 11526. Indeed, he devoted part of his Armistice Day Address to the cause of urging Americans to support the bill. 89 His speech had the intended effect. Thanks largely to the President's persistence, the Senate approved H.R. 11526 on 5 February 1929, although not before Senator

Confounded Expectations Borah succeeded in attaching this proviso: that "in the event of an international agreement, which the President is requested to encourage, for the further limitation of naval armament, to which the United States is signatory, the President is hereby authorized and empowered to suspend in whole or in part any naval construction authorized under this act." 9 0 Where the failure of the Geneva Conference transformed President Coolidge's views on naval building and made H.R. 11526 possible, the nation's passionate faith in the efficacy of naval limitation made the failure of the bill's more ambitious predecessor inevitable. What about the effects of the process of naval arms limitation on the building programs and policies of Great Britain and Japan? On the British side, it is more difficult to establish the linkage between cause and effect. True, designers considered the 35,000-ton limit on battleships and 10,000-ton limit for cruisers less than desirable. Post-treaty designs would exceed these limits. 91 T h e limits on aircraft carriers did foreclose even the opportunity of replacing the battleships as the mainstay of the fleet, although the Royal Navy showed no such inclination anyway. Perhaps the promise of further naval limitation also helped to erode whatever support a major building program had in the first place. 92 Yet the Royal Navy's decision to build smaller warships stemmed from more than naval treaties. Chiefly, it reflected a combination of budgetary scarcity coupled with strategic necessity. Limiting large warships seemed, to many, a promising way of preserving Great Britain's maritime supremacy at a time when both Parliament and the public lacked the will or the inclination to compete. 9 ' Later, the Royal Navy's need for number interacted with the limits the London Naval Treaty of 1930 imposed to force the Admiralty to build smaller cruisers than they would normally have wanted. 94 Post-treaty displacements and capabilities of many types of British warships would exceed the limits established under the Washington and London Treaties considerably. 95 Overall, though, the blame for Great Britain's poor designs falls largely outside the realm of the treaties. The vigor of Japan's post-1922 naval program attests that the process of naval limitation failed to dampen enthusiasm for naval building and innovation the way it did in the United States. As the price for their begrudging and belated acquiescence to the London Naval Treaty of 1930, the Imperial Navy would extract a pledge from a desparate civilian government to increase the pace and scope of Japan's naval program even further. T h e treaties did constrain design, however, and probably distorted Japan's building program. Trying to pack too much armor and firepower

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Confounded Expectations into too little displacement made many of Japan's treaty ships perilously unstable in rough water. Perhaps the Imperial Navy also would have built more carriers and battleships but fewer cruisers in a world without the treaties. 9 6 S o m e scholars and decisionmakers make another argument about the effects of the treaties on Japanese politics: that the abrogation of the AngloJapanese Alliance may have helped to drive Japan into a more aggressive policy and to weaken the position of the moderates within the Japanese Navy who favored continued cooperation with the United States. 9 7 I doubt whether such strong linkages exist as a matter of cause and effect. Japan's policy of Asiatic expansionism long preceded the abrogation of the AngloJapanese alliance. Nor did the alliance operate so effectively as a force of moderation anyway. Despite or perhaps under the cover of the alliance, Japan expanded relentlessly at China's expense during the First World War. Conversely, the years immediately proceeding its abrogation represented the high point of Meiji Japan's efforts to cooperate with the West. Japan's aggression during the 1930s also had its analog in the program the Japanese pursued during the decade before the Washington Conference. Similarly, some commentators have overstated the impact of the naval treaties on the struggle between the Fleet Faction and the Administrative Faction within the Japanese Navy. 98 From 1922 on, naval sentiment would become increasingly anti-American. Such sentiments had wide popularity within Kato Kanji's Fleet Faction and among the middleechelon naval officers who would play such a critical role in the decisions that brought about the Pacific war. 9 9 T h e abrogation of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance bears only a symptomatic relation to these ominous developments. Although the Imperial Navy came late by its Germanophilia, Japanese soldiers and statesmen had looked on the theory and practice of the German state as a source of inspiration since the Meiji Restoration. 1 0 0 Nor does the abrogation of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance account for the militant anti-Westemism that became prevalent within the Imperial Navy. Such sentiment sprang from an odd mixture of Mahanism, racialism, and an apocalyptic assessment of American intentions in Asia. T h e Japanese Navy's Fleet Faction intended for Japan to dominate China, with or without the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. 1 0 1

Confounded Expectations

III. POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE FAR EAST Yet the radicalization of the Japanese armed forces reveals that the Washington Naval Treaty rested on a precarious set of assumptions about politics in the Far East. In the first place, the Washington Naval Treaty depended on the continued ascendancy of the Japanese moderates committed to parliamentary rule and cooperation with Great Britain and the United States. Equally, it depended on the stable and evolutionary development of China into a modern nation. Although the Washington Treaties would collapse irrevocably only in the 1930s, the decade of the 1920s would end with the treaties political underpinning shaken. Outwardly, events of the early 1920s appeared to confirm Charles Evans Hughes' radiant optimism about how Japanese politics would evolve. Democratic forces reached their prewar height of legitimacy and influence. On 11 June 1924, the Premiership of Kato Takaaki began seven uninterrupted years of Party governments. In 1925, the government enacted a universal manhood suffrage act, while the prestige of the military and the authority of the oligarchs had reached their interwar low. 1 0 2 Although Congress antagonized the Japanese by foolishly passing the Immigration Act of 1924, which excluded Oriental immigrants, relations between the United States and Japan remained fairly good throughout the 1920s. 1 0 3 T h e moderation of Kejiro Shidehara, Japan's Foreign Minister under Minseito cabinets, would continue to dominate Japanese foreign policy for much of the decade. Shidehara diplomacy sought cooperation, not confrontation, with the West, economic penetration, not military conquest of China. 1 0 4 Unfortunately, this brief experiment with liberalism conveyed a false sense of optimism about the nature of Japanese politics. In the end, the Japanese constitution, the military's special place in it, chaos in China, Malthusian population growth, and a worldwide depression would combine to make inevitable the triumph of Japanese ultranationalists intent on dominating East Asia. Certain developments of the 1920s presaged that triumph. Ironically, the military reforms of 1924-1925 accelerated this ominous trend by introducing a new type of officer drawn primarily from the low-middle class, without their aristocratic predecessors' reverence for traditional authority or for the authority of their own commanders. 1 0 5

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Confounded Expectations Ominously, too, a militant variant of Bushido became highly popular within their ranks, then spread cancerously throughout society. 106 An offshoot of the State religion of Shinto, itself a derivative of Buddhism, Bushido became popularized as an extreme code of military honor mixed with ultranationalism and militarism. Secret societies opposed to democracy proliferated during the 1920s—some radical in the way of the early Brownshirts. Like Weimar Germany, political assassination became widespread. Like Weimar Germany, Japanese authorities not only treated assassins leniently; society also tolerated them. 1 0 7 Political parties continued to suffer from corruption, factionalism, and a lack of ideology. Institutionally, their position remained weak. The Army, the Navy, and the oligarchs still retained their privileged position under the Japanese Constitution. Japan continued to lack a truly free press. 108 T h e Peace Preservation Law of 1925 cancelled out the liberalizing effects of granting unilateral manhood suffrage by giving the police full powers to cope with radicals or other societies that challenged the Constitution, the existing form of government, or the private ownership of property. 109 Nor did the Japanese business community operate as a force for democratization and liberalization. Japanese businessmen assimilated nationalism in a way that helped to sustain their organic theory (of Japanese nationalist doctrines) and removed them further from democratic philosophy. 110 T h e situation in China also did not develop as optimistic American negotiators at Washington had forecast. After the Washington Conference, China plunged into a bloody civil war that would end only with the final victory of the Chinese Communists in 1949. No summary can convey the intensity of the conflict or the sense of utter disorder that engulfed China during the 1920s. T h e South fought the North. Warlords fought each other everywhere. T h e Kuomintang (National Peoples Party, or KMT) began the decade operating as a force for unity, but ended it engaged in a fratricidal civil war with the Chinese Communists. 1 1 1 Japan's armed forces watched China's descent into anarchy with ambivalent feelings. On one hand, the Nationalists' efforts to unify all of China threatened Japan's position in Northeast Asia, especially Manchuria, and, if successful, dimmed the hopes for further advances there; moreover, growing Soviet involvement in Chinese affairs—first, in shaping, organizing, and manipulating the KMT; then, once Chiang Kai-shek broke with the Communists, in ordering and backing the Chinese Communists' bid to take power by force—threatened to revive the dreaded Russian menace

Confounded Expectations on Japan's northern flank.112 O n the other hand, China's internal weakness offered the Japanese armed forces an irresistible opportunity to accomplish their goal of establishing a Pan-Asian empire. T h e naval settlement at Washington had denied the West even the option to intervene effectively on China's behalf. T h e military conquest of Manchuria appeared to solve in one stroke Japan's Malthusian dilemma that the onset of a world depression and the West's foolish trade and racial policies would soon aggravate. By the logic of militants within the armed forces, continental expansion could not only free Japan from her degrading dependence on the West; it might drive the Western powers out of East Asia altogether. 1 " Ultimately, Japan would take this gamble, in 1931 and again in 1941. Although parliamentary institutions muted the force of the military's program through the remainder of the 1920s, the last years of the decade would preview what would happen in the 1930s. Militarists labelled Shidehara's policy of international cooperation and peace in China a failure. Neither the United States nor Great Britain had cooperated, in their view, with Japan's efforts to effect stable and peaceful development on the continent. Nor had Shidehara's policy of cooperation prevented the Nationalists from menacing Japan's special position in Manchuria or Japanese treaty rights in China, both of which moderates and militarists alike envisaged as the irreducible minimum for Sino-Japanese cooperation."4 When General Tanaka Giichi, president of the Seiyukai, became Premier on 20 April 1927, Japan would get a foretaste of what type of China policy the militarists wanted. General Tanaka advocated a positive foreign policy toward China, which meant strengthening Japan's position in Manchuria and protecting Japan's interests in China, by force if necessary. In the spring of 1928, Japanese and Nationalist troops clashed a year later in a series of battles along the Kiaochow-Tsinan Railway, with Chiang suspending his northward advance to unite China as the upshot of the KMT's defeat. Simultaneously, General Tanaka's government sought unsuccessfully to persuade the powerful and independent warlord, Chang Tso-lin, to act as a Japanese surrogate. W h e n Chang refused, the Kwangtung Army took matters into its own hands without the knowledge or approval of the Cabinet. In June of 1928, the Kwangtung Army assassinated Chang in the hope that his son would prove more accommodating. When General Tanaka moved to punish those responsible, the armed forces blocked

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Confounded Expectations him. 1 1 5 Their defiance forced Tanaka to resign. T h e Minseito returned to power in 1929 with Hamaguchi Osachi as Premier and Shidehara as foreign minister. Domestically, the Hamaguchi cabinet would attempt to restore the primacy of parliamentary government over the military. 116 In foreign affairs, Hamaguchi would attempt a return to Shidehara diplomacy. This twilight of liberalism would last, however, only until 1931.

IV. V E R I F I C A T I O N AND C O M P L I A N C E What about verification of and compliance with the Washington Treaties? Again, experience confounded the optimistic hopes and expectations of the Americans. Neither good faith nor verification by unilateral means sufficed to ensure compliance with the Washington Treaties. Japan violated the naval treaties, seriously and systematically. T h e United States Navy broke the rules too. 1 1 7 On the American side, controversy arose over the Navy's program to increase the gun elevations of its battleships. T h e Navy considered this program important. T h e General Board had come out of the Washington Conference convinced that the Royal Navy still retained a superior battleline. One major reason was, in its view, because the Royal Navy had increased the gun elevation of its capital ships. British battleships could fire effectively at 30,000 yards; whereas the guns of American ships had maximum ranges of only 21,000 yards. 118 In December of 1922, therefore, the General Board recommended that the battleship modernization program include an authorization to increase the gun elevation on the fleet's thirteen oldest battleships. 119 Navy Secretary Denby promptly approved the request. Testifying before the House Naval Affairs Committee in January of 1923, he warned that Britain's program to raise the gun elevation of its battleships left the United States no choice but to do the same. 1 2 0 On 4 March 1923, Congress authorized $6.5 million to increase the elevations on the fleet's thirteen oldest capital ships. Did the Washington Naval Treaty permit such modernization? Chapter II, Part 3, Section 1 (d) of the naval treaty prohibited any reconstruction of retained aircraft carriers or capital ships, except for the purpose of providing protection against air or submarine attack. Did raising the gun elevation on battleships amount to a reconstruction? Great Britain argued yes. On 5 March 1923, Sir Aukland Geddes, the British ambassador to the United States, protested to Secretary of State Hughes that Congress

Confounded Expectations had based its action on false information. 121 "Categorically," he assured the Secretary, the Royal Navy had made no such modifications to their gun mountings on its battleships since the Washington Conference. In Geddes view, too, raising the gun elevations on battleships would violate the Washington Treaty's prohibition on reconstructing battleships. Secretary Hughes apologized publicly for the Navy's false statements about the British modernization program. 122 When, later in the year, Congress appropriated money for the program anyway, the British lodged a formal protest. Their memorandum to Washington labelled gun elevation as a violation not only of the letter, but the spirit, of the Washington Treaty. If, London warned, the United States went ahead with gun elevation, it would precipitate a wasteful and dangerous arms race nobody wanted. 1 2 ' This charge ran contrary to the convictions of the Americans. In October of 1923, months before London's formal protest, the General Board strongly defended the legality of increasing the gun elevation on American battleships. Their conclusion hinged on their interpretation of the term reconstruction. No increase in gun elevation would constitute a reconstruction in violation of the treaty, according to the General Board, so long as the general type of gun mounting remained unchanged. Secretary Denby agreed. 124 In March of 1924, he defended the necessity and the legality of increasing gun elevations strongly to President Coolidge. 1 2 5 T h e President tended to agree that the United States had the right to elevate the guns on its battleships. So did the lawyers of the State Department, Secretary Hughes, and, notably, Japan. 1 2 6 Still, the British continued to protest. By the fall of 1924, the administration and Congress had begun to waiver. Secretary Hughes continued to defend the legality of increasing gun elevations, but conceded that such a modernization would violate the spirit of the Washington Naval Treaty. 1 2 7 He sought to assure the British that Congress would not appropriate the funds to carry it out. T h e Secretary reiterated these sentiments in a memorandum responding to a Congressional inquiry on the subject. Although gun elevation did not, in his view, violate the treaty, it "would tend to evoke the competition which it had been the policy of this government to mitigate." Nor did he believe that the United States should spend more money on ships that a future naval treaty might scrap or the Navy might soon have to replace. 1 2 8 Some Congressmen joined in to oppose gun elevation for the same reason. 1 2 9 Fearing that the controversy might block further progress on naval limita-

Confounded Expectations tion, the President shifted his position and announced on 9 January 1925 that he now opposed increasing the gun elevations on American battleships." 0 T h e Senate froze appropriations for increasing gun elevations on 20 January 1925 pending negotiations with other treaty powers. That decision stood for two years, although the Navy protested bitterly. 151 When Navy Secretary Wilbur began to press again for gun elevation in the winter of 1927 and informed the British of the Navy's plans, he sought not only Great Britain's acquiescence, but its formal sanction of the legality of America's actions in the hope of deterring others from violating the spirit or the letter of the treaty." 2 The British dropped their protest."' Eventually, the Navy increased the gun elevations on all of its Π oldest capital ships. " 4 The conversion of the two battleships into carriers also raised some compliance problems for the Americans. T h e Lexington and the Saratoga each displaced 36,000 tons, 3,000 tons more than the Washington Treaty's limit on individual aircraft carrier displacement. Although no treaty power raised objection, the Coolidge administration debated the matter at great length. Whether the 36,000-ton carriers violated the treaty turned on the interpretation of reconstruction and conversion clauses of the Washington Naval Treaty. Under Chapter II, Part 3, Section 1 (d) of the treaty, the parties could add 3,000 tons to their existing capital ships in order to equip them with bulge or blister or antiaircraft protection. Did this allowance extend to converted carriers? Or did Article IX of the treaty specifically restrict the maximum on displacements for converted carriers to 33,000 tons? Was the excess tonnage of the Lexington and the Saratoga really for air and submarine defenses? T h e Navy argued for the legality of building the Lexington and the Saratoga with displacements in excess of 36,000 tons. T h e General Board warned, too, that the United States could not build them within the 33,000-ton limit, without radically sacrificing speed, power, or endura n c e . " 5 In their view (correct, as it turned out), even 36,000 tons would prove a tight design. The Navy's Bureau of Construction and Repair confirmed the Board's technical assessment." 6 Alternatively, the Board suggested, the United States could build the Lexington and the Saratoga with up to 36,000 tons displacement under Chapter II, Part 3, Section 1 (d) of the treaty. " 7 Admiral Pratt, an active participant at the Washington Conference, agreed, although his series of memoranda on the subject just as easily could have supported the opposite conclusion." 8 This failed to

Confounded Expectations satisfy President Coolidge, loathe to violate either the spirit or the letter of the Washington Treaty and worried about a hostile reaction from Congress. So Pratt sought further clarification. During the spring of 1925, he solicited the recollections of America's two leading participants in the conference's discussion on carriers: Charles Evans Hughes and Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. Neither one ventured to answer the question of whether the Navy could add 3,000 tons to the 33,000-ton carriers." 9 Actually, the General Board had a weaker case legally than even the silence of Hughes or Roosevelt implied. The records of the Washington Conference's negotiations on carrier conversion suggest compellingly if not conclusively that negotiators envisaged the 33,000-limit as the maximum tonnage allowed under any circumstances. Indeed, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. had to press Secretary Hughes to get even that exception to the treaty's upper limit on carrier displacement of 27,000 tons. Nor did American designers add the 3,000 tons to the Lexington for protection, which, debatably, the reconstruction clause of the treaty intended. Rather, the Navy justified the additional 3,000 tons displacement for each of the carriers ex post facto only when designing them within treaty limits proved impossible. 140 Eventually, the Navy proceeded to build the Lexington and the Saratoga, each with 36,000 tons displacement. Congress and the Executive Branch assented, while the other treaty powers raised no protest. Meanwhile, the Japanese broke the rules seriously, systematically, and often clandestinely. The Japanese Navy built heavy cruisers exceeding the Washington Treaty's 10,000-ton limit by more than 20 percent. During 1924-1925, the Imperial Navy laid down the keels of the Myoko, the Nachi, the Haguro, and the Nichira, each of which displaced more than 12,000 tons. In 1927, the Navy began building a new class of cruisers, among them the Takao and the Atago, which displaced nearly 13,000 tons each—nearly 30 percent more than the Washington Treaty allowed. The Japanese also exceeded the treaty's limits of aircraft carriers for both individual units and total tonnage. 141 The Kaga and the Akagi, the two battlecruisers the Japanese converted into aircraft carriers during the 1920s, displaced 33,693 tons and 34,364 tons, respectively. Mendaciously, the Japanese reported that these carriers displaced only 26,500 tons each. This saved the Imperial Navy 14,000 tons of its 81,000 allotment under the Washington Treaty. Collectively, Japanese carriers displaced 92,770 tons —nearly 12,000 tons in excess of treaty limits. 142 From 1931 on, Japan waged an imperial war against China that openly

Confounded Expectations flaunted the Nine Power Treaty. Japan probably also violated its treaty commitment not to build fortifications and naval bases on the Mandates. In this instance, however, the case against Japan remains d e b a t a b l e . m Thomas Wild has argued, for example, that Japan had largely complied with its treaty obligations at least until 1 9 3 9 . 1 4 4 Wild's analysis convinced such eminent historians as Christopher Thome that Japan never fortified the Mandates. 1 4 5 It also convinced Richard Dean Burns, who wrote one of the few essays systematically addressing the issue of verifying Japan's compliance with the nonfortification treaties. 1 4 6 Still, others continue to disagree. Although apparently unaware of Wild's work, Dorothy Borg seems convinced that Japan violated the nonfortification pledge. 1 4 7 So are Gerald Wheeler and Philip Crowl, the latter the author of the United States Army's official history on the campaign in the Marianas, whom Borg quotes approvingly. 148 Unfortunately, the Tokyo War Crimes Trial only adds to the uncertainty. Although American prosecutors accused Japan of violating the nonfortification pledges, Japanese witnesses denied it. T h e prosecutors dropped the matter for bigger things, without conceding the merit of the denials. 1 4 9 Because of the secrecy shrouding Japanese activities on the Mandates, scholars and decisionmakers will always lack sufficient information to know for certain whether, when, or to what extent the Japanese violated their treaty obligations. Granted, too, the hopeless ambiguity of the key terms of the Mandates Treaty between the United States and Japan, particularly the terms "naval base" and "fortifications," which various treaties unwisely left undefined. It is possible, however, to make some informed judgments about the plausibilities and probabilities. In my view at least, the evidence tends to support circumstantially the arguments of those who contend that Japan violated the treaties. Conversely, I regard Wild's and Burns' interpretation of Japan's activities on the Mandates as implausible. T o be sure. Wild argues compellingly that Japan did not fortify the Mandated Islands as extensively as some have supposed. Yet, unwittingly, his own analysis convicts Japan of violating its treaty obligations not to build naval bases on the islands. First, he concedes that the Japanese began constructing permanent bases in 1934, a year after withdrawing from the League of Nations, with the object of improving the air, harbor, communications, and fuel facilities on four Islands in the Marshalls: Saipan, the Palaus, Truk, and Ponape. Also, he concedes that Japan accelerated the pace of this program dramatically after 1939. Nor does he

Confounded Expectations explain away Japan's building program on the Mandates between 1934 and 1939 plausibly. If Japan had as good a case as Wild supposed, then why did not Japan open the islands to foreign observers? He says that "her refusal to do so apparently stemmed from a general policy of strict military security and a reluctance to expose her interpretations of the treaty to hostile criticism." 150 If military secrecy no doubt had something to do with it, then the fear of Western reaction just as easily supports the opposite conclusion: that the Japanese knew well they were violating the treaties. Neither Wild nor Burns appeared to know anything about how the Japanese clandestinely violated the terms of the naval treaties. Consequently, both evaluate Japan's conduct as an isolated incident rather than as just one possible example in a pattern of systematic violations. If this analysis of the Mandates controversy rests inevitably on inferences and probabilities, if reasonable people of honor and goodwill will continue to debate the matter, then the uncertainty surrounding Japan's activities on the Mandates highlights the shortcomings of American efforts to verify and ensure compliance with the treaties. So, even more forcibly, does Japan's record of compliance with both the political and naval provisions of the Washington Treaties. Ensuring compliance depends not only on detecting violations of any agreements that may be reached, but on responding promptly and effectively to such violations. As Fred Ikle perceptively put it: "We have learned . . . that an opponent may thwart our detection techniques by evasive techniques of his own. W e may also realize that he may thwart the consequences of detection—which we count on to deter violation—by military of political strategems." 151 Ikle's observations underscore the special problems democratic governments face in reacting effectively to a detected evasion. Normally, public officials will not risk taking vigorous corrective measures, unless the evidence establishing the violation is overwhelming and the violation is unequivocally serious. Otherwise, the political party in opposition and the nation's large and influential arms limitation lobby will either cast doubt on the data relating to the violation, or minimize its significance in relation to the benefits of the arms agreement and the risk of an unrestrained arms race. The fear of arousing such a domestic reaction may deter an administration from raising issues of treaty violations in the first place. Or public officials may decline to press vigorously for corrective action based on equivocal evidence if the violations involved an agreement their party negotiated or supported. Unfortunately, governments rarely obtain clear and convincing evidence of a violation, particularly

Confounded Expectations when closed societies cheat clandestinely and then dissemble for the consumption of public opinion in democracies. Even if democracies take belated corrective action, the violator may have secured a major military advantage in the meantime by his head start. 152 America's program for deterring evasions of the Washington Treaties failed on all counts. The United States failed to detect most of Japan's violations. Domestic politics inhibited effective response to those violations about which American public officials had full knowledge or at least some suspicions. Indeed, the inability to detect violations and the constraints inherent in American politics interacted with each other synergistically. The lack of solid evidence made public officials reluctant to risk provoking either a domestic or international controversy over the actualities and significance of treaty violations; pari passu, the importance Americans attached to naval arms limitation inclined decisionmakers to explain away ambiguous evidence or the significance of the violation, or to decouple the political from the naval agreements of the Washington treaties. Consequently, Japan escaped serious penalty for its evasions until the United States responded belatedly in the late 1930s. As for the failure to detect violations of the cruiser and carrier provisions of the treaties, one intelligence officer recounts in his memoirs, written shortly after the Second World War, that American naval attachés strongly suspected Japan of violating the Washington Treaties' tonnage restrictions even during the 1920s. 15 ' My research discovered no evidence that the Americans harbored any such particular suspicions. 154 True, American naval attachés complained periodically about the secrecy surrounding Japan's shipbuilding program and their lack of access to Japanese shipyards. 155 Judging from the archival record, however, this represents the extent of any American suspicions that the Japanese violated the tonnage limitations of the treaties. Nor did American detection techniques yield the type of evidence necessary to embolden decisionmakers to press the Japanese about their activities in the Mandates. To be sure, the Americans and the League of Nations Mandates Commission had their suspicions. The Navy began to suspect Japan of building naval bases on the Mandates by the early 1920s. Naval attachés became even more suspicious over the next decade. 156 Twice, in 1929, the Japanese refused the American Navy's request to visit closed ports in the Mandates. 157 Frustrated, the Navy asked the State Department to press Japan about opening up the closed ports of the Mandates for inspection. The State Department's Solicitor responded,

Confounded Expectations however, that Japan had the legal right to keep such ports closed. The State Department agreed to explore the issue with the Japanese informally, but advised against making a public complaint for fear of pushing Japan into a position of intransigence from which it could not retreat. Reluctantly, the Navy agreed. 158 By the 1930s, the League of Nations Mandates Commission also had become suspicious of Japan's activities on the Islands. In 1932 and again in 1934, the Commission urged the Japanese to dispel rumors about violations by opening up the closed ports of the Mandates to visits from foreign warships. The Japanese declined, although their representative assured the Commission that the rumors had no foundation. This explanation failed to satisfy the Commission, which remained suspicious of Japan's activities on the Mandates throughout the 1930s. Although the Commission had no authority to conduct an on-site inspection of the Mandates, the American press continued to report the controversy. 159 Meanwhile, the Roosevelt administrations' suspicions intensified, based on American intelligence reports. 160 Writing in 1933, Joseph Grew, America's Ambassador to Japan, confided in his diary that America had "abundant first-hand evidence that Japan had undertaken military preparations on the Mandates." 161 Even Congress momentarily raised the issue. In 1935, Secretary Hull successfully persuaded Senator Key Pittman, Nevada Democrat and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to quash a resolution calling for a congressional investigation of whether Japan had violated the Nonfortification Treaty. Although, privately, Hull suspected the Japanese of violating the treaty too, he urged that the United States leave any investigation to the League Mandates Commission. 1 6 2 During 1936-1937, the State Department would try again to induce the Japanese to open up the mandates. Again, Japan refused. Again, the State Department refused to press the point for fear of a public showdown. 163 Why did not the Americans detect Japanese evasions? A complex of circumstances account for this intelligence failure. One was naïveté on America's part and an inadequate system of inspection. Chapter 3 has already discussed the naive assumptions of American negotiators about verification and compliance. As statesmen saw it, good faith would suffice to ensure that the parties would abide by the treaties;164 as the Navy saw it, unilateral means of verification would suffice because battleships were easy to count and difficult to hide. American decisionmakers thought, too, that international inspection constituted an intolerable intrusion into

Confounded Expectations a nation's right of sovereignty. Ironically, the Navy also thought that the United States stood to lose more than it would gain by on-site inspection, lest the Japanese discover too much about American defenses in the Philippines. 165 T h e United States opposed the idea of on-site inspection, therefore, until Secretary of State Stimson came out for it at the Geneva Disarmament Conference of 1932-1933. 1 6 6 Although America's belated support for on-site inspection symbolized an increasing distrust of Japan, the Roosevelt administration refused to press the point. Instead, the President would display an astonishing naiveté about the sufficiencies of unilateral means and good faith to ensure compliance. Unaware that Japan had underreported its aircraft carrier and cruiser tonnage, unconcerned about the possibility of cheating, he would attach great importance even during the late 1930s to renewing the agreement among the Washington Treaty powers merely to exchange information about their respective shipbuilding programs. 167 Similarly, despite mounting suspicions that Japan had begun to fortify the Mandates, the President would attempt to enlist his State Department during 1936-1937 in support of a scheme to neutralize and demilitarize the Pacific, without any regard to the adequacy of unilateral means and good faith to ensure compliance. 1 6 8 Whether or not on-site inspection would have sufficed to discover or deter Japanese violations remains an open question. Surely such a system would have represented a significant improvement over relying merely on the good faith of the parties, or the mutual exchange of unverifiable information about the particulars of naval shipbuilding programs the Washington Naval Treaty provided. Surely it would have forced Japan to clarify to the world sooner its activities in the Mandates, although distinguishing between commercial and military improvements would have remained difficult anyway. Possibly, on-site inspection of Japanese warships under construction may have disclosed or raised suspicions of treaty violations, although inspectors would ha%'e found it difficult to detect such significant but incremental violations of the tonnage limits on cruiscrs and carriers just by sight. If, however, the failure to provide for on-site inspection aggravated the shortcomings of America's detection techniques, then the failure to detect Japanese violations owed to more than that. It also owed largely to the asymmetries between open and closed societies that Japan's resort to stealth and dissimulation epitomized. Where the American Navy operated under the watchful and distrustful eye of Presidents and Congressmen

Confounded Expectations intent on complying not only with the letter but the spirit of the naval treaties; where the Americans broke the rules only after debating such actions publicly and justifying them legally by the text of the treaty; where, essentially, Japan could verify America's compliance by reading the American press or the Congressional Record, the Imperial Navy operated under no such constraints: Japan's more closed system allowed it to deceive the world about its record on compliance and the intensity of its naval buildup. Throughout the interwar years, the policy of deception that Japan's closed system facilitated clouded America's knowledge about Japanese naval affairs. Indeed, one writer concluded in his study of British naval intelligence between the wars, data about Japan's naval affair hardly existed at all. 169 Worse, the Americans tended to misconstrue what little information they received. Mirroring their logic to the Japanese, assuming that Japanese decisionmakers operated under domestic constraints similar to their American counterparts, American civilian leaders consistently underestimated Japan's will to initiate a sustained and comprehensive naval buildup. Even Japan's repudiation of the naval treaties, in December of 1934, failed at first to convince the Roosevelt administration that the Japanese would not think and act like the Americans. Even in 1936, Norman Davis, the Roosevelt administration's chief negotiator at the London Naval Conference of 1935-1936, predicted confidently that Japan would eschew a naval race "which it realizes it could never win" and thus come to its senses about the virtues of naval limitation. 170 Even in the spring of 1937, the President continued to express serious doubts about Japan's willingness and capability to abandon arms limitation and begin a naval race. 171 Then, too, bigots and experts who should have known better constantly denigrated Japan's capabilities by resort to dubious racial and cultural arguments. Such assessors refused even to contemplate that Japanese inferiors could match or surpass their nations' achievement in the area of military technology. Throughout the interwar years, then, Americans vastly underestimated the quality of Japan's naval program, which, in many respects, exceeded their own. 172 What accounts for America's reluctance to respond firmly when it suspected Japan of violating the treaty? The answer lies largely in the combination of the constraints domestic politics imposed, public officials' passionate faith in arms limitation, and their fear of provoking a showdown with Japan. 175 As the evidence for Japan's violations of the spirit and the letter of the treaties began slowly to come to light in the early 1930s,

Confounded Expectations President Roosevelt and his State Department worried that a strong reaction on their part would arouse intense domestic opposition among pacifists and Isolationists whose support the administration sought assiduously for the President's top priority: the domestic crisis. 174 At least before 1938, a strong reaction also would have run against the President's convictions about the dangers of the arms race, the imperative of arms limitation to assure the peace, and America's limited stakes in East Asia. Neither President Roosevelt nor the vast majority of Americans would countenance a major naval buildup or the risk of war that a strong reaction implied, without full and unequivocal evidence of serious Japanese violations. This is why the United States, Great Britain, and France continued to abide by the terms of the naval treaties until Japanese could no longer conceal and the democracies could no longer deny that the Imperial Navy had vastly exceeded these limits. 175 This is also why President Roosevelt declined to press Japan or inform Congress about the administration's suspicions about the Mandates. 176 Or as Dorothy Borg put it in her splendid chapter on the Mandates Controversy: the State Department deliberately refrained from probing into the question of military preparedness because it wished to avoid a controversy with the Japanese. 1 7 7 Borg's assessment of America's motivations in respect to the Mandates controversy applies with equal force to explain why the United States responded so passively to Japan's invasion of Manchuria, an action that demolished the Nine Power Treaty. Here, the United States possessed firm and unequivocal evidence of a serious Japanese violation. From 1922 on, moreover, American Secretaries of State had continued to argue strongly for the interdependence between the political and naval components of the Washington Treaties. Henry Stimson, President Hoover's Secretary of State, expressed himself with a particular vehemence on the subject. 1 7 8 For a long while, however, the United States did nothing more than protest. T h e Americans refused to recognize Japan's conquests in China, but had no intention of forcibly dislodging the Japanese from the Asian continent either. Meanwhile, President Hoover and later President Roosevelt would continue to honor the terms of the naval treaties and even attempt to negotiate a new one. Nor would the United States respond to Japan's repudiation of the Nine Power Treaty even by building the Navy up to treaty limits. On the contrary, the buildup would have to wait until the late 1930s when the weight of events finally shattered Americans'

Confounded Expectations belief in the virtues of naval limitation. Again, the passivity America maintained through most of the 1930s in the face of Japan's blatant violation of the Nine Power Treaty owed chiefly to three things: the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations' decision to give their domestic agendas top priority, their desire to avert a showdown with Japan, and their commitment to proceed with naval limitation regardless of the international climate. In their view, America's stakes in China were simply too small, America's naval power too weak, the risks of provoking Japan and their domestic opponents too great, to justify responding firmly to Japanese violations. 179 Whatever the merits of Hoover's and Roosevelt's passivity as a matter of policy, it symbolized the failure of America's scheme for deterring Japanese violations of the Washington and London Naval Treaties. Great Britain's schemes for deterring violations suffered from the same shortcomings as that of the Americans. The British also lacked adequate intelligence about Japanese naval affairs. One intelligence officer summed up the lamentable state of affairs this way: "Japan, behind an unpenetrable wall of security, has build up a fighting machine about whose composition and intention we know very little. Both we and the Americans erred and there is hardly anybody who is entitled to say, I told you so." 1 8 0 Like the American Navy, 181 it underestimated Japan's capabilities because its intelligence officers assumed that the racially and culturally inferior Japanese could not match the West's capacity for technological innovation or for producing sailors who knew how to think and fight.182 Similarly, the British assumed naively that good faith and unilateral means would suffice to ensure compliance with the treaties. Nothing epitomized the naïveté characterizing Great Britain's thinking about verification and compliance between the wars so much as the Anglo-German Naval agreement of 1935. Astonishingly, the Baldwin Government assumed that the Nazis would abide by this agreement merely on good faith without any system of inspection. Of course the Nazis cheated systematically. The Bismark exceeded the agreements limit on the size of battleships by nearly 7,000 tons. Some German destroyers exceeded treaty limits by nearly one third. Undaunted, Prime Ministers Baldwin and Chamberlain invested great hopes in reaching an agreement with the Nazis to limit military aircraft—again with scant regard to the possibility that the Nazis might cheat. 1 8 5 If the Baldwin Government could trust Hitler to honor an arms agreement, if the British failed to react strongly when the Nazis dismantled the Treaty of Versailles, if British civilian

Confounded Expectations leaders or their public refused to stand by France in the face of these violations, then it should become clear why the British responded so passively when Japan violated the Nine Power Treaty. Preoccupied with the problems of Europe, blindly optimistic about the potentialities of arms limitation with and appeasement of dictators, fearful of provoking a showdown, domestically or internationally, Great Britain's policy of inaction closely paralleled that of the United States. The British also would decline to take strong corrective action until the late 1930s.184 V. T H E G E N E V A N A V A L C O N F E R E N C E O F 1927 Later chapters will analyze, in great detail, why and how naval arms limitation broke down during the 1930s. Let us return now to the 1920s with some observations about why the Geneva Naval Conference of 1927 failed and the consequences of the failure. When the meetings of the League of Nations Preparatory Commission on Disarmament in which the United States participated became hopelessly bogged down in the problems of land disarmament and French security, President Coolidge decided to call an independent naval conference among the parties to the Washington Naval Treaty to avert a naval race that, in his opinion, would not only entail wastful expenditure, but menace the peace. Indeed, he envisaged the Geneva Naval Conference as a logical extension of the Washington. 185 France and Italy refused, however, to send delegations to the Conference. In their official replies to the President's invitation, both countries stressed that a separate naval conference risked compromising the League of Nation's negotiations on disarmament and the principle of the interdependence of armaments underpinning the League's negotiations. The British and the Japanese accepted the President's invitation. 186 The Geneva Naval Conference began on 20 June 1927 amid great hopes and expectations about the chances of reaching an agreement to extend the Washington Treaty system to auxiliary warships. Yet the conference adjourned less than two months later without agreement chiefly because the British and the Americans failed to reconcile their divergent position on cruisers. 187 Asymmetries in geography and mission formed the crux of the cruiser controversy. Alarmed by the increasing cost of warships but concerned about having enough cruisers to protect the Empire's worldwide commerce, the British faced a dilemma. The Admiralty esti-

Confounded Expectations mated that the Royal Navy needed at least 70 cruisers to discharge its global responsibilities. The Government also wanted strict limits on the numbers of heavy cruisers: to save money and to protect the fleet's large number of light cruisers for obsolescence which, in their view, the vastly superior fighting power of the heavy cruisers threatened. 1 8 8 T h e British came to the Geneva Conference, demanding fifteen 10,000-ton cruisers armed with 8-inch guns and fifty-five 6-inch gun cruisers with a maximum displacement of 7,500 tons. 189 The American Navy's strategic position contrasted sharply with that of Great Britain. T h e United States possessed neither the large merchant fleet nor the bases that justified Great Britain's needs for large numbers of small cruisers. Instead, the United States needed heavy cruisers with the capacity to operate as commerce raiders and to engage in a transoceanic advance across the Pacific with the battlefleet. T h e Coolidge administration also wanted arms reduction, not an arms buildup, which the British proposal would have forced on the United States if the Americans hoped to maintain parity in numbers with the Royal Navy. T h e General Board doubted, too, whether either Congress or the Executive Branch would countenance so extensive a buildup. The Americans thus came to Geneva asking for almost the converse of what the British wanted: the low levels of cruiser tonnage—400,000 at a maximum with 250,000 preferred—but large numbers of heavy cruisers—twenty-five 10,000-ton cruisers armed with 8-inch guns—within those limits. 190 Neither the British nor the Americans compromised. T h e British refused to accept such low levels of cruiser tonnage, which imperiled the Royal Navy's minimum requirements to secure the Empire's strategic trade routes. Nor would the British agree to allow the Americans' larger numbers of heavy cruisers the American Navy thought it needed in the Pacific. T h e Americans proved no more sympathetic to Great Britain's strategic situation. Following the advice of their naval advisors, American delegates rejected the idea of allowing the Royal Navy larger numbers of light cruisers than their American counterparts. With the talks deadlocked, Hugh Gibson, America's chief delegate and conference chairman, adjourned on 4 August 1927. 191 Whether or not a resolution of the cruiser controversy would have cleared the way for an agreement, no one really knows. T h e British and the Americans also divided on several other issues of importance. Hoping to save money, the Royal Navy wanted to extend the life of capital ships

Confounded Expectations beyond the 20 years agreed to at Washington and to reduce the size and armaments of capital ships and carriers, while the American Navy favored retaining the Washington Treaty's qualitative limits and the rules on replacement, on the grounds that operations in the Pacific would require a fleet with the maximum range, speed, endurance, and firepower.192 T h e cruiser controversy also masked a potential clash with the Japanese, who came to the Geneva Conference dissatisfied with the idea of a 6:10 ratio in auxiliary vessels.193 Although an Anglo-American compromise on cruisers may not have sufficed to bring about an agreement, it represented a necessary condition for one. Why did such a compromise have to await the London Conference of 1930? Some commentators have answered that it was because naval men rather than diplomats dominated the proceedings; 194 others stress that the United States lacked the bargaining power it had at the Washington Conference to bring about an agreement. 195 Both explanations have considerable merit. The American delegation lacked a civilian with the stature or influence of Charles Evans Hughes. Admiral Hilary Jones and other naval men on the American delegation had an impact on the American plan and the negotiations that their predecessors at the Washington Conference conspicuously lacked. T h e same applies to the British delegations, in which naval men largely dominated. Note, however, why naval men enjoyed such influence. T h e answer lies not in the strategic views of British and American civilian leaders or in the influence their respective navies wielded in politics; on the contrary, British and American statesmen of the 1920s recoiled from and repudiated the world view of their naval establishments. So, too, did their constituents. The answer lies, rather, in the way in which statesmen envisaged the problem of naval limitation. The British and the Americans simply did not take the political dimensions or difficulties of naval limitation seriously. Geneva seemed so logical an extension of the Washington Conference that they assumed it was merely a technical endeavor, and an easy one at that. T h e British and the Americans thus entrusted the negotiations chiefly to their navies. 196 Decisionmakers would learn their lesson by the London Naval Conference of 1930. It would take until the late 1930s, however, before the Americans and the British learned their lesson about the importance of having a vigorous building program in being for bargaining power. Whether or not the British and the Japanese assessed American resolve, circa 1921, correctly, their fear of the 1916 building program gave Hughes' Stop Now Plan

Confounded Expectations plausibility. 197 T h e British and the Japanese did not have the same incentive to agree with the Coolidge administration's recommendations for limiting auxiliaries at low levels, because the United States came into the Geneva Conference having only a minimal naval building program. Sadly, the democracies learned this lesson too late.

111

ν THE LONDON NAVAL CONFERENCE OF 1930

I. HOOVER A N D STIMSON The collapse of the Geneva Naval Conference halted the movement for naval limitation on both sides of the Adantic only momentarily. The Senate ratified the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced war as an instrument of national policy, just before the Congress passed H. R. 11526. Meanwhile, the United States continued to participate in the discussions of the League Preparatory Commission on Disarmament. In November 1928, the American people overwhelmingly elected a President who not only took the Kellogg-Briand Pact seriously, but also considered naval limitation a national imperative. The British would reciprocate, just months later, by returning Ramsay MacDonald as Prime Minister. His passionate faith in the virtues of the Kellogg-Briand Pact and arms limitation would match President Hoover's own. By the middle of 1929, then, the chances of further Anglo-American naval limitation seemed good if not certain. It is against this backdrop that the United States and Great Britain resumed talks aimed at bringing about another naval conference. American civilian leaders would enter the London Naval Conference of 1930 harboring hopes and expectations nearly identical to those of their predecessors at the Washington Naval Conference. This striking continuity in views would extend to the regnant assumptions about naval doctrine and the nature of the arms race. The differences between the Washington and London Naval Conferences lie chiefly in answer to the question of who made the decisions on the American side, not why. Whereas Presi-

The London Naval Conference of 1930 dent Harding deferred largely to Secretary of State Hughes' vision of the desirable and the possible for an arms agreement, President Hoover played an active role in defining the agenda of and expectations for the London Naval Conference of 1930. Although Hoover came to the Presidency far better qualified in the realm of foreign affairs than Harding or Coolidge, his views on the subject differed from those of his predecessors only in the intensity with which he held them. Hoover's experience in war-ravaged Europe and his Quaker faith stirred in him "a deep passion for peace" and a strong distrust for all things military. 1 Hoover was, to be sure, no pacifist. Repeatedly, he affirmed the need for the United States to maintain a military establishment adequate to repel any foreign invasion of the Western hemisphere. 2 Nor did he discount the possibility of war entirely, even at the high point of his faith in the efficacy of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Essentially, though, President Hoover remained an optimist and an idealist. He determined to make the Kellogg-Briand Pact the vital premise of American diplomacy.' His ambition in foreign policy "was to lead the United States in full cooperation with world moral forces to preserve the peace." 4 Like so many of his contemporaries, Hoover not only discounted the importance of power in international politics; he abhorred it. He subscribed wholly to the popular and mechanistic views of the causes of the arms race and its consequences. 5 If, as Hoover saw it, the building of arms "breeds suspicion, fear, counterarmament . . . hate" and war, 6 then arms limitation offered "the only effective way" to preserve the peace. He sought not only a limitation of armaments, but an actual reduction. 7 Hoover did not advocate eliminating armaments entirely, but only "offensive" and "aggressive" armaments "which in themselves lead to constant instability in the world and ultimately to the dangers of war." 8 Eschewing, however, the Mahanian outlook of his admirals and their offensively oriented, transoceanic strategy for carrying it out, Hoover had a very restrictive view of the concept: adequate self-defense. He believed that the United States needed just enough force to defend the Western hemisphere, but no more. Indeed, he believed ardently that the United States must keep out of any future war in Europe or Asia. All this does not mean to imply that Hoover's outlook on foreign affairs was totally isolationist. It was not. Having supported the League of Nations with reservations in defiance of the Irreconcilables within his party, Hoover considered the active involvement of the United States in world affairs

The London Naval Conference of 19Î0 salutary to the cause of peace. 9 Hoover's isolationism was not the isolationism of ends, but of means; that is to say, he would rule out the use of force beyond the Western hemisphere and oppose any commitments that seemed to risk foreign conflicts in Europe or East Asia. 1 0 Arms limitation meshed nicely with Hoover's vision of the desirable and the possible in foreign affairs. He not only foresaw no danger arising from the gap between force and diplomacy in the Far East, but considered such a gap an asset. It promoted arms limitation and, hence, the cause of peace, by ensuring Japan's "adequate self-defense"; whereas building more ships would only beget "hate, counterarmaments," and, possibly war. 11 Moreover, "preparedness must not exceed the barest necessity for defense or it becomes a threat of aggression against others and thus a cause of animosity in the world. 12 Collectively, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the moral force of public opinion, and the good-faith engendered by a naval agreement would more than suffice, in his view, to ensure the Open Door in China.n What about Hoover's views on the politics of the Far East? What did he mean by the Open Door? Having lived extensively in China while working as an engineer, he had more doubts about China's potentiality for Westernization than either Secretary Hughes, circa the Washington Conference, or the vast majority of Americans, although some within the State Department had their doubts too. 1 4 He also admired the Japanese and sympathized with their strategic and economic situation. He recognized, likewise, the legitimacy of and necessity for Japan's special relationship with China economically, which the chaos in China imperiled. He assumed, however, that Japan could accomplish its legitimate objectives in a way consistent with the Open Door and China's territorial integrity. 15 Three more aspects of Hoover's views about arms limitation deserve mention. First, domestic considerations account largely for his zealous pursuit of an agreement to limit naval weapons. Hoover not only feared war abroad as a consequence of the naval race, but budget deficits and militarism at home. Naval building clashed fundamentally with his cherished objectives of maintaining economy in government and minimizing the influence of the military in domestic affairs. 16 One must not exaggerate, however, the importance of economics in Hoover's views about naval limitation. Hoover valued naval limitation primarily for its contribution to peace, secondarily for its benefits economically. 17 T h e contrast between Hoover and President Coolidge illuminates the danger of ascribing too much of former's policies with respcct to arms

115

The London Naval Conference of 1930 limitation merely to economics. Although no President in this century, certainly not Herbert Hoover, took a more hostile view toward government spending, high taxes, and statism in the economy than Calvin Coolidge did, President Coolidge fought hard for a major increase in naval building when the failure of the Geneva Naval Conference confounded his expectations for naval limitation. Conversely, Hoover's faith in arms limitation and his antipathy toward naval building would prove far more resilient than President Coolidge's. 18 As Hoover saw it, unilateral restraint in naval building would help the cause of naval limitation, and, pari passu, the cause of peace; whereas building up even to the treaty limits would hurt both. 1 9 Second, Hoover remained throughout his career an ardent Anglophile. He discounted entirely the possibility of war between fellow democracies linked by common language, interests, and institutions. Rather, he envisaged Anglo-American naval talks as a way to improve relations between friends, not potential adversaries. 20 Third, the American people did less to shape Hoover's hopes and expectations for the potentialités of naval limitation than he did to shape theirs. Hoover not only deplored, but feared, the influence big-navy supporters might have on the national debate over arms limitation and national defense. Anticipating, correctly, their intense opposition to his views, the President would seize the initiative to discredit their cause. His exploitation of the so-called Shearer affair stands out as an example of the way in which Hoover sought aggressively to influence public opinion on the subject of naval limitation. In the summer of 1929, William Shearer—Anglophobe, lobbyist, and a fierce opponent of naval limitation —sued three shipping companies to recover payment for propaganda work done on their behalf at the Geneva Naval Conference of 1927. T h e trial's allegations about Shearer's and the shipbuilders' activities to thwart the Geneva Naval Conference evoked an outpouring of public indignation. Although the allegations infuriated the President, he also saw the Shearer affair as an opportunity to further the naval limitation talks with Great Britain then in progress. 21 Indeed, he launched a public campaign further to inflame public sentiment against not only Shearer's activities, but the big navy cause generally. Immediately, he called on the companies involved to denounce their efforts to thwart the Geneva Naval Conference and to promise not to do the same at the London Naval Conference. 2 2 In the meantime, he instructed his attorney general to investigate Shearer

The London Naval Conference of 1930 and, if possible, prosecute him to the fullest. Simultaneously, the Senate decided to conduct a series of widely-publicized hearings on the matter. In the end, these investigations yielded nothing of significance. Neither Shearer nor the shipping companies had any impact on the negotiations at Geneva. 2 ' Nevertheless, the publicity about Shearer served the President's intended effect of furthering the cause of naval limitation and weakening the domestic opponents of his defense policy. Hoover would even tell Sir Robert Vansittart during the course of the preliminaries to the London Naval Conference, according to Sir Robert's account, that he wished the British "could find a Shearer" too. 2 4 T h e President would attempt actively to manipulate public opinion for naval limitation and against further building throughout his term in office. During the 1930s, naval officers would complain, with some justification, that the President attempted to stifle their opportunity to dissent publicly from his controversial arms limitation and defense policies. 25 It is wrong, therefore, to attribute Hoover's actions in the realm of naval limitation to the pressure of public opinion. T h e climate of public opinion did strengthen the President's hand in his dealings with the Navy, but did not force it. Similarly, Henry Stimson, Hoover's Secretary of State, began his tenure enthusiastic about the potentialities of naval limitation. Historians have studied thoroughly the disagreements between Hoover and Stimson that Japan's invasion of Manchuria precipitated. Insofar as their differences touched on naval limitation, the secretary would take the concept of linkage between the political and military components of the treaty system more seriously than the President would. 2 6 Initially, though, their views on foreign policy seemed wholly compatible. 2 7 Stimson shared Hoover's Anglophilia, his optimism about the efficacy of the KelloggBriand Pact, his views on the causes and consequences of the arms race, his faith in the benign effects of arms limitation, and his intense desire to minimize the Navy's influence in the negotiations. 28 Like President Hoover and Charles Evans Hughes, the secretary approached naval limitation as an optimist, but as a gradualist who regarded arms control as an incremental process. 29 He entered office even more sanguine than President Hoover about the situation in the Far East.' 0 Stimson's approach to naval limitation during the preliminaries of and negotiations at the London Naval Conference would differ from Hoover's only as a matter of emphasis: where the President sought chiefly to end the naval race as an

The London Naval Conference of 1930 end in itself, the secretary placed primary emphasis on improving relations with Great Britain." Still, Hoover's and Stimson's objectives would complement one another's at the London Naval Conference. Both wanted an agreement that would freeze the military balance, end the naval race, and preserve the peace.

II.

PRELIMINARIES

How would Hoover and Stimson translate their ideas into actions? T h e President took office with Anglo-American naval talks stalled on the cruiser question. Neither side had figured a way to reconcile the concept of parity with Great Britain's need for large numbers of small cruisers and America's preference for small numbers of large ones. Hoover moved quickly to break the impasse. Even before his inauguration, he and Hugh Gibson, America's Ambassador to Belgium and chairman of America's delegation to the League's Preparatory Commission on Disarmament, had discussed the possibility of devising a formula "on which parity could be based." These discussions inspired the President to revive Charles Evans Hughes' idea of a "yardstick" to measure the comparative strength of different warships. Hoping to "inject new life" into the naval limitation talks, he determined to make the "yardstick" the basis of America's "bold and unexpected proposal," which he instructed Gibson to deliver in Geneva at the Sixth Session of the League Preparatory Commission on Disarmament. 3 2 Gibson delivered the President's yardstick proposal to the Commission on 22 April 1929. 35 T h e yardstick captured the public's imagination, at home and abroad. Civilian leaders hailed the idea as the breakthrough that would bring about a naval agreement and end the arms race. T h e British, particularly, reacted to the yardstick with great enthusiasm. Prime Minister Baldwin came out immediately in favor of a naval agreement based on that principle and on the principle of parity. 54 O n 3 May 1929, Sir Esme Howard, Britain's Ambassador to Washington, proposed formally to Stimson that the United States and Great Britain commence bilateral talks aimed at establishing the "broad lines of a naval agreement". 3 5 The secretary responded positively to the idea of resuming bilateral talks, although he and the President decided to defer them until after the outcome of Great Britain's general election at the end of May. Both Stimson and Howard agreed, however, that civilians, not admirals, should dominate the negotiations. 36

The London Naval Conference of 1930 The general election yielded an outcome that would greatly accelerate the drive for naval limitation. Laborite J. Ramsay MacDonald returned to Downing Street. MacDonald's enthusiasm for naval limitation exceeded even that of his Conservative predecessor, Stanley Baldwin. Nor, unlike some Conservatives, did he contest America's claim for full parity with Great Britain. His order of priorities, his convictions on the causes of war and the conditions of peace, his view on the dynamics and the malevolent consequences of the naval race, his belief in the necessity of AngloAmerican friendship, his faith in the efficacy of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, mirrored Hoover's own, not only in substance, but in the intensity with which he held them. 3 7 Indeed, the arms control community of any generation would find it difficult to imagine a more felicitous combination than President Hoover and Prime Minister MacDonald. It attests, however, to the immense difficulties of negotiating arms limitation treaties, even under the best of circumstances, that preliminary agreement between the United States and Great Britain did not come quickly or easily. If, to begin with, the United States and Great Britain hoped to use the yardstick as the basis for negotiations, then both sides would have to come up with one. Gibson's yardstick speech and the commentary that followed had conveyed the impression that the Americans had devised a precise formula for equating the fighting strength of different warships and calculating parity. Actually, no such yardstick existed when Dawes and MacDonald began their talks in June of 1928. The President and Gibson had proposed the yardstick without first soliciting the views of the navy on whether it was possible to devise such a measure.' 8 Now that the public had responded so enthusiastically to the yardstick and the British had pressed for clarification of the idea, Hoover decided to submit the question to the General Board. The Board responded negatively. It was "highly improbable," in its view, "that accurate determination of the fighting or combatant value of any unit can be made. " On the contrary, "any attempt to establish such a value" would depend "upon highly technical assumptions and complex computations upon which general agreement is impossible."' 9 Vexed, Hoover asked Admiral Hilary Jones to calculate the requirements for cruiser parity between Great Britain and the United States. 40 The Admiral responded even more negatively than the General Board. In his view, "the attainment of actual parity between the two countries" was complicated by so many factors as to render such attainment practically impossible by any agreement under present conditions. He argued, further, that

The London Naval Conference of 1930 because of Great Britain's preponderance in merchant tonnage and its worldwide aiTay of bases, parity with Great Britain in seapower would require the United States "having a great preponderance of combat ton»41 nage. Even Stimson had doubts about the wisdom or the necessity of devising a "scientific yardstick," although, to be sure, for drastically different reasons than the General Board's. What he wanted, from the outset, was merely a "civilian yardstick" that would allow like-minded statesmen to reach agreement. He had no illusions that the Navy could invest the yardstick with practical content for strategy and operations, as the President sought. Nor did he believe that naval experts would ever agree on such a measure. 4 2 A mathematical yardstick appealed, however, to President Hoover, always the engineer at heart. Finally, the General Board relented under the President's pressure. On 13 July 1929, the Board released its formula for a yardstick in a lengthy memorandum addressed to the Secretary of the Navy, although not without expressing once more their skepticism about the value of any such formula and its limits even as a rough comparative measure of naval strength. T h e Board expressed its yardstick for cruisers as an equation: E = D x A x G . E represented fighting efficiency, D displacement, A age, and G gun caliber. T h e Board's yardstick did not take direct account of such important characteristics as armor, speed, and number of guns, because such characteristics depended largely, in its view, on the variable displacement. T h e Board dropped the variable gun-caliber out of its yardstick for cruisers and destroyers (E = D x A) because the gun was not the primary weapon on these types of ships. 43 T h e Board pointed out, however, that its formula for a yardstick, or any formula for a yardstick, raised as many controversial questions as it answered. How would the Board determine with precision the property weight and value of each of the component variables in their equation? Would other navies reach the same conclusions? How could negotiators determine an objective measure to bridge the gap between rival assessments of value? T h e Board tried anyway. The Board began simply by expressing D as the standard displacement tonnage of warships. Then things became vastly more complicated and subjective. For age factor (A), the Board settled on the equation, A = 1 — (n — 2)/(n + 7)/K, where η was the age of the cruiser in years reckoned from the date of completion, Κ a numerical constant (.972); except that for the first and second year after completion, the value of A would equal unity. The formula also assumed

The London Naval Conference of 1930 that the life expectancy of a warship was 29 years. T h e Board determined two sets of values for G, gun caliber: Equitable Value (the Board's preferred value), and Acceptable Value (the value the Board would tolerate). 44 Accordingly, the Board calculated that the United States would need at least twenty-three 10,000-ton, 8-inch gun cruisers to Great Britain's fifteen, although the Board conceded the arbitrariness of and anticipated the controversy about any such assessment. 45 Meanwhile, MacDonald, Ambassador Dawes, and Secretary Stimson spent the summer trying to reach an agreement on cruisers and on summit preliminary to a naval conference. 4 6 In late July 1929, MacDonald suspended part of Great Britain's cruiser program as a gesture of goodwill. 47 President Hoover reciprocated immediately by suspending construction on the three cruisers scheduled to have their keels laid in the fall. 48 Yet the British and the Americans continued to disagree on two separate but related issues of critical importance for the negotiations. In the first place, the negotiators failed to agree on a mutually acceptable yardstick. MacDonald's emphasis on Great Britain's absolute need for cruisers also clashed with the Hoover administration's desire for an actual reduction in armaments. In July 1929, MacDonald presented the Americans with his government's conception of parity. MacDonald's plan gave Great Britain 60 cruisers (376,000 tons in all), ten less than the Royal Navy deemed necessary to meet the Empire's commitment: 15 large 8-inch gun cruisers totalling 146,500 tons, forty-one 6-inch gun cruisers totalling 90,000 tons, and four 7.5-inch gun Hawkins class cruisers, totalling 39,426 tons. But it gave the Americans only 38 ships totalling roughly 300,000 tons: eighteen 10,000-ton cruisers with 8-inch guns, ten 6-inch gun cruisers then in service, and 50,000 tons more in 6-inch cruisers, which the United States could build in the future. 4 9 Stimson flatly rejected the proposal. Whereas, he explained, the United States sought an agreement reducing cruiser tonnage for both sides to 250,000 tons by 1936, MacDonald's plan would require the United States to build more than 100,000 tons in additional tonnage. Also, it gave the United States too few heavy cruisers, according to the General Board's calculations, to compensate for Great Britain's overwhelming advantage in numbers and total tonnage. T h e Americans quarrelled, too, with MacDonald's classification of the Hawkins class cruisers in the 6-inch class. As Stimson saw it, Great Britain's superiority in such cruisers "more than compensated" for the American superiority in heavy cruisers under the MacDonald plan. 50

The London Naval Conference of 1930 T h e secretary opposed likewise any plan departing significantly from the principle of optical parity, that is, numerical equality. Whatever the views of naval experts, who "apparently assumed that a yardstick would permit such a liberal discount as to affect a wide disparity" in total tonnage between the two fleets, Stimson believed that nothing more than optical parity was desirable or possible. He warned MacDonald any agreement must look like parity to the man on the street, regardless of the operational meaning of such parity; otherwise, the public would fail to comprehend it and the Senate would reject it. 51 MacDonald countered that his plan ensured parity between the two countries, because, according to the estimates of the Admiralty, America's proposed advantage in 10,000-ton, 8-inch gun cruisers "were worth an infinity of smaller ones." He conceded that "granting the United States preponderance in heavy cruisers would perhaps be the most effective way of bridging the gap. " He feared, however, that the Dominions would not permit such a disparity, because the number of Japan's heavy cruisers would increase proportionately to the American number. 5 2 As the negotiations moved into the late summer and early fall, it became apparent that neither side could agree on a mathematical yardstick. Gradually, Hoover and Stimson began to abandon the idea of achieving actual reductions in cruisers as unrealistic in light of Great Britain's insistence on its absolute needs. As Anglo-American naval talks continued, controversy flared up again between the President and the General Board on the meaning and application of the yardstick. T h e Board proposed that the United States abandon the formula arrived at in July for calculating the yardstick because British superiority in bases and merchant marine made such a formula meaningless. T h e Board agreed, however, to Great Britain's August proposal to retain 339,000 tons, on these terms. T h e United States would get 315,000 tons of cruisers overall: twenty-one 8-inch gun cruisers to Great Britain's fifteen, ten Omaha class cruisers, armed with 6-inch guns, and the right to build eight more 6inch gun cruisers totalling 58,500 tons. Also the British would have to scrap their four Hawkins class cruisers. 5 ' T h e Board's recommendation to abandon the yardstick incensed the President. 54 In a meeting at the White House on 11 September 1929, the President demanded that the Board recalculate what the American Navy would need to reach parity using the 13 July 1929 mathematical yardstick and MacDonald's figure of 339,000 tons for the British cruiser fleet. Although its calculations put the American Navy's requirements at twenty-

The London Naval Conference of 1930 one 8-inch gun cruisers and fourteen 6-inch gun cruisers, the Board dissented emphatically from Hoover and Stimson's judgment that this would give the American Navy parity. Nor was Hoover wholly reconciled to the idea of a yardstick of MacDonald's proposals. Seeking to avoid building more warships, Hoover suggested to Stimson that Great Britain and the United States lower their cruiser tonnage to 300,000 and 276,000 tons, respectively. Why build more cruisers, he argued rhetorically, when future conferences would "sink a considerable portion of these fleets"? Why build anything as long as future conferences offered the hope of further reductions? 55 Although the debate over a formula waged on, enthusiasm for a yardstick began to wane dramatically by September of 1929. MacDonald and Stimson agreed to defer their search for a yardstick, lest the controversy between their naval experts jeopardize the chances for a naval conference. 5 6 Thereafter, the influence of American and Royal Navies on the negotiations would wane even further. Despite the failure of British and American negotiators to reach agreement on either a naval agreement or a yardstick, the spirit of compromise and goodwill displayed on both sides had narrowed if not eliminated the gap. Accordingly, the President determined that the time had come for MacDonald's proposed Anglo-American summit as a preliminary to a naval conference. On 11 September 1929, the President officially extended the Prime Minister an invitation to visit the United States. 57 A detailed account of MacDonald's American trip does not belong here. It suffices to say that the trip was a diplomatic triumph. O n 6 October 1929, he and Hoover began their deliberations at the President's camp, the Rapidan in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia. Although Hoover and MacDonald failed to reach agreement on the particulars, the Rapidan Conference "did indeed succeed brilliantly" in promoting friendship and a cooperative spirit between the British and the Americans. 58 Taking advantage of this highpoint of Anglo-American goodwill the British Government, on October 7, 1929, invited the United States, France, Italy, and Japan to attend a naval conference in London. Each government accepted its invitation without hesitation. 59 Meanwhile, the Hoover administration began its preparations for the London Conference scheduled for early January of 1930. Hoover and Stimson dealt first with the task of selecting a delegation for the conference. Acting on their convictions and a request from the British, the secretary and the President agreed to exclude naval officers from the

The London Naval Conference of 1930 official delegation and allow them to serve only in the capacity of advisors. In choosing a delegation, both had learned well from the mistakes of their predecessors, Wilson and Coolidge. T h e administration ensured bipartisan support for any treaty by selecting as delegates Senator David Reed, an Oregon Republican and member of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Joseph T. Robinson, an Arkansas Democrat and prominent member of the Naval Affairs Committee. T h e choice of Secretary Stimson to head the delegation ensured that the American delegation would not suffer from the lack of prestige that had contributed to the failure of the Geneva Naval Conference of 1927. T h e administration would succeed, too, in minimizing the influence of the General Board at the conference by choosing Admiral Pratt, then Chief of Naval Operations, to head the delegation's naval advisors. 60 Next, the administration began to devise a plan and an agenda for the Conference. Although Anglo-American naval talks had focused chiefly on the cruiser question, Hoover and MacDonald had agreed, during their Rapidan summit, to discuss limits on all categories of warships at the forthcoming London Conference. 6 1 In late October, Secretary Stimson conducted a series of meetings with individual members of the General Board on the concepts that ought to guide American negotiators at the London Conference. Their responses echoed the official position the Board had taken since the early 1920s. Collectively and individually, members of the General Board held strongly to their views that the big battleships remained the Navy's ultimate weapon. 62 Although official naval opinion remained dissatisfied with only a 10:6 ratio relative to Japan, the Washington Naval Treaty had locked the Americans into such a ratio for battleships and carriers until 1936. T h e Navy had become resigned, therefore, to extending the 10:6 ratio to auxiliary craft. Again, the American Navy insisted on full parity with Great Britain in all categories of naval craft. 6 ' In respect to the submarine, however, the naval opinion had changed completely. T h e United States would advocate the total abolition of such weapons at the London Naval Conference because of the high unit cost of submarines, the mistaken belief that the American public would forbid the resort to unrestricted U-boat warfare, and the mistaken belief that the Japanese stood more to gain than the Americans did by its retention. 64 Some dissented from the Board's premises about the relative value of warships and doctrine. Rear Admiral William Moffett, who would serve as an advisor at the London Naval Conference, continued to argue zeal-

The London Naval Conference of 1930 ously that the future of the Navy belonged to airpower and aircraft carriers. 65 So did Assistant Secretary of the Navy, David Ingersoll. 66 Periodically, President Hoover invoked the argument of obsolescence, too. During the Prime Minister's visit to America, Hoover told the Prime Minister that "the United States did not wish to construct any more battleships until 1936. " 6 7 "The days of the battleships were numbered owing to the development of aircraft, and he (President Hoover) saw no point in putting vast sums into engines of war that might afterward have to be scrapped as useless." 68 Actually, though, Hoover's proposal for extending the battleship holiday until 1936 sprang chiefly from his desire to save money and avert a naval race. If the United States intended to replace its 15 overage battleships by 1936 as the Washington Treaty permitted, it would add 50 million dollars to the naval appropriations annually; whereas deferring replacement would relieve American taxpayers of a burden the President considered enormous and senseless. 69 Genuine skeptics of the battleship's primacy thus remained few and at the margins of the debate. T h e American delegation would come to the London Naval Conference unanimously (save, of course, Admiral Moffett) operating from the General Board's premises about the comparative value of warships: "that the battleship is the primary measure of naval strength; and that the four other categories, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, bear a certain relationship to the strength of battleships." 70 Attempting, however, to reduce the American Navy's influence even further, Stimson determined that the Board would not prepare a detailed proposal prior to the conference. 7 1 T h e MacDonald Cabinet often ignored the recommendations of the Admiralty, too. T h e Cabinet determined, contrary to MacDonald's initial view and over the protests of the Admiralty, that a naval treaty should defer all battleship replacements until after a naval conference of 1935. Again, despite the Admiralty's protest that the Royal Navy needed 70 cruisers as an irreducible minimum, the Cabinet backed MacDonald's decision to settle for 50 cruisers. T h e Cabinet and the Admiralty did agree to pursue the same line on other matters that the Government had followed at the Geneva Conference. 7 2 Hoping to reduce the cost and importance of the largest and most expensive warships, the Cabinet recommended a reduction in the aggregate carrier tonnage and the size of individual units. Similarly, it recommended a reduction in the size and armaments of battleships.

The London Naval Conference of 1930 T h e British continued to support abolition of the submarine, although the Cabinet and the Admiralty recognized that such a proposal stood little chance of succeeding. If the conference failed to abolish the submarine, then the Cabinet recommended that the delegation press for an agreement reducing submarine tonnage to the lowest levels possible. T h e Cabinet also accepted parity with the United States in destroyers at the 150,000ton level Hoover proposed—its acceptance of such levels contingent on achieving significant reductions in aggregate submarine tonnage. T h e British also continued to insist on maintaining the 5:5:3 ratio among the United States, Great Britain, and Japan for all categories of warships except for the submarine: MacDonald and Hoover had agreed at Rapidan that Japan could have submarine parity as a concession for the anticipated difficulty on the cruiser issue. 7 ' Outwardly, in Japan, the political situation seemed to bode favorably for a naval agreement. The Hamaguchi Cabinet, formed on 2 July 1929, determined to reverse the policies of the Prime Minister's predecessor, General Tanaka, at home and abroad. In foreign affairs, the appointment of Shidehara as Foreign Minister signified the return to a conciliatory policy toward China and the Western Powers. Domestically, Prime Minister Hamaguchi would attempt to restore Japan's fiscal stability through a policy of fiscal retrenchment. He would attempt, likewise, to stand up to the military by cutting the armed forces and broadening the powers of the legislative branches of government. 74 Nevertheless, the Hamaguchi Cabinet's liberal interregnum could not avert, but only postpone, the Asian crisis of the 1930s that would demolish the naval treaty system. China remained in disarray. Chinese nationalism menaced Japan's special relationship with Manchuria that moderates and militants alike deemed essential to Japan's security. Simultaneously, the onset of a worldwide depression crippled Japan's foreign trade on which its economy largely depended. By 1929, there were signs of trouble in domestic politics, too. Although Party rule still appeared strong, the services, patriotic societies, mass opinion, and even some elements within the political parties themselves had already become alienated from the pro-Western institutions and orientation the Hamaguchi Cabinet represented. 75 T h e internal debate over the London Naval Treaty highlights how precarious the political position of liberal pro-Westem Japanese moderates had become. Indeed, the ratification of the London Treaty would stand as their last, and, in the end, Pyrrhic victory. Yet moderates and militarists

The London Naval Conference of 1930 alike would come to the London Naval Conference sharing many of the same assumptions about the objects and prerequisites of a naval settlement. Although naval and civilian moderates would clash fundamentally with Kato Kanji and his followers in the Fleet Faction on the probability of war with the United States and Japan's chances for winning one, both sides shared the consensus that any naval agreement should assure Japan's naval predominance in the Western Pacific. 76 Both also agreed on the need to establish a 70 percent ratio in overall auxiliary strength and an absolute minimum of 78,000 tons in submarines. Moreover, both attached critical importance to maintaining a 70 percent ratio in 10,000 8-inch gun cruisers. During the 1920s, the Japanese Navy had come to regard them as "semicapital ships" that could offset the 60 percent ratio in battleships and carriers (perhaps this explains why Japan cheated by building cruisers to displace more than 10,000 tons). Japanese naval planners anticipated that such ships could weaken the American cruiser and destroyer shield of the battlefleet significantly during the attrition phase of a Pacific war before it could reach the Western Pacific for the decisive encounter. In their estimates of'the relative capabilities, naval planners considered heavy cruisers vastly superior to the 6inch gun type. T h e Imperial Navy believed, therefore, that "their demand for a 70 percent ratio left absolutely no room for compromise." T h e Hamaguchi Cabinet went along with this assessment, although the civilian members of the Cabinet and Japan's chief delegate to the conference would settle for less (65 percent to 67 percent) of the American fleet in auxiliaries to reach an agreement. 77 Secretary Stimson discounted various warnings coming from his department in Tokyo on the importance the Japanese attached to increasing the ratio. 78 He also did not take seriously sporadic reports warning of the deteriorating situation in China or in Japanese politics. On the contrary, he and his department generally would enter the Conference optimistic about the future of American-Japanese-Chinese relations. Mirroring the logic, stability, and dynamics of American politics to his assessment of Japanese conditions, he assumed that Japan's deteriorating economy would force statesmen to compromise on the ratio question rather than risk an arms race neither the Japanese people nor the government wanted. 7 9 T h e Japanese and the Americans thus remained divided on the matter of ratio when the London Naval Conference began in January of 1930. Other problems resurfaced, too, during the preliminaries to the Conference. It soon became apparent that France would not join any naval

The London Naval Conference of 1930 agreement. The French government approached the conference with assumptions about an agenda for naval limitation wholly at odds with those of British and American civilian leaders. T h e French continued to envisage naval limitation chiefly in the context of their security problems in Europe. Since the end of the Great War, French authorities had insisted adamantly that security must precede disarmament, which meant political guarantees against German aggression on the continent. 8 0 French authorities had insisted, likewise, on the interrelationship among armaments, land and sea, which meant that they viewed any naval agreement as contingent on reaching a general disarmament agreement with acceptable political guarantees. Without such an agreement, France would insist on the right to build a navy that ensured its expansive conception of continental security. 81 France's demands did not stem from its assessments of British or American naval activities. T h e French did not fear them. What France did fear was the possibility of an Italian-German combination directed against it. Mussolini's triumph in Italy and emergence of the Nazis as a force in German politics intensified French fears. By 1929, French authorities had begun to worry about the naval dimensions of this potential threat. Germany planned to build several new warships with displacements (10,000 tons) and armaments (11-inch guns) to the limit of what the Treaty of Versailles allowed. These so-called pocket battleships appeared particularly menacing as commerce raiders, which France feared because of its position as a maritime power and its worldwide Empire. Having two widely separated coastlines and the vastness of France's global responsibilities meant, to French authorities, that parity with Italy would mean superiority for the latter in the Mediterranean, a region vital to France's security. Thus, France refused to concede Italy naval parity. 82 The Italians would settle for nothing less. Italy insisted on naval parity for reasons of prestige and geography. Italian authorities argued that the Washington Conference had established the principle of parity between France and Italy, which they proposed merely to extend to auxiliary craft. Equally, they emphasized that geography rendered Italy a veritable island, dependent for its very existence on foreign trade and seapower. 8 ' This is where the dispute between the French and the Italians stood on the eve of the conference.

The London Naval Conference of 1930

III. THE C O N F E R E N C E T h e London Conference met continuously from 21 January to 22 April 1930. The negotiations proceeded through three separate buk interrelated phases. In just a matter of weeks, the British and the Americans reached a preliminary naval agreement. It took nearly three months, however, to reach a compromise that largely conceded Japan's demand for an increase in ratio. Meanwhile, hopes for a five-power treaty foundered on FrancoItalian rivalry and France's demand for security guarantees in Europe. Having arrived in London without a well-formulated plan for a settlement, members of the American delegation spent the first weeks of the conference devising one. The ensuing debate among them underscored once more the hopelessness of agreeing on a formula to express naval parity. Its outcome signified the triumph of civilian, not naval, priorities. When, early on, Stimson determined that insisting on the Board's demand for 21 heavy cruisers could wreck the conference, he faced a reckoning: were the benefits of reaching an arms agreement worth the sacrifice on the cruiser question and the abandonment of any pretense about the possibility of measuring scientifically the relative fighting value of warships? Stimson and his civilian advisors believed emphatically yes. Without consulting the General Board, the American delegation produced a tentative plan at the end of January 1930 that settled the cruiser controversy essentially on Great Britain's terms. It reduced from 21 to 18 America's number of 10,000-ton 8-inch gun cruisers. Great Britain would get 15 such ships and Japan 12. Overall, Great Britain would get 339,000 tons in cruisers, the United States 327,000 tons, Japan 198,500 tons. T h e British and the Americans each would have the option of trading off heavy cruisers or tonnage to duplicate the cruiser fleet of the other. T h e tentative plan called a naval holiday in capital ship building until 1936, except that the Americans could build one battleship to offset Great Britain's two modern Hoods built after the Washington Naval Conference of 1922. T h e British, Americans, and the Japanese would also cut their numbers of battleships immediately to 15, 15, and 9, respectively. The United States and Great Britain would have parity in destroyers (200,000 tons) and submarines (60,000 tons); Japan would get 120,000 tons and 40,000 tons, respectively, in those categories of warships. Finally, the plan opposed any

The London Naval Conference of 1930 reduction in aircraft carrier tonnage below what the naval powers had agreed to at the Washington Conference. 8 4 For the next several days, civilian members of the American delegation held meetings with and conducted interviews of their naval advisors on the merits of the Plan. Again, sharp disagreement arose over the proposed reduction of 8-inch gun cruisers. Civilians argued with their naval advisors. Naval advisors argued among themselves. Although, generally, naval opinion echoed to the General Board's view that the United States needed at least 21 large cruisers as an irreducible minimum, some prominent naval officers testified before the American delegation to the contrary. Indeed, some considered the 6-inch gun cruiser superior to its 8-inch gun counterpart, given the limitations that the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 had imposed on the size of such ships. Admiral Jones, recalled to active duty as an advisor to the delegation, testified before the delegates first. He rejected the Tentative Plan of 27 January 1930 in favor of the General Board's plan of 11 September 1929, which gave the American Navy 21 heavy cruisers and 315,000 overall to the Royal Navy's 21 and 339,000 tons. T h e Tentative Plan "decreased the number of units most suitable to needs of the United States," the Admiral argued, while it "increases the number of units most suitable to the needs of Great Brit"85

ain.

0

Captain Van Keuren, a member of Admiral Pratt's staff and an ordnance expert, challenged Admiral Jones's contention that the 8-inch gun 10,000-ton cruisers represented the preferred alternative to smaller 6-inch gun cruisers. Van Keuren described the 8-inch gun cruiser as "an artificial type" that "violates all the tenants of good design, especially the principle of corresponding protection." Nor did he believe that, "in the present state of the art," the navy could develop a satisfactory design for such ships without reducing speed significandy. Captain Van Keuren concluded that "we would pay a tremendous cost for the privilege of retaining 8-inch gun ships, when, by the additional tonnage secured by forgoing building 8inch gun ships in considerable numbers we could secure several extra valuable 6-inch gun units." 8 6 Next, Admiral Pringle, formerly President of the Naval War College, and Captain Smyth, another ordnance expert from Pratt's staff, came before the committee. Admiral Pringle confined his remarks to some general observations on what strategic or operational considerations should influence the compo-

The London Naval Conference of 1930 sition of the American cruiser fleet. T h e optimal type of cruiser depended, in his view, on its mission. For operations in connection with the battleline, the Navy would need cruisers best suited to thwart destroyer attacks and to perform the general duties of a defensive screen. He believed that the 6-inch gun cruiser of between 6000 and 7500 tons, "a fast and handy ship with a good volume of fire," best combined these characteristics. For scouting operations and distant screening, the Navy would need a cruiser "with high speed, a large cruising radius . . . and a gun caliber at least equal to that carried by any other cruisers." Admiral Pringle recommended the 10,000-ton 8-inch cruiser as the best alternative available under the restrictions of the Washington Conference to perform this mission. On balance, though, he recommended giving priority to building the lighter cruisers because of the primacy of their mission. 87 Captain Smyth argued, to the contrary, that the data confirmed the superiority of the 8-inch gun type: "with a 100 percent superiority beyond 18,000 yards, the possible inferiority of 33 1/3 percent for the 8-inch gun cruisers at shorter ranges would not seem, to most of us, sufficiently serious to discredit the more controversial 8-inch gun type." 8 8 Admiral Yamell, an authority on naval aviation and Admiral Hepburn, Chief of Staff of the United States Fleet, also testified on the cruiser question. Both considered the 8-inch gun 10,000-ton cruiser "an unbalanced type" and favored a 10,000-ton 6-inch gun cruiser as an alternative. 89 Similarly, Admiral Pratt, Chief of Naval Operations, argued that the United States should settle for 18 large cruisers instead of 21 in exchange for the right to build 4 or 5 more smaller ones, although not just for technical reasons. 90 His argument on behalf of the Tentative Plan sounded just like that of a quintessential American civilian leader of the interwar years: As I see it, the General Board plan . . . is, in effect, a continuation of the battlegound of Geneva and insofar as it does not permit of reasonable adjustment to meet changed conditions and arrive at a fair agreement, it is reactionary and not in keeping with the spirit of the Conference. . . . I see no hope for real reductions until limitation is applied throughout all classes of combatant ships, and keeping in mind the question of limitation in the background. I believe that thought should be centered on the ultimate naval force that should result in limitation. . . . If, however, there is any one thing which this analysis tends to prove, it is I believe this—namely that

The London Naval Conference of 1930 the discussion as to whether we have 3 more 8-inch gun cruisers is not worthy of the discussion it has raised. I consider it a very minor detail in the whole scheme, and have no hesitation in saying so. 91 Indeed, Pratt's vigorous defense of naval limitation justly earned him the reputation as a political admiral, among friend and foe alike. 92 T h e other aspects of the Tentative Plan aroused less controversy. Even before the conference began, the General Board had agreed reluctantly to cut the number of battleships to the levels called for in the plan so long as the maximum displacement of capital ships remained at 35,000 tons. T h e Board also insisted that the United States have the right to build one more capital ship during the capital ship holiday that would extend otherwise until December of 1936. 93 Only Rear Admiral Moffett dissented wholly from the doctrinal premises underlying the Tentative Plan and the recommendations of the Board. He viewed the aircraft carrier as the dominant weapon of the future and worthy of the delegation's primary conQ4

cern. He complained, moreover, that the Washington Treaty had placed the United States at a grave disadvantage as to aircraft carriers, because it had locked up so much of its available carrier tonnage in the Lexington and the Saratoga (66,000 tons). This left the United States "only 69,000 tons for building additional carriers, while Great Britain would have 90,000 tons." If both sides build as many efficient carriers with their remaining tonnage as possible (13,800 tons being an efficient carrier, though less efficient, unit for unit, than larger carriers), the British would have 9 overall and the Americans just 7. Nor, Moffett added, did the 9:7 ratio in numbers capture the full dimensions of Great Britain's carrier advantage. Whereas the British had 50 merchant ships they could easily convert into carriers, the United States had just 14. He suggested that the delegation should press for an agreement to classify the Lexington and the Saratoga as experimental carriers, so that the Navy could replace them immediately with a larger number of smaller carriers. Alternatively, he proposed that each nation should have the option of converting cruiser tonnage and replacement battleship tonnage to carriers. 95 Although Admiral Yamell also testified in favor of building two 17,500ton carriers in lieu of one new battleship, Moffett found little support for his challenge to the regnant doctrine of battleship supremacy among the civilian delegation, the delegation's naval advisors, or from the General Board. Nor did his proposal to build carriers under 10,000 tons attract

The London Naval Conference of 1930 much interest or support. The General Board agreed with Moffett, however, that the Washington Treaty permitted the Navy too few carriers to meet the operational requirements of War Plan Orange, that is, not enough carriers to defeat Japanese carriers in short, spasmodic encounter in the waters of the Western Pacific. The Board also had come to favor building as many 13,800-ton carriers as possible within the limits of the Washington Treaty instead of retaining the Lexington and the Saratoga96 Similarly, the Board opposed reducing America's allotment of carrier tonnage below the 135,000 tons agreed to at the Washington Naval Conference. 97 The division among his naval advisors only confirmed to Stimson the utter uselessness of a scientific yardstick. On 3 February 1930, he and MacDonald agreed to abandon the idea entirely in favor of a civilian, or optical, yardstick "in order to convince the unthinking man on the street." 98 He and the Prime Minister also agreed to the settlement on cruisers provided for in the Tentative Plan of 27 January. 99 On 4 February 1930, Stimson convened a meeting of the delegation to vote on the tentative plan. Again, Admiral Jones argued that the plan allowed the Navy too few heavy cruisers. He even revived the General Board's original demand for 23 such ships, but to no avail. 100 The delegation approved the Plan unanimously. 101 So did President Hoover. 102 Thereafter, the United States and Great Britain easily reached a tentative agreement pending a settlement with Japan and France. The terms differed from the American delegation's plan in only two particulars. When the British agreed not to press for further reductions in the maximum displacement of capital ships and confirmed the legality of America's battleship modernization program, the Americans abandoned their request to build one more capital ship during the naval holiday. Also, the United States settled for slightly less then the Delegation's plan called for in cruiser tonnage (323,500). 1 0 5 Only reaching a compromise on carriers caused momentary difficulty. When MacDonald proposed a reduction in the aggregate maximum carrier tonnage for the British and the Americans to 100,000 tons each, President Hoover showed more enthusiasm for arms reduction than for airpower by instructing the American delegation to accept the offer. 104 Luckily, Stimson and his naval advisors objected so strenuously that the President changed his mind. 1 0 5 The British conceded the point. Despite Admiral Moffett's advocacy, the agreement closed a loophole of the Washington Naval Treaty that had left carriers displacing under 10,000 tons unregulated. It defined a carrier as

134

The London Naval Conference of 1930 any vessel fitted exclusively for the purpose of launching aircraft, regardless of tonnage. It also explicitly prohibited carriers of less than 10,000 tons. 1 0 6 Having reached an accord, the British and the Americans turned next to working out an acceptable compromise with the Japanese. It was not easy. T h e American plan had given Japan substantially less than the 70 percent ratio in auxiliaries that the Japanese delegation contìnue to demand as an irreducible minimum. T h e Japanese also objected to the proposed elimination of the submarine and reduction in battleships. 107 Stimson saw no reason, however, to concede Japan's demand for a higher ratio. 108 Nor did he or MacDonald believe that Japan would hold out in this demand. If both recognized, in part, how contentious the dispute over ratio had become domestically in Japan, then both also assumed that "Japan could not go back without a Treaty." 1 0 9 T h e Hamaguchi government's victory in the general elections of 20 February 1930 strengthened Stimson and MacDonald's convictions that the Japanese would compromise. But the stalemate continued. 1 1 0 T h e Japanese government divided bitterly on whether or not to modify its stand. O n the one hand, Reijiro Wakasuki, a member of the House of Peers and a head of the Japanese delegation, warned Shidehara and Hamaguchi that the government must amend its instructions or risk the collapse of the conference and a parting with America and Great Britain. Hamaguchi and Shidehara favored compromise. So did Vice-Naval Minister Yamanashi and other moderates in the Navy's Administrative Faction. O n the other hand, the leaders of the Naval General Staff opposed any sort of compromise. Kato Kanji, now Chief of the Naval General Staff, Vice-Chief Suetsugu, Admiral Abo, the highest naval advisor in London, Rear Admiral Yamamoto, and other members of the C o m m a n d Faction representing the dominant views of the Imperial Navy, remained adamantly against any concession on the 7:10 ratio. 1 " T h e Japanese, British, and American delegations met continuously in the hope of breaking the deadlock. Things did not begin auspiciously. On 25 February 1930, Matsudaira presented Japan's official proposal calling again for the 7:10 ratio. 112 Stimson, MacDonald, and their naval advisors inclined against any further concessions to the Japanese. In early March 1930, Stimson and MacDonald even threatened to settle for a two-power treaty between the United States and Great Britain should Japan refuse to abandon its demand for a 7:10 r a t i o . m Finally, both sides began to waiver. President Hoover simply did not consider the 10:6 ratio worth the

The London Naval Conference of 1930 risk of jeopardizing agreement with Japan; on 5 March 1930, he informed Secretary Stimson that, in his opinion, increasing Japan's ratio should cause no alarm to the United States. 114 Stimson learned, the next day, that Senator Borah had expressed similar sentiments to Undersecretary of State Joseph C o t t o n . " 5 These messages stimulated him to drop his unequivocal demand for a 10:7 ratio, just as his adamancy on the subject had convinced Matsudaira and Wakasuki on the need for some concessions on their part. 1 1 6 After a lengthy series of meetings, Senator Reed and Ambassador Matsudaira reached a compromise that bears their name. Actually, the Americans conceded more than they received. In principle, the agreement gave the United States a 10:6 ratio in heavy cruisers. In practice, it allowed the Japanese more than 70 percent of American heavy cruiser tonnage over the life of the treaty. 117 T h e United States agreed to defer completing 3 of its 18 heavy cruisers until after 31 December 1936, while Japan would retain 12 such ships. 118 T h e agreement also conceded Japan a 7:10 ratio in light cruisers and destroyers and parity in submarines, although the Japanese did agree to accept just 9 battleships and less tonnage in submarines (52,500 tons) than the Imperial Navy wanted. Overall, not counting Japan's de facto 7:10 ratio in heavy cruisers, the agreement gave Japan a ratio of 69.25 percent of the American fleet's, only 0.75 percent less than Japan's original proposal. It encountered fierce opposition, nevertheless, from the C o m m a n d Faction of the Imperial Navy at home and most of Japan's naval advisors in London. Admiral Kato Kanji and his cohorts complained bitterly that the shortage of submarine tonnage and heavy cruisers would cripple Japan's operational plans in the Pacific. As a matter of national honor, Kato believed that Japan should have parity in all categories. After a lengthy debate, the Hamaguchi Cabinet decided to accept the compromise anyway. 119 Prime Minister Hamaguchi, Shidehara, and Watasuki believed the Matsudaira had struck an advantageous bargain that more than provided for Japan's defense needs at great savings. 120 Their decision to bypass the Imperial Navy's high command did not end, but merely deferred, the controversy. The American Navy did not like the Reed-Matsudaira Compromise either. It represented, in most naval officers' view, a dangerous capitulation on a ratio that the consensus of naval opinion considered perilous. 121 Equally, it conflicted fundamentally with the recommendations of the Cenerai Board and delegation's naval advisors, although some naval offi-

The London Naval Conference of 1930 cers had different ideas. Again, Admiral Pratt justified the compromise in civilian terms. 122 He argued that the benefits of reaching agreement with Japan justified deferring the construction of the last three heavy cruisers. He believed, too, that Congress would not appropriate the money to construct all 18 cruisers by 1936 anyway. If, however, the American and Japanese Navies opposed the agreement vehemently, the parallel ended there. Hoover could and did ignore his recalcitrant admirals. Ultimately, the Hamaguchi government could not. Having reached a compromise with the British and the Japanese, the Americans failed in their attempt to reach agreement with the French. France's quest for security lay at the heart of the trouble. T h e French delegation linked their position on naval limitation with the willingness of the United States and Great Britain to underwrite France's security guarantees. If France received adequate guarantees, then it would accept the Anglo-American method of limitation by category and define its naval needs relative to the needs of others. Otherwise, France would have to build a fleet that could preserve it security unilaterally. Without adequate political guarantees, the French demanded at least 100,000 tons of 8-inch gun cruisers and nearly 100,000 tons in submarines. T h e French delegation also insisted on preserving France's right under the Washington Treaty to lay down two 35,000-ton capital ships during the duration of any naval agreement. Nor would the delegation accept the Anglo-American method of limitation by categories, parity with Italy, or the elimination of such a valuable "defensive weapon" as the submarine. 1 2 5 The British and the Americans recognized that they had nothing to fear from the French Navy. France lacked the resources or the inclination to engage in a massive naval buildup. Neither the British nor the Americans really considered France a potential enemy either. 124 Yet France's demands for such high levels of tonnage threatened to unravel the AngloAmerican accord. If the Italians insisted on the right to build a navy as large as that of France, the British would have to abandon the two-power standard in Europe or increase its naval forces substantially. Correspondingly, the Americans and the Japanese would insist on the right to match any British increase. French authorities cared most about committing the British to political and military guarantees against any European aggressor, but sought, albeit with less hope or urgency, to commit the United States, too. 125 Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, France's chief negotiator at the Conference, offered Stimson and MacDonald several choices as to what form the

The London Naval Conference of 19Î0 political and military guarantees could take: a Mediterranean pact, a new article to the Kellogg-Briand Pact, amending the Convenant of the League, the Treaty of Locarno, or the Four Power Treaty of the Washington Conference. Stimson and MacDonald rejected them ajl. Neither the President nor Congress would accept the entanglement in European affairs France's proposals entailed. 126 France's demands also conflicted fundamentally with MacDonald's and his countrymens' outlook on world affairs. The vast majority of British authorities discounted France's assessment of the German threat as paranoia. For the Prime Minister and many others, France's security demands, not Germany's claim to military parity or the danger of German revanchism, represented the chief threat to a just and lasting European settlement. 127 Stimson's and MacDonald's rejection of Briand's proposals ruined the chances of achieving a five-power naval treaty. France would not limit the numbers of its auxiliaries or concede parity to Italy without compensating political guarantees, while the Italians insisted on the right to naval parity with France as the sine qua non of any agreement. 1 2 8 France and Italy did not subscribe, therefore, to Part III of the London Naval Treaty of 1930 establishing qualitative and quantitative limitations on cruisers and destroyers and quantitative limitations on submarines. Instead, Hoover, MacDonald, and Hamaguchi settled for a three-power agreement, with an escalator clause as a hedge against a French or Italian naval buildup that never materialized: in the event that the building program of a nonsignatory threatened the security of a party, the clause allowed for that party to increase its naval tonnage; the other parties could also increase their tonnage proportionately. 129 France and Italy did subscribe to the other parts of the treaty. Part I amended certain provisions of the Washington Treaty in respect to battleships and carriers. It also postponed capital ship replacement until 31 December 1936, except that Italy and France could build the capital ships the Washington Treaty permitted them. 1 5 0 Part II set qualitative limits on submarines and defined vessels exempt from limitation." 1 Part IV established rules to regulate the use of the submarine in wartime. Part V provided that the treaty would run until 31 December 1936, except for Part IV, which would run indefinitely." 2 Part IV of the Treaty, outlawing unrestricted submarine warfare, stands out, in retrospect, as yet another paradox of the conference. Events would demolish the assumptions on which the Americans and the Japanese based their case on the submarine question. Japan joined France and Italy

The London Naval Conference of 1930 in arguing strongly for the submarine's retention, because the Imperial Navy believed that the weapon could wTeak havoc on the American fleet during the attrition phase of a Japanese-American naval war. T h e American delegation favored abolition because, in its view, submarines cost too much and had only marginal military value. 1 " The American delegates assumed, too, that the American people would never allow the Navy to resort to unrestricted submarine warfare anyway. They and the Japanese were wrong: Whereas, during the Pacific War, Japanese submarines inflicted only marginal damage on the American fleet, American submarines waged an unrestricted campaign against all types of Japanese shipping, with devastating effect. What provisions did the London Treaty of 1930 make for verification? No one even raised the issue at the Conference. T h e treaty made no provision for verification, except that the Washington Treaty's obligation of all the parties to exchange information about their building program remained in force. Otherwise, the parties would have to rely on unilateral means and good faith to ensure compliance with the treaty.

IV. R A T I F I C A T I O N That did not bother the American delegation. Secretary Stimson signed the treaty on 22 April 1930 brimming with confidence about the good faith of the signatories and rapturously optimistic about the accomplishments of the treaty. Notwithstanding the failure to abolish the submarine or to include France and Italy in the agreement 1 on auxiliaries, the conference had given the Secretary "more confidence in his belief that the peaceful methods of diplomacy can eventually take the place of war than anything [he] had witnessed since the last war drew to a close." 154 The London Treaty had confirmed, for Stimson, the efficacy of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, because a naval agreement, "by its very nature, precludes the idea of war as an instrument of national policy." 1 ' 5 He believed that the conference had accomplished its "main purpose" of stopping the dangers of competition in armaments that otherwise, "whether accompanied or unaccompanied by good intentions, will lead to war." 1 ' 6 Like Hughes at the Washington Conference, he believed, too, that the London Treaty had stabilized the naval balance indefinitely and would improve America's relations with the other treaty powers immeasurably, particularly with Great Britain and Japan. 1 5 7

The London Naval Conference of 19Î0 He also believed that the treaty would accomplish its important, but secondary, purpose of saving money. 1 , 8 Collectively, the American, British, and Japanese fleets would scrap 468,000 tons of ships: battleships, destroyers, and submarines. Stimson based his optimism "not solely on the appraisal of the accomplishment of the particular agreement we are signing, but also upon the demonstration which the treaty affords that the process of limitation can be carried further into the f u t u r e . " 1 ' 9 He "looked forward . . . to periodically recurring conferences, confident that we shall obtain ever increasing security with ever decreasing armaments." 1 4 0 T h e President agreed fully with the secretary's glowing assessment of the London Naval Conference. 1 4 1 On the whole, the American people and press responded favorably to the treaty, too. 1 4 2 Nevertheless, Hoover and Stimson rightly anticipated opposition to the treaty from the naval establishment. T h e President determined to head off the Navy and shape the debate from the start. He instructed Stimson, Ambassador Gibson, Senators Reed, and Robinson to address the American people by radio on the virtues of the treaty. 143 They did. Their rhetoric and logic of their addresses echoed that which Stimson, the President, and the delegation had used earlier to praise the accomplishments of the treaty: that it ended the arms race, that United States had won genuine parity with Great Britain by it, that it would improve relations among the treaty powers, that it would set the stage for further reductions and agreements, that it would save money, that naval critics looked at the world through a porthole. 1 4 4 The President's campaign on the treaty's behalf had its intended effect. The Senate ratified the treaty on 22 July 1930 by a wide margin (58-9), although not without a bitter and protracted debate in both the Senate Foreign Relations and Naval Affairs Committees. If a few opposed the treaty because the treaty did not limit weapons enough, 1 4 5 then opposition came mainly from the General Board and all but four of the Navy's admirals, who objected to the treaty because it dangerously restricted America's naval building. 1 4 6 The arguments of the 22 officers who testified against the treaty should sound familiar. Most of them denounced the concessions to Japan as further jeopardizing an already perilous equilibrium in the Pacific, particularly the defense of the Philippines. 147 Admiral Jones focused his criticisms on the concession the American delegation had made to the British on the cruiser issue. 148 Many others recapitulated the Jones arguments on

The London Naval Conference of 1930 the recklessness of the cruiser compromise, the failure of the treaty to achieve genuine parity, and the manifest superiority of the 8-inch versus the 6-inch gun cruiser. 149 Only five naval experts testified in favor of the London Naval Treaty: Admiral Pratt's testimony raised the same themes that had run through his arguments at the conference. He explained that the 6-inch gun cruiser was the preferred type, given the limits the Washington Treaties had imposed on the size of such warships. 150 The United States would also benefit disproportionately from the agreement, as he saw it, because the British and the Japanese had already built up to their limits; whereas the American Navy could build a new cruiser fleet.151 Learning nothing from his mistakes at the Washington Conference, Pratt predicted again that the treaty would stimulate support for naval building. 152 Secretary of the Navy Adams recapitulated the arguments of Admiral Pratt. Admirals Hepburn, Yarnell, and Moffett testified in favor of the treaty, too, although more soberly than Pratt. Indeed, Yamell assessed the strategic situation vis-á-vis Japan pessimistically. In his view, however, the London Treaty "affected very little one way or another," the safety of the Philippines or America's interests in the Western Pacific generally. Rather, he argued that the Washington Naval Treaty and the country's manifest unwillingness to build adequate bases in the Western Pacific beforehand accounted more than anything else for the American Navy's weakness in the region under any short war scenario. 154 He stressed, too, that the United States had violated the 5:3 ratio anyway by not building up to treaty limits. He supported the treaties, therefore, on the condition and with the expectation that the President and Congress would "appropriate the money" necessary to maintain the 5:3 ratio. 155 Admiral Moffett supported the treaty on the same conditions and with the same expectations as Admiral Yarnell. Equally, he believed that the London Treaty's provisions for cruisers, destroyers, and submarines had only a minor effect on the overall naval balance between the United States and Japan. As he saw it, the Navy's chances of defeating Japan would depend chiefly on the strength of America's carrier forces. 156 The British reaction to the treaty closely paralleled what happened in the United States. MacDonald and most of his constituents hailed the London Treaty as an end to the arms race and a positive step toward lasting peace; the Admiralty and the handful of big-navy supporters in Parliament, including Winston Churchill, opposed it. Opponents warned that the arbitrary reduction in cruisers from 70 to 50 fell considerably below

The London Naval Conference of 1930 the Royal Navy's minimum needs and thus menaced the empire's security. Also, the Admiralty criticized the treaty for failing to reduce the size and armaments of battleships. British civilian leaders and the force of public opinion easily overcame resistance to the treaty. 157 In Japan, however, the treaty precipitated a constitutional crisis. That Japan had obtained nearly everything its delegation initially asked for made no difference to the treaty's opponents. Admiral Kato, Chief of the Naval Staff, and the vast majority of the naval establishment argued that the Reed-Matsudaira Compromise imperiled Japan's security; others argued more broadly that the Hamaguchi government had violated the Armed Forces' constitutional right of supreme command by overruling the objections of the Chief of the Naval Staff and the delegation's naval advisors. Premier Hamaguchi insisted, to the contrary, that the government did not need the Navy's approval for the treaty. He eventually persuaded a reluctant Privy Council to ratify the treaty, despite intense opposition from Kato Kanji (who resigned as Chief of Naval Staff in protest), the Navy's Fleet Faction, large segments of the press, nationalist groups, the opposition party, and even some members of the Council itself. 158 Hamaguchi's victory did not last for long. As a concession to naval opponents, the Hamaguchi Cabinet committed itself to increasing considerably the pace and scope of Japan's naval program. Later, Hamaguchi would pay for his advocacy of the London Treaty with his life. In November 1930, a right-wing fanatic shot the Prime Minister at a Tokyo railway station. He died of his injuries the next summer. 1 5 9 French and Italian reaction to the treaty surprised no one. The French blamed the collapse of the five-power negotiations on Italy's unreasonable demand for parity and the unwillingness of the United States and Great Britain to recognize the legitimacy of France's concerns about continental security. The Italians blamed the French for their refusal to concede Italy the naval parity the Washington Treaty had promised and that Italy's strategic situation warranted. 160 Did the London Treaty of 1930 contribute, positively or negatively, to international peace? Would events confirm or confound the lofty expectations the Americans held for the treaty? The answer to the first question depends largely on how one would assess the realm of the possible and the probable in Anglo-American relations. It depends, moreover, on whether or not the naval treaty really caused or served merely as a symptom of and as a pretext for Japan's constitutional crisis that erupted during the debate

The London Naval Conference of 1930 over ratification. On the one hand, the United States achieved numerical if not actual parity with Great Britain and numerical if not operational superiority over Japan, even though both countries entered the conference with a marked superiority over the United States in cruisers. Theoretically, the treaty allowed the United States to construct a modem cruiser fleet, while Great Britain and japan could only replace their overage vessels. The London Agreement also marked an historic recognition on Great Britain's part of America's right to complete battlefleet parity. It did contribute, too, to improving Anglo-American relations, although the two countries would not even begin actively to cooperate with one another against Germany and Japan until the late 1930s. The author argues, however, that the treaty's defenders have overrated its benefits and underestimated its costs. Great Britain and the United States paid a heavy price for their support of and expectations for the treaty. The principle of optical parity drove the British and the Americans each to press for an agreement to recreate the fleet of the other in the image of their own. Neither side could build a fleet that best suited their complementary strategic objectives. The Americans forced the British to accept too few cruisers; the British did not permit the Americans enough large ones. Instead each side continued to use the negotiations as a means of reducing the other's fleet to below the levels they had a common interest in maintaining. In retrospect, Stimson described as "ridiculous" the American delegation's goal of optical parity with Great Britain. As he put it: "On every ground, the United States should have been happy to see the British Navy just as big and strong as the British pocketbook would permit.'" 6 1 T h e apparent success of the treaty also fed the illusion in Great Britain and the United States that future conferences would make significant increases in their naval building programs unnecessary, although, to be sure, their reluctance to build sprang largely from domestic and economic considerations. Meanwhile, as Robert Ferrell points out, the treaty gave japan, the weakest of the three-treaty powers, a respite from a concerted arms race. 162 I disagree with Ferrell and others, however, who blame the treaty for the constitutional crisis that followed the treaty and the radicalization of the Imperial Navy. I 6 ' The treaty not only incorporated nearly all of the Japanese delegation's original demands, but ensured Japan's superiority in the Western Pacific under the short-war scenario of Orange even in the

The London Naval Conference of 1930 worst case that Japan would fight the Americans alone without a European ally to divert part of the American fleet. If the treaty helped again to discourage the Americans from building up to the limit, then the Japanese would enjoy an even more favorable ratio. That the Imperial Navy provoked a constitutional crisis anyway attests how hostile to the principle of civilian rule the Japanese armed forces had become. Could the Americans have staved off the triumph of the militarists by agreeing at London to concede Japan a 7:10 ratio de jure? Would the Kwantung Army have forgone the seizure of Manchuria for such a concession? Would such a concession have ultimately satisfied the Japanese Navy's Fleet Faction? T h e answers to all these questions seems to be no. From a standpoint of political history, Japan's domestic reaction to the London Treaty culminated a decade-long resentment to the rule of civilians, the parties, and the moderates. T h e militarization of Japan during the 1930s owed not to the London Treaties, which left the democracies largely helpless to deter Japan's continental prédations of the 1930s. Rather, it owed to the disastrous combination of China's chaos, a worldwide depression, and the militaristic, authoritarian impulse that the theory and practice of the Meiji Constitution epitomized. 1 6 4 Japan's constitutional crisis over the London Treaty epitomized, but did not cause, the breakdown in civilian rule and the policy of relentless expansionism that followed. Nor, probably, could the Americans have appeased the Japanese armed forces successfully in any event. Notably, the Japanese Navy would come to the Second London Conference (1935) demanding not a 7:10 ratio, but full parity with the American and Royal Navies, qualitatively and quantitatively. Why then did not the Japanese ask merely for a 7:10 ratio if such a concession would have appeased the armed forces at the London Conference of 1930? Would Anglo-American relations really have deteriorated badly without the London Naval Treaty? Did the treaty avert the serious potential for an Anglo-American arms race? Could the United States and Great Britain have become serious enemies without naval arms limitation? No one will ever know for sure. If, as some commentatore imply, the answer to all these questions is yes, then perhaps the London Naval Treaty of 1930 was well worth the cost. 165 This study has argued, however, that the right answer to these questions is probably no. Although the United States and Great Britain often did not cooperate during the 1920s and the 1930s, they never expected to fight one another either. Even the abortive Geneva

The London Naval Conference of 1930 Conference of 1927 did nothing to change the basic outlook of decisionmakers on both sides of the Atlantic that war between Great Britain and the United States had become veritably unthinkable. MacDonald, Stimson, and Hoover envisaged Anglo-American naval talks as a negotiation between friends, not actual or potential enemies. Nor is it tenable to think that, without a treaty, the United States and Great Britain would have found each other on opposite sides in the fight against Germany and Japan. If, indeed, the London Naval Conference of 1930 demonstrates anything, it is that arms limitation works best when needed the least. It also demonstrates how difficult it is to reach agreement even under the best of circumstances; that is, between two friendly countries sharing a common language, democratic institutions, and complementary objectives in world affairs. As I see it, therefore, the marginal improvement in Anglo-American relations the London Naval Treaty may have brought about does not outweigh the treaty's costs. I recognize, however, that the American Navy's unfavorable strategic situation in the Western Pacific flowed logically from the naval balance the Washington Naval Treaty codified and the process of naval limitation it encouraged. T h e London Treaty merely reinforced the already dangerous gap between the American Navy's capabilities and American diplomacy in the Far East. No individual or group had a monopoly on foresight or lack of it. If the General Board assessed the trends in Japanese politics and their grave implications internationally more accurately than American statesmen; if experience vindicated the Board's intense opposition to the Washington and London Naval Treaties' force levels and ratios; if the negotiation showed the futility of measuring parity, or precisely, if the treaty established merely optical, not strategic, parity between Great Britain and the United States; if the treaty did not end the naval race, but initiated a new one in which the United States would lag behind: then not only civilians miscalculated. T h e General Board made their share of miscalculations, too. Virtually no major participant at the conference, with the noteworthy exception of Admiral MofFett, recognized the significance of airpower for strategy and operations. Nor did decisionmakers contemplate the danger of relying solely on good faith and unilateral means to ensure verification and compliance with the naval treaties. T h e Pacific War would prove the Board wrong and Admiral Pratt right in the debate over the 8-inch gun cruisers: American large 8-inch gun cruisers designed within the constraints of the Washington Treaty performed poorly.

The London Naval Conference of 1930 These miscalculations on America's part in no way cast doubt on the intelligence or goodwill of American negotiators, admirable qualities they possessed in abundance. Rather, the way events confounded expectations exposes the limits of foresight and the predilection to rely on untested assumptions that afflict even the best among us. No arms control treaty or negotiation can entirely escape this dilemma, regardless of time or place.

VI CONFOUNDED EXPECTATIONS AGAIN

The 1930s witnessed the complete breakdown of naval limitation. This chapter and chapter 7 analyze the causes and consequences of that breakdown. Here we will cover the interlude between the London Naval Conference of 1930 and the preliminaries to the London Naval Conference of 1935-1936, paying special attention to naval developments during those years and the political force that doomed naval limitation to failure. Chapter 7 analyzes the preliminaries to and negotiations at the Second London Naval Conference, then concludes with an assessment of the conference's aftermath. Specifically, it addresses two questions of vital importance. Why did the United States continue to press for naval limitation so fervently and abide by the Washington and London Naval Treaties unilaterally even after Japan had abrogated the treaties? What connection exists, if any, among Japan's breakout from the treaties, the United States' and Creat Britain's initial forbearance to induce Japan to reciprocate, and Japan's decision to attack the United States in December of 1941?

I. T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S On the American side, events confounded the General Board's hopes and Admiral Pratt's expectations that the London Naval Treaty of 1930 would stimulate a U.S. commitment to an orderly naval buildup. President Hoover and Congress blocked any significant increase in American naval building for the rest of Hoover's Presidency, be it the General Board's

Confounded Expectations Again recommendation to build up to treaty strength by 1936 or Admiral Pratt's and Congressman Carl Vinson's ( D . - G a . ) more modest proposals to build up such strength by 1942. 1 Thanks largely to the President's efforts, Congress failed to authorize the construction of even a single new warship between 1930 and 1933. Hoover also succeeded in reducing the numbers (from 14 to 8) and delaying the completion of the cruiser program authorized in H.R. 11526 (Coolidge's cruiser bill of 13 February 1929). 2 T h e President announced too, in May of 1931, that the United States would observe the one-year holiday in naval construction the Italians had proposed in anticipation of the World Disarmament Conference of 19321933. At the conference itself, he proposed to reduce all "defensive armaments" by one third and to eliminate "offensive armaments" entirely. He proposed, in the naval realm, to reduce battleship and submarine tonnage by one third; carrier, cruiser, and destroyer tonnage by one quarter. 3 Ultimately, the conference foundered on Germany's demand for full military parity with France and on the inability of nations to agree on what constituted an offensive or defensive weapon. Japan argued, for example, that the carrier and the battleships were offensive weapons, while the United States considered such weapons defensive. Undaunted, President Hoover continued to press for deep cuts in armaments for the rest of his Presidency. 4 Nor did Japan's invasion of Manchuria change Hoover's naval program. Although Hoover and Secretary Stimson announced on 7 January 1932 that the United States would not recognize Japan's conquests at China's expense that violated either the Nine Power Treaty or the KelloggBriand Pact, the President would go no further. Indeed, the Manchurian incident revealed starkly that he and Stimson differed fundamentally on the relationship between naval limitation and the Nine Power Treaty. Where Stimson warned Japan on the interrelatedness between the naval agreements and the Nine Power Treaty and advocated building up the Navy quickly to treaty strength, the President sought to decouple the negotiations to limit naval weapons from events in the Far East. 5 Hoover continued to regard naval building as a threat, not an inducement, to peace in the region. 6 Also, the adverse naval balance with respect to Japan reinforced Hoover's caution. As of 1932, the American Navy had only built up to 65 percent of treaty strength as opposed to 95 percent for the Japanese Navy. T h e Japanese had 184 underaged vessels, totalling 726,128 tons (listed) to 101 vessels for the U.S., totalling 726,000 tons. T h e American Navy had

Confounded Expectations Again only 3 carriers and 11 battleships in commission as compared with the 4 and 10 for the Japanese Navy, respectively. Japan also possessed more modem heavy cruisers than the Americans. 7 If, as American naval planners had estimated during the 1920s, Japan and the United States determined to fight, then the Philippines could not hold out until the American fleet arrived to the rescue. 8 Hoover continued to believe, too, that a combination of arms limitation and the moral force of world opinion would suffice to bring about a peaceful change in Japan's China policy; otherwise the United States had no interests, in his view, worth fighting for outside the Western hemisphere anyway. 9 In assessing why Hoover and Congress still opposed a naval buildup even to treaty limits, commentators have rightly stressed the Great Depression. 10 Yet economics alone does not explain President Hoover's naval program any more than it explains why Japan kept building steadily despite the Depression. In some measure, the nature of American popular democracy accounts for why the coalitions opposing naval building won out in their budgetary battles with an American naval establishment no less committed to major increases in naval building than its Japanese counterpart. Nor do economic motives account fully for Hoover's decision on naval matters. Despite this antipathy to direct relief, Hoover's response to the Depression anticipated much of what economists later would call a Keynesian policy. T h e American government's share of G N P went up

TABLE 1 " U.S. and Japanese Ship« Laid Down or Appropriated for Between the Washington Treaty and November 1932 Carriers

Number United States Japan

3 3

Tons

Number

Tons

85,800 85,600

16 20

152,900 200,875

Submarines

United States Japan

Cruisers

Destroyers

Number

Tons

11 63

Miscellaneous

16,500 89,016 Total

Number

Tons

Number

Tons

Number

Tons

6 42

11,970 59,871

6 38

2,470 93,105

42 166

269,640 510,467

Confounded Expectations Again from 16.4 percent in 1930 to 21.5 percent in 1931—then the largest U.S. peacetime increase in history—as Hoover pushed up government spending significantly and ran a then huge deficit of 2.2 billion in a vain effort to revive the economy. In the next two years, moreover, Hoover's Agricultural Marketing Act and Reconstruction Finance Corporation transferred billions of dollars to industry and farmers respectively. T h e Hoover administration also started more public works projects than its predecessors had done in the previous 31 years combined. Even so, Hoover rejected the argument of big navy supporters that naval building would provide domestic relief. 12 Why? T h e President's belief that the United States had no interests in East Asia worth the cost and risk of war, his belief that arms races caused war and arms limitation preserved peace, his expectation that future conferences would make further building unnecessary accounted, too, for Hoover's and Congress' reluctance to build warships. 13 Hoover conceded— publicly, privately, and frequently—that he would build u p the fleet to treaty limits only if "these efforts" to achieve further naval limitation "finally fail." 14 To the end of his Presidency, he retained his optimism about a breakthrough to disarmament and saw no point in building a large fleet at great expense just to scrap it. 15 Hoover thus opposed and thwarted Congressman Vinson's bill (and several similar measures) calling for a ten-year construction program that would build up the fleet to treaty limits by 1942, partly because he feared "provoking an arms race with Japan" that could possibly lead to war, 16 and jeopardize the future of naval limitation. 17 T h e Congressional debates on Congressman Vinson's ( D . - G a ), and Senator Hale's ( R . - M e . ) abortive bills to build up the Navy to treaty strength mirror the Congressional debates of the 1920s. Whereas Admiral Pratt and the bills' sponsors argued that the treaties imposed an obligation to build up to treaty limits, opponents countered that the treaties set maximum, not minimum, limits on the size of the Navy. Some opposed increased building on the grounds of economy; others voiced fears that a significant naval increase would precipitate an arms race ominously like the Anglo-German Naval race before 1914; others objected to increases as a menace to the chances for further naval limitation; according to still others, future arms agreements would make such building unnecessary. 18 By 1933, even Admiral Pratt had to admit, in exasperation, that the treaties had failed to stimulate a definite building program; indeed, "that

Confounded Expectations Again Naval holidays, disarmament conferences and financial depression all have worked against the Navy's proper growth." 1 9 Although the Navy's fortunes improved during President Roosevelt's first term, ambivalence characterized his views and actions on naval limitation until well into the late 1930s. 20 When Roosevelt took office in March of 1933, he seemed to share much of his predecessor's outlook on world affairs and naval limitation. If, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy during World War I, Roosevelt had justly earned the reputation as a big navy supporter, he had largely repudiated these views during the 1920s. In 1923, he published an article rapturous about the results of the Washington Naval Conference, because the treaties gave the Japanese and American Navies unassailable superiority in their respective home waters.21 In 1928, he criticized the Coolidge administration's decision to advocate a major increase in naval building. 22 In 1932, he commended Hoover's disarmament program as "clear and satisfactory." 23 Nor did President Roosevelt's initial convictions about the values, dynamics, or consequences of the arms race differ significantly from Hoover's. Roosevelt believed, too, that arms races in themselves caused wars; that an arms buildup would "only provoke corresponding increases" elsewhere, to the detriment of all the "competitors." 24 Similarly, he believed well into the late 1930s that naval limitation could save enormous sums of money, end the naval race, and ensure the peace. 25 Roosevelt's initial actions matched the antinaval sentiments he expressed during the 1920s. In the spring of 1933, he announced that, to save money, the Navy would have to put one third of its fleet and personnel on rotating reserve. 26 Yet President Roosevelt had another side. He feared the increase of Japanese naval power and distrusted Japan's intentions in Asia. He also accepted the argument of his naval advisor that building up to treaty limits could deter further Japanese aggression. 27 Unlike Hoover, he envisaged naval building not as a drain on the nation's resources, but as a public works program that could help relieve unemployment. In 1933, therefore, he alloted $238,000,000 of funds under the National Industrial Recovery Act for the construction of 32 warships. A year later, he supported Congressman Vinson's bill authorizing the President to build 102 warships, which would bring the American Navy up to treaty strength by 1942. 28 Congress passed the bill and the President signed it on 27 March 1934, although not without a bitter debate that further inclined the President to

Confounded Expectations Again caution. Advocates of the bill stressed the themes of preparedness, the failure of arms limitation by example, and the benefits of naval building for domestic relief in their arguments on its behalf. 29 Indeed, in this particular instance, the treaties muted the impact of pacifist criticism of a buildup by giving it an aura of legitimacy. Because of the treaties, advocates of the Vinson-Trammel Act could and did argue convincingly that the bill was consistent with the system of naval limitation and hence did not threaten to provoke a naval race. 50 Senator Nye, Republican from North Dakota, and his fellow Progressive Isolationists from the Midwest led the congressional opposition to the bill. Their reasoning followed the same logic opponents of naval building had evoked in the past. Senator Nye opposed the Vinson bill on a number of grounds. First, he argued passionately against the bill, and all naval increases for that matter, because, in his view, maintaining armaments in excess of what was necessary for the United States to defend the Western hemisphere would lead inexorably to an arms race, international discord, and war. He implied, too, that the President pressed for naval buildup not just to protect the hemisphere but to prepare for waging war in Europe and Asia, where, as he saw it, the United States had no interests worth a fight. He argued, further, that naval building would undermine further efforts to achieve arms limitation at the forthcoming London Naval Conference of 1935; whereas self-restraint would induce reciprocity on the parts of Great Britain and Japan, with whom he regarded war as unthinkable. Also, he inveighed against spending enormous sums of money on naval building, which could be better spent to alleviate the domestic crisis. T o Nye, military building in general and the Vinson bill in particular did not reflect actual defense needs; rather, both stemmed chiefly from private munitions makers' lust for profits and the self-interest of service chiefs seeking to expand their budgets. Finally, he proposed that Congress delay approval of the Vinson bill pending the outcome of his commission's investigations of the connection between the activities of private munitions makers and America's entry into the First World W a r . " Progressive Republicans William King of Utah, George Norris of Nebraska, Lynn Frazier of South Dakota, and Robert La Follette of Wisconsin echoed these sentiments. So did Senator Borah. Again, he blamed the Anglo-German naval race for causing World War I, and warned that the Vinson bill could have the same ominous consequences for the United States and Japan presently. 52 If Nye and his brethren failed to defeat the Vinson bill, then the

Confounded Expectations Again intensity of their opposition alarmed the President and reinforced his ambivalence about building u p the Navy to treaty strength quickly. T h e President wanted to keep Nye's and his fellow Progressives' support for his domestic agenda, which he regarded as p a r a m o u n t . " He had "received 200 letters and telegrams a day regarding the Vinson bill. . . . With very few exceptions (certainly less than one percent), these letters have been in opposition to the Bill, usually on the basis (a) that the money should be spent more constructively (b) that the bill contradicted our professed disarmament aims (c) that it is no way to preserve peace. T h e letters and telegrams came in from every part of the country and from any society. . . . " ' 4 Soon, too, Senator Nye would begin his investigation of the munitions industry. T h e Nye hearings not only inspired the neutrality legislation aimed at keeping the United States out of any future conflict in Europe or Asia, but reinforced the popular and fallacious conviction of many Americans that armaments caused World War I and wars generally." In this atmosphere, Roosevelt determined to proceed cautiously. Although money for naval building increased significandy during President Roosevelt's first three years, the President assured the American public that the United States was "not going to start building those one hundred and two new ships right away." "Whether the ships were started or not . . ." depends "on the actions of future Congresses." According to the President, the Vinson-Trammel Act was "nothing more than a resolution that it is still the policy of the United States Navy to build up to London Treaty limits."' 6 Hence, the Vinson-Trammel Act represented only a contingent commitment to increase naval building. If the naval debates of the 1920s revealed anything, it was that the President could not count on Congress to appropriate the necessary funds to match naval authorizations. Even assuming that Congress appropriated enough money for the VinsonTrammel Act, the United States would not reach treaty strength until 1942, and then only if Congress appropriated additional moneys to replace overage vessels, and if the Japanese did not build beyond treaty limits. 57 Nor would President Roosevelt accelerate the pace of naval building, as the General Board urged, to bring the fleet within striking distance of treaty limits by the end of 1936 when the Naval Treaties expired.' 8 Instead, he provided for only a minimum construction program for 1934. Nor, despite his sympathy for China, would his Far Eastern policy depart significantly from Hoover's until the late 1930s. Although he refused to

Confounded Expectations Again recognize Japan's conquests in China, Roosevelt sought, primarily, to avert trouble with japan through a strategy of passivity and inaction.' 9 Similarly, Roosevelt not only feared the Isolationists, but shared their convictions, circa the mid-1930s, that the United States should stay out of any future war in Europe. 4 0 Although the President did not fear the British or regard them as a potential enemy, he had no inclination to defend their imperial system, which he disliked intensely. 41 T h e Roosevelt administration thus acquiesced without much resistance to the Neutrality Legislation of 1935-1936. 4 2 Consequently, japan's naval strength grew substantially in relative and absolute terms over the duration of the Washington Naval Treaty. 43 In 1922, the United States possessed a 2 to 1 advantage of Japan in aggregate combat tonnage. By 1936, the Imperial Navy had achieved a 7.4:10 ratio to the American fleet, plus the advantage of home water in the likely theater of encounter. 4 4 T h e American fleet exercises of 1933 and 1935 also reached the same grim outcome as their predecessors: in the shortwar scenario of Orange, the United States Navy would almost certainly lose any decisive fleet encounter in the Western Pacific and Philippines. 45 By 1935, the widening gap between America's obligation to defend the Philippines and the means available to defend them provoked an interservice debate over whether or how to modify War Plan Orange. The Army had become increasingly pessimistic about the prospects of defending the Philippines and, therefore, advocated America's withdrawal, especially in light of the growing Axis threat in the Atlantic. The Navy remained more optimistic about defending the Philippines and considered them essential to support America's policy in the Far East, even though the United States had decided, in 1934, to grant the Philippines independence by 1946. The debate failed, however, to close the gap between ends and means. In May of 1935, the Joint Board modified Orange to make the initial mission of the fleet the capture of a base in the Mandated Islands, but substituted the even more unrealistic assumption that the American garrison on the Philippines could hold out longer until the fleet arrived. 46 The Roosevelt administration thus would come to the Second London Naval Conference hopeful, ambivalent, committed to further naval reductions, afraid of the domestic reaction to failure, and reliant on America's potential, not actual, naval power for bargaining leverage with the Japanese.

Confounded Expectations Again

II. G R E A T B R I T A I N British civilian leaders' reluctance to build warships conspired with events abroad to worsen Great Britain's strategic situation considerably. The Royal Navy's building program proceeded slowly during the years 1930— 1935. Indeed, building failed to keep pace even with the relaxed schedule for replacing overage auxiliary vessels that the naval treaties permitted. 47 Great Britain's development of naval aviation continued to lag far behind that of Japan and the United States. 48 Nor, by the middle of the decade, had the Royal Navy's plans to develop Singapore as a base developed very far. Although, by 1932, Japan's seizure of North China had moved the British to abandon the 10-Year Rule, naval rearmament did not get under way seriously until after 1936, partly because Prime Minister Baldwin deferred the question of building new warships pending the outcome of the London Naval Conference of 193 5-1936. 4 9 Thereafter, the decline in the number and quality of production facilities that had occurred in the previous fifteen years would slow the pace of Great Britain's belated naval buildup considerably, just as it would in the United States. 50 By 1934, events abroad also had exposed and aggravated Great Britain's strategic weakness, particularly in the Far East. Granted, British war planning with respect to Japan had suffered the same gap between ends and means that plagued War Plan Orange. When it agreed at the Washington Conference to the 5:3 ratio at such low levels. Great Britain had lost even the option of building up enough to stop Japan militarily from seizing North China. Throughout the 1920s, however, the British had maintained a modified two-power standard that had given British plans for war with Japan at least some credibility. The Admiralty intended to leave a fleet sufficient to deter French or Italian aggression in European waters, while sending the rest of the fleet to the Pacific to counter Japanese aggression against the Dominions or Great Britain's Imperial possessions in the South Pacific. In the 1920s, the Admiralty planned to retain 6 of the Royal Navy's 20 battleships in European waters, while the remaining 14 would venture forth to engage 10 Japanese capital ships in the Pacific. By the 1930s, the significant growth of the Japanese Navy, the reduction in Great Britain's capital ship strength to 15 under the London Naval Treaty, and the emergence, simultaneously, of a Nazi and Italian threat made British warplans for the Far East simply incredible. 51 Militarily,

Confounded Expectations Again Great Britain's Asian Strategy rested merely on a series of bluffs that Japan called in December of 1941. T h e way Britain civilian decisionmakers reacted to these ominous strategic developments and the reasons why reveal the striking similarities between American and British societies. Instead of rearming at the rapid pace of the dictators, Great Britain adopted a policy of appeasement, in which, initially, arms limitation played a large part. Essentially, advocates of appeasement hoped to avert war by satisfying demands of the revisionist powers, Germany and Japan. W h a t motivated this policy? In the first place, the alternative, the willingness to use force, clashed with the priority of civilian leaders and their democratic electorates to maintain and expand the welfare state. T h e widespread pacifism, isolationism, and wishful thinking about German and Japanese aims also contributed to the mood favoring appeasement and arms limitation. Many Britons not only sympathized with Germany's claim that the Treaty of Versailles had treated it unfairly, but defended Hitler's abrogation of the treaty's disarmament provisions and his march into Rhineland. Indeed, many considered Hitler a nationalist, not an ideologue, a man with limited aims and objectives, a man with whom Great Britain could do business and reach a mutually satisfactory compromise. 5 2 Many believed, too, in the desirability and possibility of appeasing Japan in China, without menacing the empire's security. In 1932, the Government protested Japan's invasion of Manchuria, but only verbally, and, under pressure from the Americans, begrudingly. Actually, the British government considered even Stimson's nonrecognition doctrine too provocative. 53 Nor did most Britons believe that Great Britain had vital interests in Europe or Asia worth the cost or risk of war. Nothing epitomized the antiwar mood of Great Britain during the 1930s more than the Oxford Union's vote (1933) not to fight for king or country under any circumstances. T h e analogy of 1914 haunted the British imagination throughout the interwar years, but especially during the 1930s. Most British civilian leaders of the day subscribed likewise to the revisionist viewpoint that arms race, misperception, and mistake, not a clash of wills, had caused that devastating conflict that had left 7 5 0 , 0 0 0 Britons dead and 1 , 5 0 0 , 0 0 0 million more maimed permanently. 5 4 Also, many expected that the advent of aerial bombardment would make the next war even more devastating. 5 5 If, however, arms races caused war, then arms limitation could avert an arms race and thus help greatly to ensure the peace. 5 6 This

Confounded Expectations Again defense of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement (1935) by Sir Samuel Hoare, sometime Foreign Minister under both Baldwin and MacDonald, epitomizes much of the logic underlying Great Britain's determined efforts to reach arms limitation agreements with both Germany and Japan. Here again we saw a chance that might not recur of eliminating one of the causes that chiefly led to the embitterment before the Great W a r — t h e race of German naval armaments. 5 7 Doubtless, strategic weakness also accounts for why British decisionmakers supported appeasement and arms limitation so enthusiastically. In respect to the Far East, particularly, appeasement held great allure, because Britain had a great deal to lose in the region, but lacked the armed strength to defend its interests adequately. 58 T h e rise of the Third Reich meant that Great Britain would have to devote its limited resources to the Nazi threat. By 1934, even Sir Robert Vansittart, who had no illusions about Hitler, would argue forcibly for appeasing japan politically and in the realm of naval negotiation so that Great Britain could concentrate on the greater German danger, especially in the air where the Luftwaffe would soon surpass the R.A.F. 5 9 So would Neville Chamberlain, then Chancellor of the Exchequer who, later as Prime Minister, would take appeasement toward Germany to its ignominous climax at Munich. In the early winter of 1934, he argued that Great Britain lacked the economic strength to contest Germany and Japan simultaneously. 60 Unlike Vansittart, however, Chamberlain, Sir John Simon, and most other advocates of appeasement did not regard the Nazis as a menacing threat. Chamberlain also distrusted and disliked the United States intensely. He believed that rapproachement with Japan was well worth the price of antagonizing the Americans. America's neutrality legislation made Chamberlain's argument even more compelling. If Congress would keep the Americans out of any fight, then Britain would have to settle for the next best deal; namely détente with Japan. 61 As of 1934, the Admiralty remained committed to giving the Far East top priority, increasing Great Britain's naval armaments, and maintaining the 5:3 ratio in respect to Japan. 62 Nor were the Admiralty, Ramsay MacDonald, or many other leading members of Great Britain's coalition government willing to appease Japan on ratios if it meant antagonizing the Americans. 6 ' Nevertheless, all three major political parties supported the idea of arms limitation enthusiastically, not only with Japan, but with Germany, too. Conservative advocates of appeasement envisaged arms

Confounded Expectations Again limitation in Europe and the Far East as a way of ameliorating political tension, ending the arms race, and avoiding world war. Although Laborites and Liberals took a sterner view of the Nazis and Japanese aggression, the leadership of both parties deplored the building of weapons and the diplomacy of force even more. 6 4 Only Winston Churchill and a handful of his stalwarts opposed any further arms negotiations and repudiated the policy of appeasement entirely. 65 Accordingly, Great Britain would enter the preliminaries of the Second London Naval Conference, divided not on the virtues of arms limitation, but on whether to appease Japan on the ratio question or stand with the Americans. Simultaneously, the British would attempt to reach an accord with the Nazis to limit warships and aircraft. Like the Americans, the British would rearm vigorously only after naval limitation had proved utterly futile.

III.

JAPAN

Meanwhile, in Japan, constitutional government collapsed irrevocably during the 1930s, with ominous implications for Japanese foreign policy in general and naval limitation in particular. Domestic and international events interacted with one another synergistically to drive Japan toward a policy of aggression and expansion that would culminate in the Great Pacific War. Domestically, Japan drifted steadily toward a less total but militaristic variant of Facism, direct army control, and radical nationalism; pari passu, the Japanese people would become increasingly united in support of an aggressive policy toward China, the eviction of the West from East Asia, and the establishment of an East Asian Co-Prosperity sphere with Japan as the dominant partner. If, to paraphrase Hugh Borton, Japan had not reached the end of this road as of the middle of 1930s, then it was well on the way. 66 T h e seizure of Manchuria had demonstrated the impotence of the League and Japanese armed forces. 67 In January 1932, Japan established the puppet state of Manchukuo in defiance of League resolutions directing it to withdraw. Later in the year, Japanese airplanes bombed Shanghai after fighting broke out between Nationalist troops and Japanese naval units stationed in the city. In 1933, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, while Japanese troops advanced into Inner Mongolia and compelled the Chinese to accept the Tangki truce demilitarizing nearly 5000 miles between Peiking and the Manchurian border. Japan would use the truce to consolidate its gains in North China and prepare to launch an

Confounded Expectations Again invasion against all of China, which began in 1937. 68 Even by the spring of 1934, however, Japan had put the West on notice (the Amau statement) by declaring itself China's sole benefactor and warning the British and the Americans not to interfere on behalf of the Nationalists. 69 Nor, by the mid-1930s, could party government withstand the pressure from the Japanese military and other ultranationalist forces at work in Japanese politics. T h e 1932 murder of Premier Inukai Tsuyuyoshi marked the end of party and parliamentary government. 7 0 Formally, authority resided in the cabinet composed of the Prime Minister, and the War, Navy, and Finance Ministers. Actually, the real power of government had become concentrated increasingly in the middle-echelons of the state bureaucracies, particularly those of the armed forces. 71 In many ways, though, Japan lacked a true system of government at all. Anarchy and the struggle between warring factions characterized Japanese politics curing the 1930s. Ultranationalist fanatics either murdered or intimidated into silence those few who objected and dared to speak out against the militarization of Japanese society and politics. 72 Although the most influential group in the government, the armed forces remained divided about strategy and politics. T h e Army wanted to give Continental expansion priority; whereas the Navy pressed for a southern expansion against British, French, and Dutch possessions to secure Japan the raw materials, especially oil, it so desperately lacked. 75 Within the Army, competing factions vied for dominance. T h e Imperial Way School, briefly ascendant (1932-1934) and grouped around their War Minister Araki Sadao, wanted to restructure Japanese society radically along Facist lines; whereas the Control Faction, ascendant after 1936, cared less about changing the system of government and more about preparing Japan for total war. Also, the Imperial Way School wanted to provoke a final showdown with the Soviet Union as soon as Japan had consolidated its Manchurian Conquest; whereas the Control School, envisaging mainland China as the main target of expansion, wanted to maintain friendly relations with the USSR. 7 4 Within the Imperial Navy, the Fleet and proGerman factions pressed for an unequivocal repudiation of the treaty system so that Japan could prepare, without restraint, for a war with the United States; whereas the Administrative Faction, recognizing America's awesome potential power, advocated cooperation with the Americans as Japan built up her naval strength and consolidated its empire. 7 5 What united all factions was their commitment to a program of Asiatic expansion and huge expenditures on national defense. 76

Confounded Expectations Again By 1934, too, the Fleet and pro-German factions had come to dominate the Imperial Navy by systematically purging (1930-1934) senior officers of moderate inclination. 7 7 True, some moderates—like Admirals Yonai, Yamamoto, and I n o u e — n o t only retained senior positions, but continued to counsel caution and restraint, in the means and timing if not the end of attaining predominance in East Asia. Nevertheless, these Admirals represented only a tiny minority. Nor did they even exercise an influence commensurate with their rank. Instead, "in a pervasive spirit of genkokuju (rule from below)," real power became concentrated increasingly in the hands of mid-level naval officers: as a group overwhelmingly pro-Nazi, disciples of Kato Kanji, and implacably hostile to the United States. 78 Japan's constitutional collapse doomed the chances for further naval limitation. In the 1920s, parties, parliaments, and politicians had the will and the authority to restrain the Armed Forces, at least partially. In the 1930s, they did not. T h e Army could flaunt the Nine Power Treaty, the Navy could plan its breakout from the Washington Naval Treaties, both services could claim a huge share of the State's resources, all without encountering serious domestic opposition. What happened after the London Conference of 1930 in the naval realm thoroughly confounded the optimistic expectations of American civilian decisionmakers. Instead of moderating its naval program, Japan accelerated its pace and scope. Instead of reconciling itself to the treaty system, Japan used the interval between the London Naval Conference of 1930 and the expiration of the Washington Conference of 1936 to plan its breakout from the naval treaties, which would give the Japanese a head start in the post-1936 naval race. By 1933, the Armed Forces had already consumed 72% of Japan's government expenditure. 79 By 1935, Japan had built right up to treaty limits and possessed a totally modern fleet. The First and Second Naval Replenishment programs, spanning 1931-1936, provided ample funds for the development of new technologies: by 1933, Japan had developed the Type 93 oxygen-fueled torpedo that, as of 1941, vastly exceeded America's best torpedo in speed, firepower, and range. T h e cruisers and destroyers Japan built in the early thirties also were better armed and faster than their British or American counterparts. 80 Battleships and battleship admirals continued to dominate the Imperial Navy right up until 1941; yet, thanks to farsighted advocates of airpower like Admirals Yamamoto and Inoue, both of whom believed in the primacy of the carrier, Japan led the way in many areas of naval aviation,

Confounded Expectations Again too. By 1935, Japan had built the world's first monoplane carrier fighter, the Claude, and the first prototype of the legendary Zero, a fighter aircraft vastly superior to any fighter the American or Royal Navies had at the outbreak of the Pacific War. By the early 1930s, the Japanese had designed and built their own medium-range bombers and dive bombers. Japan's torpedo bombers, which it began developing in the early 1930s, also would prove superior to the American types available in 1941.81 By 1934, too, the Imperial Navy had also begun to draw blueprints and stockpile materials for its Yamamoto class battleships, the most powerful in the world: twice the size of America's largest battleships, armed with 18.1-inch guns, with a speed of nearly 30 knots, a cruising radius of 8000 miles, with armor and blisters able to withstand the largest shells, torpedos, bombs then available.82 Tactically, the Imperial Navy also led the way in the realm of night fighting and carrier aviation. 8 ' Clandestinely, the Imperial Navy prepared its Third Replenishment Plan, which Japan launched immediately after the expiration of the naval treaties on 31 December 1936.84 Why did Japan abrogate the naval treaties and determine to engage the United States in a concerted naval race? How and why did Japanese naval planners expect to win a naval race against a country with resources so vastly superior to their own? The Imperial Navy's decision owed to a concurrence of ideas, developments, and circumstances. Most important, it owed to the outlook and orientation of the Navy's dominant Fleet Faction which had opposed naval limitation bitterly since the Washington Naval Conference of 1922. America's sympathies for China and the Roosevelt administration's passage of the 1934 Vision bill only confirmed, to the leaders of the Fleet Faction, that the United States stood as the primary obstacle to Japan realizing its destiny of empire in East Asia.85 If, however, the Vinson bill potentially menaced Japan's favorable 8 to 10 ratio vis-á-vis the United States over the long term, then past experience had shown that the Americans would not actually build up to treaty limits until naval arms limitation collapsed irrevocably.86 According to historian Steven Pelz, perhaps the foremost authority on the subject, the Imperial Navy decided to abrogate the naval treaties and engage the United States in a naval race not out of fear or desperation; Japan was thoroughly confident and optimistic about its chances of success. The Imperial Navy had never lost a battle or a war. Drawing from the lessons of Japan's spectacular naval victories over China (1894-1895) and Russia (1904-1905), Kato Kanji believed that Japan could win its

Confounded Expectations Again battle for empire in a Mahanian-style decisive fleet encounter, even against a rival with superior resources, by relying on superior quality and tactics. Many within the Fleet Faction also believed that America's economic collapse, its lack of will, and Japan's technological advances had made an unrestricted naval race even more feasible. Some argued that the combination of America's Great Depression, Japan's increased productive potential, and its favorable prospects of harnessing the resources of North China would give Japan sufficient resources not only for a qualitative, but a quantitative race; others conceded the hopelessness of Japan matching a determined adversary quantitatively, but argued that Japan could defeat the American fleet by relying on the "advantage which geography" gave the former for national defense, bigger and faster ships, better fighters and bombers, superior firepower, weaponry, and tactics. 87 Moreover, many considered Japan's qualitative advantage insurmountable. The Americans would not only have to design and build a ship comparable to the Yamamoto, which would take years, but also widen the Panama Canal to accommodate such large ships. By this time, the Fleet Faction expected the Imperial Navy to have even larger and more powerful ships. 88 Nor did many believe that the United States had the political will to match the Japanese quantitatively. 89 By building up to treaty limits and planning clandestinely to break out of the treaties, the Imperial Navy hoped to jump out to a head start in a post-treaty naval race. America's previous neglect of its naval establishment, the intensity of Americans' antimilitary convictions, plus Japan's incontestably greater stakes in East Asia convinced many that the United States would not spend the money for naval construction to catch up. If the United States determined to catch up, then the Fleet Faction counted on the German threat to keep the British and the Americans from concentrating their forces in the Pacific. 90 By 1934, then, technological and political developments had given the Fleet Faction confidence that the Imperial Navy could defeat the American fleet and win an Asian empire in a world without naval limitation. 91 Conversely, naval officers of the Fleet Faction objected to the treaties' ratios and considered their restrictions dangerous, because they inhibited the Imperial Navy from designing and building the numbers and types of weapons that they wanted. In June of 1934, Navy Minister Osumi, Commander of the Combined Fleets, argued that Japan should announce its intention to abrogate the naval treaties immediately and unequivocally. T h e Army supported the Navy's demand for parity, but had some tactical

Confounded Expectations Again reservations about the method and timing of abrogating the Washington Treaty. Fearing an Anglo-American combination, the Army favored negotiating further with the treaty powers before abrogating so that the Government could divide the British from the Americans and avoid the blame for naval limitation's collapse. Also, the Army hoped, if possible, to maintain the Non-Fortification Agreements and to keep the China problem outside the naval talks. Prime Minister Okada and Foreign Minister Hirota not only shared the Army's misgivings about immediate abrogation, but also had reservations about demanding full naval parity with the United States. 92 Nevertheless, the Prime Minister and the civilian members of his cabinet lacked either the support or the inclination to provoke a showdown with the Navy. Instead, the Navy compromised only on the tactics of its demand for numerical parity with Great Britain and the United States. O n one hand, the Navy agreed to defer abrogating the naval treaties until the end of 1934, while the preliminaries to the forthcoming London Naval Conference progressed. Okada and Hirota also persuaded the Navy to accept an agreement giving Japan parity in stages. O n the other hand, the Navy forced the Government to demand the complete abolition of battleships and carriers, certain that Great Britain and the United States would reject it. 93 As Chief of staff Fushimi put it: T h e complete abolition of these [capital ships and carriers] types of ships would be unprofitable from the standpoint of maintaining our position as a great naval power. . . our real intention is not to bring about the realization of this proposal. But . . . to strengthen the Empire's demands. W e recognize that the possibility of the complete abolition of the capital ship is extremely small in view of England and the United States' past demands and in view of their relations with various countries which have capital ships. 9 4 If the United States and Great Britain accepted this demand, then Japan would have achieved at one stroke the object of its strategy of sea denial, which lay at the heart of the empire's continental strategy. Without capital ships and cruisers, United States and Great Britain would have no hope of conducting offensive operations in the waters of the Western Pacific. Numerical parity might also give the Imperial Navy superiority even against the combined Pacific fleets of the United States and Great Britain, especially in light of the growing Nazi threat. Hence, Japan would attempt to use the naval talks to tranquilize public opinion in the democracies as it prepared to break out of the treaties.

VII THE LONDON NAVAL CONFERENCE OF 1935-1936 AND ITS AFTERMATH

I.

PRELIMINARIES

Great Britain and the United States had begun to plan early for the London Naval Conference of 1935. In March of 1934, Ramsay MacDonald proposed to Norman Davis, who would soon become America's chief delegate at the naval talks, that the United States and Great Britain meet in advance to work out a common front should Japan's demand for parity materialize. President Roosevelt agreed wholeheartedly. He, Davis, and Secretary of State Hull believed that Anglo-American cooperation stood the best chance not only of pressuring Japan to remain within the treaty system, but also of laying blame squarely on the Japanese should the Second London Naval Conference fail. 1 To placate Conservative members of the National Government advocating appeasement in the Pacific, MacDonald also invited Japan to participate in the talks at London scheduled for June of 1934; Japan decided, however, not to participate until the fall. 2 Throughout June and July of 1934, high level British and American delegations met continuously in hopes of reaching a preliminary accord. Yet the negotiations revealed more differences than they settled. The Americans and the British divided on virtually the same issues that had caused controversy since the preliminaries to the Washington Conference. Great Britain wanted to increase significantly the number of auxiliary vessels permitted under the Washington and London naval treaties, but to reduce sharply the size and armaments of all warships, especially battle-

The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 ships and carriers. T h e United States wanted a treaty reducing the n u m bers of warships sharply, but not their size or armaments. 3 By the spring of 1934, the British Government had reluctantly accepted its admirals' argument that the Royal Navy needed at least 20 more cruisers to defend its worldwide trade routes than the 50 allowed under the London Naval Treaty of 1930. 4 Accordingly, the British delegation proposed that a new treaty permit the Royal and American Navies 70 cruisers each, totalling 562,000 tons. Hoping to save money, to offset a 60% increase in light cruiser strength, and to prevent the other naval powers from building ships individually superior to theirs, the British also proposed an extensive program of qualitative reductions. Each side would retain 15 battleships, but replacements would have a maximum displacement of only 25,000 tons (a cut of 10,000 tons from what the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 allowed), with guns no larger than 12 inches (a cut of 4 inches). For aircraft carriers, the Royal and American Navies would reduce their total tonnage to 110,000 tons, with a maximum displacement of 22,000 tons for each unit. 5 T h e British plan called, too, for phasing out large 8-inch gun cruisers. Each side could retain its present treaty allowance, but could build no additional or replacement ships of this type. Nor could the United States or Great Britain build more than ten 10,000-ton 6-inch gun cruisers each with its alloted cruiser tonnage. Any additional cruisers in excess of the present treaty allowances could not exceed 7000 tons each. T h e level of destroyer tonnage would depend on the fate of the submarine. If the forthcoming London Naval Conference abolished the latter, then the British and the Americans would reduce their total destroyer tonnage to 100,000 tons each. If a treaty reduced submarine allowances to 40,000 tons, then each side would retain 150,000 tons. If submarine allowances remain above 40,000 tons, each would retain an additional 50,000 tons of overage destroyers. Finally, the British proposed that the treaty should extend for ten years, contingent, of course, on Japan accepting the idea of quantitative limitation. 6 Although American naval planners now sympathized genuinely with the Royal Navy's demand for more cruisers, Great Britain's proposal clashed fundamentally with America's strategic requirements as the American Navy envisaged them. Because the United States lacked a worldwide array of bases and Japan remained the America's most probable antagonist, then the American Navy needed vessels possessing great range, firepower, and endurance. 7 Big ships could combine these characteristics

The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 better than small ones, especially big battleships, which, in the eyes of the General Board, remained the primary index of naval power. T h e American naval delegates thus objected foremost to Great Britain's proposals for reducing the size and armaments of battleships. 8 T h e General Board considered the 25,000-ton 12-inch gun design a veritable deathtrap: too slow, extremely vulnerable to air and submarine attack, undergunned, and incapable of withstanding punishment. Instead, it preferred to retain the Washington Treaty restrictions on individual battleship size and armaments: 35,000 tons with 16-inch guns. 9 Again, with the operational requirements of a transoceanic advance prominently in mind the Board also opposed eliminating the 8-inch gun cruiser. It opposed likewise restricting size and armaments of any additional cruisers above the levels of the London Naval Treaty (1930) to 7000 tons with 6-inch guns. 1 0 Having, however, designed the Yorktown class carriers with a 20,000-ton displacement and envisaging carriers primarily as auxiliaries, the Board inclined to accept Great Britain's proposal to cut aggregate carrier tonnage by 10% and the size of individual units to 22,000 tons. Also, the American Navy accepted the essentials of Great Britain's proposals regarding submarines and destroyers. 11 Great Britain's proposed increase in cruiser tonnage aroused even stronger opposition from President Roosevelt, who believed firmly that the "world situation" required "a reduction in armaments and not an increase." Partly out of expediency—to convince domestic opinion that the United States would do everything possible to avoid building more weapons— partly out of conviction, the President proposed a 20% reduction in the strength of the treaty powers within the framework of the Washington and London Naval Treaties. 12 Failing that, he would accept a treaty "providing for . . . at most the existing maximum tonnages with no change in ratios," although "we should use every effort for the first."1' Secretary Hull considered the British proposal "wholly unacceptable even as a basis of discussion," not only because it would provoke an arms race, but because, the Senate would reject any treaty that countenanced any increase in armaments. 1 4 T h e summer talks also revealed tensions within the British government and between the British and the Americans on how to deal with Japan. Whereas the Royal Navy advocated maintaining the 10:6 ratio with Japan, civilian leaders of the National Government preferred to leave open the possibility of appeasing Japan politically and in the naval realm. Stanley Baldwin, soon to become Prime Minister, Sir John Simon, Ramsay

The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 MacDonald, and Robert Craigie explained, in a series of private meetings with Norman Davis, why the British Cabinet remained ambivalent about whether to join the Americans against Japan on the ratio question. They emphasized, first, that the United States did not appreciate fully how the changes in world politics since the London Naval Conference of 1930 had vastly complicated Great Britain's strategic situation. Now, their argument ran, the Royal Navy faced not only a Japanese threat, but a growing German and Italian threat simultaneously. Ideally, Great Britain hoped for an alliance with the United States; then it would take strong action against Japan. America's withdrawal from the Philippines and America's passivity during the Manchurian crisis had raised serious doubts, however, about whether Great Britain could depend on the Americans. Confronted with the necessity of having to deal alone with growing threats in Europe and Asia simultaneously, Great Britain would have to give priority to the former. Meanwhile, Britain would have to avoid provoking a showdown with Japan. 15 President Roosevelt refused to consider any arrangement with Great Britain that "would constitute an alliance." 1 6 Nor did he accept the idea of increasing Japan's ratio, which he and his advisors considered tantamount to condoning Japan's violation of the Open Door, the Nine Power Treaty, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact. He believed, to the contrary, that maintaining the Washington and London ratios would deter further Japanese aggression in China and strengthen the hand of the Japanese moderates in their dealings with ultTanationalist militarists intent on dominating East Asia by force. 17 He also did not consider the treaty ratios menacing to Japan's naval supremacy in the Western Pacific, which he thought correctly those ratios ensured. 1 8 Actually, he hoped to reach an arms accord with Japan. W h e n , during the spring of 1934, Norman Davis, a congenital optimist on matters of naval limitation, suggested, in a rare moment of pessimism, that the United States consider ending the naval talks lest it condone Japan's violations of the Nine Power Treaty, the President declined even to consider it. 19 Nor, during the autumn of 1934, would he accept the advice of Stanley Hornbeck, Eugene Dooman, and other skeptics of naval limitation in the State Department's Far Eastern Division, who exhorted the President to embark on a concerted naval buildup way beyond treaty limits instead of reaching a naval agreement without which, in their view, the United States would be better off. 20 Rather, Roosevelt and most of his

The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 civilian advisors believed that America's potential power would suffice to deter further Japanese aggression and induce them to remain within the Washington Treaty system. T h e treaties did not give the American Navy the strength to deny Japan its Asian conquests, but did signal, in their view, America's resolve to build up that capacity should the need arise. 21 In late July 1934, the British decided to suspend the preliminary talks until the autumn, when Japan would be ready to participate. 22 Any quantitative agreement hinged on Japan's demands. When the tripartite negotiations opened on 24 October 1934, the British and the Americans still remained divided on how to deal with Japan's demand for parity. T h e President continued to oppose any upward revision of the Washington and London force levels or ratios. For "he was unwilling to sign a treaty or submit a treaty to the Senate or the people which carried with it an increase of one ton over the total figures now appearing in the Washington or London Naval Treaty." 2 ' Nor, at the outset, had the President altered his basic outlook about the priorities for the naval talks. He still hoped for a 20% reduction in the fleets of the treaty powers in accordance with the existing ratios. As a last resort, he would settle for an extension of the Washington and London Treaties force levels and ratios. Similarly, he continued to prefer no agreement at all to the alternatives of merely agreeing to qualitative limitation or increasing Japan's ratio. If Japan remained intransigent, he sought a united front with Great Britain, so that public opinion would hold Japan solely responsible for the breakdown of the talks. 24 The British delegation entered the autumn talks without any consensus on how to deal with the Japanese: Simon and Chamberlain still advocated accommodation with Japan, politically and on the ratios, regardless of America's opposition. MacDonald and First Sea Lord Erye Monsell argued, conversely, that the British must stand with the Americans. T h e Admiralty opposed appeasing Japan on the ratios or alienating the United States, but remained adamant on the need to increase British cruiser tonnage above the Washington and London Treaty force levels. Virtually all major British decisionmakers believed, however, that an agreement preserving qualitative limitation was better than no agreement at all. 25 Anticipating, correctly, a deadlock between the Japanese and the Americans, civilian members of the British delegation hoped to mediate, and, if necessary, reach a compromise accord with the following aims in descending order of preference: an agreement to limit building programs; an

The London Naval Conference of 1935—1936 agreement to preserve the nonfortification agreements and qualitative limitation; or failing all that, an agreement to preserve the provision for giving notice of the laying down of new ships. 26 Neither the British nor the American position stood a chance of satisfying the Japanese. Foreign Minister Hirota explained frankly to Prince Saonji, in July of 1934, that the government had decided to abrogate and break out of the Washington and London Naval Treaties no matter "how much other powers agree with our proposals. " 2 7 The Japanese delegation came to the autumn talks not to reach agreement, but to prolong the naval discussions as long as possible, to blur the responsibility for naval limitations' collapse, and to anesthetize public opinion in the democracies. In this way, the Okada Cabinet hoped to avoid provoking the United States into responding with a major naval building program of its own. 28 Also, the Cabinet hoped to keep Great Britain and the United States apart. The Japanese drafted their proposals and negotiated accordingly. Deceptively, in early October of 1934, Foreign Minister Hirota assured the Americans that "Japan had no intention of building a fleet as large as Great Britain's or the United States'." 29 The Japanese Government also determined likewise to veil its demand for numerical parity by calling for deep reductions in the naval forces of all treaty powers and the abolition of all offensive weapons (i.e., battleships, aircraft carriers, and 8-inch gun cruisers). The cabinet instructed the Japanese delegation to propose a "common upper limit" on fleet tonnage, "fixed as low as possible," within which "each power would be free to equip itself for its defensive needs." 5 0 If, as expected, the British and the Americans rejected the abolition of offensive vessels, then Japan would propose to reduce their numbers, size, and armaments dramatically: capital ships—28,000- to 30,000-ton displacement with a 14-inch gun; carriers—20,000 tons with a 6.1-inch g u n . " The autumn talks among the United States, Great Britain and Japan proceeded bilaterally. The Japanese and American talks soon became hopelessly deadlocked over ratios. The Japanese based their naval demands on two considerations: political and military. First, Ambassader Matsudaira, the civilian head of the Japanese naval delegation, explained Japan's demand for parity as a matter of prestige. Then Yamamoto argued that technical innovation had modified the relative security the Washington and London Naval Treaties had established. When Norman Davis asked Yamamoto to specify the innovations now imperiling Japan's security, the Admiral cited the greater range and increased speed of the "latest

The London Naval Conference of 1 9 3 5 - 1 9 3 6 naval vessels, plus improvements in naval aviation"—all of which "benefited the attacking more than the defending fleet." Under these conditions, "the treaties did not give Japan equal security," which formed the basis of Japan's demand for parity. Admiral Yamamoto also remained "unable to understand" why Japan's demand for parity "constituted a menace to the United States in its home waters," particularly since the Japanese plan called for the abolition of all offensive weapons. Did the American Navy want to enforce the Open Door in China? 3 2 These arguments failed to persuade the Americans. Norman Davis replied that equality of security did not require numerically equal navies. On the contrary, as he saw it, the Washington and London Treaties ensured Japan's absolute security in its home waters; whereas Japan's plan would menace the security of such outlying American possessions as Alaska and the Panama Canal. Nor, as Davis' remarks implied and the Japanese well knew, could the United States accept numerical parity and the abolition of so-called offensive weapons if it hoped to remain a power in the Orient. Davis added that the United States had conceded much more than Japan had to reach the Washington and London Treaties. T o Matsudaira's claim that the treaties affected Japan's prestige adversely, Davis replied that Japan ought to pursue a policy of cooperation, not confrontation, in China. " Then Admiral Standley rebutted Yamamoto's argument point by point. He was "at a loss" to understand Yamamoto's suggestions that the American Navy possessed a relatively large number of new ships. Indeed, he pointed out that since the Washington Conference, Japan had built considerably more naval vessels than the United States, as the "United States had refrained from new construction in the hopes that others could follow the lead. Nor, in his view, had technological innovations eroded the unassailable naval superiority the Washington and London Naval Treaties had given Japan in the waters of the Western Pacific. "While there has been an improvement in the method of attack, there has been corresponding improvement in the method of defense." Japan had more than kept pace with America's advances in naval aviation, which, "in combination with Japan's growing advantage in shore-based aviation, had actually improved relative security since Washington Conference." Admiral Standley did concede that numerical parity with Japan would not endanger America's security in its home waters, but argued that such parity would create insecurity for America's outlying pacific possessions because the United States faced two oceans and Japan just one." He dismissed the

T h e London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 idea, however, of arriving at a satisfactory definition of the terms "offensive" and "defensive" weapons: quoting Great Britain's First Sea Lord Eyre Monsell, Standley retorted that "a gun was offensive when one stood in front of it, and it was defensive when one stood behind i t . " ' 4 T h e Japanese and American delegations would repeat these arguments ritually for the next two years. Nor did the initial meeting between the British and Japanese delegations make much progress either. Although Simon explained sympathetically, his government desired to cooperate with Japan in East Asia and would consider favorably some sort of nonaggression pact with Japan, Great Britain could not agree to Japan's naval proposals: Great Britain faced worldwide responsibilities, British delegates pointed out, whereas Japan could concentrate its naval strength regionally. Equality in numbers thus would mean inequality of security, to Great Britain's grave disadvantage. T h e British also rejected Yamamoto's distinction between offensive and defensive weapons. Instead, the British proposed that Japan accept the existing ratios, sharp reductions in size and armaments of warships, and the abolition of the submarine. T h e Japanese rejected these arguments, although Yamamoto assured the British that only the size of the American Navy concerned Japan. T o entice the British further, Yamamoto dangled the possibility of fixing the common upper limit at higher levels to accommodate Great Britain's security needs. He and Matsudaira insisted, however, that Japan's decision to denounce the Washington Treaty remained final. Nor, they reiterated, would Japan accept qualitative limitation alone. 5 5 Having, by early November of 1934, reached an impasse with the Japanese on the matters of ratio and extending the Washington Treaty, the British and the Americans debated on what to do next. Simon and Baldwin remained inclined to seek accommodation with Japan and raise its ratio slightly, although not to parity. Also, the British delegation remained convinced that qualitative limitation and the retention of the nonfortification agreements, otherwise known as the middle course, was better than no limitation at all. Invoking the analogy of the AngloGerman naval race preceding World War I, Simon warned the Americans that "historically, unrestricted naval races begin as to complete want of limitation as to sizes. . . . T h e increased expenditure in our own history arose in this way. T h e dreadnought, for instance, started an entirely new level of which went around the world." Admiral Chatfield also brought up to Standley the importance of extending the Washington Treaty's

The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 provisions that required each country to notify the other about its building plans. "This was a very important provision to retain regardless of what happened with quantitative limitation," according to Chatfield, "since it avoids the necessity of each country having to leam about the other's plans through the press. " ' 6 President Roosevelt and Standley agreed with Chatfield on the importance of retaining the notification provision of the treaties. O n 14 November 1934, the President wrote to Hull that even if the conference breaks up, he should consider obtaining "some type of agreement that the Washington and London Treaties completely terminate none of the three nations will lay down ships without formal notice to otheT nations," because "full publicity of construction will be conducive to some future limitation and also it will perhaps make unnecessary the expenditure of large sums for naval intelligence purposes. " 5 7 The President raged, however, over Great Britain's endeavors to play the middleman between Japan and the United States.' 8 Nor, thanks largely to the adamancy of his Secretary of State, would the President accept any increase in Japan's ratio. To do so, in Hull's view, would sanction Japan's systematic violations of the Washington Agreement. Hull advocated instead a "termination of the present conversations on a clearcut basis of a Japanese denunication of the treaty . . . to convince the militarist in Japan that intransigence doesn't pay." In this way, the United States would only maintain its normal position, but also "stimulate Japan to take a new initiative. " T h e reports of Ambassador Grew convinced him that a strong American stand would force Japan to back down eventually because it could not afford a naval race. 39 T h e President agreed that "Japan was bluffing." 4 0 So did Admiral Standley, who predicted confidently that "the Japanese would crawl back" if the Americans and the British refused to compromise. 4 1 If, Hull worried conversly, negotiations continued even after Japan had determined to abrogate the treaties, this would confuse American domestic opinion and undermine support for further naval building. Hull worried particularly about the impact of Senator Nye, who had come out in support of Japan's demand for naval parity: Senator Nye's recent espousal of the thesis that Japan is right in demanding equality of armaments may tend toward crystalizing a considerable segment of pacifist opinion throughout the country. This sentiment is vocal only in reference to the 5-5-3 slogan and of course does not appreciate the larger issues involved. W e realize, of

The London Naval Conference of 1935—1936 course, that it is exceedingly difficult adequately to set forth our position in such terms as would convince these pacifist elements without impugning Japanese actions and motives in terms which would not ease the situation. Nevertheless, the fundamental issues at stake have been obscured during the talks of the last six weeks and the unceasing efforts of Japanese propagandists have made some headway, which may be one reason for Matsudaira's desire to keep the conversations going and to prevent the actual breakdown with a clean break." 42 Great Britain and the United States compromised. By the end of November, the pro-Japanese group in the British Government had definitely lost out. T h e Admiralty had refused unequivocally to accept parity with Japan. More important, the Dominions, Laborites, Liberals, and even the majority of Conservatives objected fundamentally to any policy that did not make friendship with the United States the sine qua n o n . 4 ' The British agreed finally to break off the negotiations once Japan abrogated the Washington Treaty (at Great Britain's request, the Japanese had agreed to delay until 29 December). 44 President Roosevelt agreed, in return, to accept a recess rather than an adjournment following Japan's abrogation, which meant the Americans would resume the naval negotiations, just as the British hoped. 4 5 Also, the President had begun to waver on his opposition to an agreement that merely limited the size and armament of warships. 46 Following the advice of Standley and Davis, who argued that qualitative agreement along the lines the British proposed could help avert an arms race, the President acquiesced when Simon and MacDonald continued through the late fall to explore the possibilities of Japan accepting some variant of the Middle Course. 4 7 T h e Japanese remained adamant in their insistence on numerical parity and their opposition to quantitative arms limitation without a qualitative agreement. Nor would they agree to give notice of their building program either. All that Yamamoto would concede was to accept parity in stages (six years) and to allow Great Britain 150,000 more in light cruiser tonnage than either Japan or the United States. Great Britain refused. 48 O n 20 December 1934, the Americans and the British adjourned the talks. On 29 December, Japan gave formal notice that it had decided to terminate the Washington Treaty, effective 31 December 1936.

The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936

II. THE CONFERENCE Now the world had clear notice that Japan had decided to break out of the naval treaties and to race even harder. In the United States and Great Britain, however, civilian leaders remained convinced of the virtue and the necessity of continuing the naval talks. It would largely retTead old ground to recount the naval negotiations that took place between the recess of the autumn talks and the opening of the Second London Naval Conference in December of 1935. It suffices here to recapitulate the cardinal points and put events in proportion. By the autumn of 1935, President Roosevelt had decided to settle for qualitative agreement rather than to have no agreement at all. 49 Nor, despite the urgings of his naval and Far Eastern advisors, did the President accelerate the pace of his naval buildup to treaty limits, still scheduled for 1942 under the 1934 Vinson Bill. 50 Indeed, "only a failure to renew these treaties, or a renunciation of these treaties could change American policy," the President announced repeatedly, "and then only in the event that other nations exceeded limits provided by these treaties." 51 Meanwhile, Prime Minister Baldwin deferred any increases in naval building pending the outcome of the Second London Naval Conference. British civilian leaders continued likewise to pursue naval limitation even more zealously than the Americans, not only with the Japanese, but with the Nazis too. In June of 1935, without even consulting the French, despite Hitler's brazen violations of the military clauses, including the naval clauses, of the Treaty of Versailles, the British Government signed a naval agreement with Germany. T h e Anglo-German Naval Treaty allowed Germany to build up to 30% of Great Britain's capital ship strength. It also conceded Germany 65% of Great Britain's submarine strength; except that in extraordinary circumstances, which the Germans had the sole discretion to determine, Germany could have parity in submarines. In return, the Germans promised to cooperate with the British in their efforts to abolish the submarine and agreed not to resort to unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant ships. Not only did the Anglo-German Naval Agreement demoralize the French, but Germany violated its terms systematically. 52 Meanwhile, Great Britain continued to push for a qualitative agreement with Japan along the lines the British delegation proposed at the autumn 1934 talks. Felicitiously, the ardently pro-American Anthony

The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 Eden would replace Sir Samuel Hoare as Foreign Secretary by the opening of the Second London Conference. Hoare's departure ended further speculation about appeasing Japan on the ratios. " What prompted President Roosevelt to drop his demand for qualitative limitation as a necessary condition of a naval agreement? Why did not the Americans and the British step up their building programs in the face of Japan's abrogation of the Washington Treaty and the deteriorating conditions in Europe? Why did British and American civilian leaders continue to attach such great importance to maintaining some type of naval limitation in such inhospitable circumstances? Again, President Roosevelt had several distinct, although interrelated, motives for his actions. First, the President continued to worry about the domestic political costs of embarking on a major naval buildup and ending the treaties. T h e anticipated reaction of Senator Nye and his fellow progressive Isolationists in Congress continued to loom large in the President's calculations, although, curiously, the president seems to have underestimated the popular support for naval building. 5 4 If the United States persisted in demanding quantitative limitation, the President feared, too, that the American people would blame him for the collapse of naval limitation. 55 Conversely, accepting Great Britain's qualitative demands offered several advantages. Tactically, a common Anglo-American front would shift the blame on Japan should the Conference fail. Domestically, the President's willingness to compromise would demonstrate to the American people how genuinely his administration wished to preserve arms limitation and avoid an arms race. Gradually, although not unequivocally, the President had begun to recognize the community of interests between Great Britain and the United States, particularly in respect to the Far East, which, in his view, an Anglo-American arms accord could facilitate. 56 His actions also stemmed from his intense desire to prevent an arms race. If naval limitation collapsed and the United States initiated a buildup beyond treaty limits, Roosevelt feared that Japan would have no choice but to respond in kind. More arms would produce more fear, not more security, which in turn would provoke another action-reaction cycle, more tension, more spending, and perhaps, ultimately, war. 5 7 By late 1935, then. President Roosevelt considered the actual reduction in naval weaponry the best alternative, not only to avert a naval race, but impress the "man on the street." 5 8 Again, he proposed the maintenance

The London Naval Conference of 1955—1936 of existing force levels and ratios as the next best alternative. O n second thought, however, he decided to settle for a temporary qualitative agreement rather than no agreement at all, because, in his view, it could prevent a naval race until a better opportunity arose to achieve quantitative naval limitation and reductions. Even if Japan did not formally sign on, the President hoped that such an agreement would serve as an example to the rest of the world to practice similar restraint. 59 Nor did Japan's abrogation of the treaties persuade him that accelerating the pace of the America's naval buildup was necessary. Even his most hawkish Far Eastern advisors, who advocated military preparedness, continued to believe that a strong American stand on the ratio question would force Japan to modify its naval demands eventually. T h e President and Davis remained even more optimistic that Japan would not start a naval race. 60 Also, the public utterances of Japanese statesmen during 1935 gave just enough credence to the President's wishful thinking to make it plausible. 61 Thus, even if Japan walked out of the Second London Naval Conference, the President determined not to build above treaty limits or to accelerate the pace of America's buildup to those limits in the hope that Japan would reciprocate. 62 A similar interplay of idealism and expediency prompted Britain's pursuit of further naval limitation and its reluctance to build up to the Royal Navy, although strategic weakness played a greater part than on the American side. T h e demands of an expanding welfare state at home and of meeting the German air threat abroad set real and significant constraints to what the Government could spend on naval defense. 6 3 Moreover, developments abroad during 1935 further exposed the gap between Great Britain's commitments and its resources. In the spring, Germany repudiated the military clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. Meanwhile, Japan further consolidated its dominant position in North China. In the fall, Italy precipitated a Mediterranean crisis by invading Ethiopia. British civilian leaders not only felt that the nation lacked the resources to deal with the German, Japanese, and Italian threats simultaneously; most still considered the dictators appeasable. 64 Most recoiled, too, at the prospect of engaging in a spiralling arms race, which, in their view, had caused the First World War and wars in general. Indeed, British statesmen envisaged the Anglo-German naval agreement as a way of averting an Anglo-German naval race and preventing history from repeating itself; whereas the Admiralty found the agree-

T h e London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 ment attractive because Germany had accepted a ratio less than what it possessed during the Great War and had agreed not to resort to submarine warfare. 65 The cause of further arms limitation with Japan continued to have an even broader constituency than arms limitation with Germany. Advocates of appeasement continued to invoke the Nazi threat to justify reaching a naval accord with Japan, although, in truth, this group had no intention of building up against or confronting Hitler either. So did many AntiAppeasers, although it was out of genuine fear of the Nazis as the greater of the two evils. 66 If, on the eve of the Second London Naval Conference, British and Americans civilian leaders remained hopeful about potentialities of naval limitation, if their attitudes and actions reflected and encouraged the great expectations of their electorates, to whom they remained willing hostages, then at least they had managed to achieve their long sought common front. T h e British and Americans agreed not only on tactics, but the objectives for the conference. First, the conference would discuss quantitative limitation. T h e British and the Americans had not worked out the numbers, but agreed that any such agreement should retain the existing ratios. If the Japanese, the French, and the Italians would not accept the old ratios, the discussion would shift to qualitative limitation. If Japan would not accept qualitative limitation either, then the United States, Great Britain, and possibly the other treaty powers, would reach a qualitative accord with an escalator clause allowing for building above treaty limits should a nontreaty power exceed them first. Privately, Great Britain and the United States also agreed to maintain Anglo-American parity and to construct enough ships to maintain the 5:3 ratio over Japan. 6 7 The first phase of the conference ended quickly and predictably, with the failure to achieve any quantitative limitation. Neither France, nor Italy, nor Japan would agree to continue the Washington Treaty ratios. T h e French continued to regard parity with Italy unacceptable, because, in their view, it would give the Italians superiority in the Mediterranean, a region vital to France. Also, the French considered the existing ratios did not give them a sufficient margin of superiority over Germany, especially in light of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement. T h e Italians continued, for their part, to demand parity with the French as the irreducible minimum. Nor, although it participated actively at the conference, would Italy agree to any qualitative limitation until France and Great Britain lifted the sanctions imposed for the invasion of Ethiopia. 68

The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 Japan's position and justifications for it remained unchanged: Admiral Nagano, Japan's replacement as chief naval delegate, reiterated that his government would accept nothing less than full numerical parity with the United States based on the common upper limit. Instead, he proposed to eliminate all offensive vessels, or failing that, to reduce their numbqjs sharply. Again, the Japanese insisted on numerical parity as the sine qua non of any agreement. When the British and the Americans refused to concede this after nearly a month of repetitious and futile argument, Japan announced its withdrawal from the conference (16 January 1936). 69 Foreign Minister Hirota repeated his assurances to Norman Davis, however, that Japan had no intention of starting a naval race. 70 At this point the United States, Great Britain, and France proceeded to reach a qualitative accord that established significant restrictions, but had numerous escape clauses. T h e first part of the London Naval Treaty of 1936 defined the various types of warships. T h e second and most important part contained the qualitative limitations. Capital ships could not exceed 35,000 tons displacement. Nor could their guns exceed 14 inches, contingent on Japan and Italy accepting this reduction no later than 1 April 1937. Otherwise, the maximum would increase to 16 inches. Carriers could not exceed 23,000 tons, their guns 6.1-inches. T h e treaty also provided for a six-year building holiday in heavy cruisers, that is, cruisers with displacements in excess of 10,000 tons. T o prevent the construction of a hybrid type warship combining the features of a cruiser and capital ship, the treaty prohibited the construction of warships between the displacements of 8000 and 17,500 tons. Part III of the treaty required each of the parties to give advance notice to the others about the particulars of its annual construction program and the characteristics of its ships building. Part IV contained more general safeguard and escalations clauses. If any nation not a party to the treaty built vessels with displacements or armaments in excess of treaty limits, each party could do the same upon three months notice to and prior consultations with the other parties. If any party deemed their national security materially affected by a change of circumstance, such party could increase its previously announced program of naval construction; but such additional ships would have to conform to the treaty's restrictions. Part V left the treaty open to accession by Japan and Italy. It provided, too, that the treaty would remain in force until December 1942, with preliminary consultations to begin in 1940 for a naval conference in 1941. 71 Norman Davis summed up the Roosevelt administration's reaction

The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 when he told reporters that "we had done better than we expected." 72 The American public also reacted favorably to the treaty. 75 Walter Lippmann, later a bitter critic of the naval treaties, went further than most in describing the London Naval Treaty of 1936 as a "little masterpiece." 71 Even so, the Roosevelt administration, the Senate, and evidently most Americans shared Lippmann's optimistic assumptions: that Japan would dare not engage the United States in a concerted naval race; that the Japanese could not keep secret any building program; that they could not build beyond treaty limits without provoking an immediate American response "over and above" the 5:3 ratio; that the treaty was "an excellent arrangement for discouraging naval competition"; that, faced with the treaty, the Japanese, Germans, and Italians would sign on eventually. 75 The Senate ratified the Treaty on 19 May 1936 by voice vote. 76 Ratification took longer in Great Britain, because the government wished first to work out a naval pact with the Soviet Union and an addendum to the Anglo-German Naval Pact that Soviet heavy cruiser building necessitated. Essentially, domestic reaction paralleled that in the United States; only Winston Churchill and a small group of his supporters protested the government's decision to settle for a 14-inch gun on British battleships. Nor did the treaty encounter any serious opposition in France. 77

III. B R E A K D O W N A N D B R E A K O U T Again, events confounded American hopes and expectations for naval arms limitation. The record highlights, too, how political asymmetries between open and closed societies put the former at a disadvantage in the naval arms limitation process: where President Roosevelt would have paid a high price domestically for building above treaty limits without full and unequivocal evidence that Japan had done the same, the Japanese government operated under no such constraint. Indeed, the Japanese took advantage of these asymmetries to secure a head start in the post-treaty naval race. The Washington Treaty and the London Naval Treaty of 1930 had expired on 31 December 1936, with Japan determined to build the numbers and types of ships heretofore banned by treaty. The Imperial Navy had planned its breakout from the treaties carefully long in advance of their expiration. In the summer of 1936, the government settled on an Imperial Defense Policy that accepted the belligerent and expansionist policies of both services. The government agreed, for the Navy's part, to retain the United States as the nation's primary enemy, to initiate a major

The London Naval Confeience of 1935-1936 naval race with the Americans, and to begin expanding southward against the territorial possessions of Great Britain, the Netherlands, and France. It agreed, for the Army's part, to embark on a major buildup against the Soviet Union and to cooperate with the Nazis. 78 Secretly, in March 1937, Japan launched a major naval buildup above and beyond the qualitative and quantitative limits of the naval treaties. This Third Naval Replenishment Program provided for the construction of 14 more naval air squadrons and 66 warships: 2 monster battleships, the Yamato and the Musachi; 2 aircraft carriers, the Shokaku and the Zuikaku, displacing 26,500 tons each, nearly 3000 tons above the limits of the Second London Treaty and over 5000 tons larger than America's newest carriers; 18 destroyers; 14 submarines; and 34 auxiliary vessels. Under this program, the Imperial Navy also accelerated the already impressive pace of qualitative innovation. T h e Shokaku and the Zuikaku had the capacity to carry 96 aircraft each and possessed extraordinary speed (34 knots). 79 At the same time, the Japanese government sought successfully to conceal the particulars and the dimensions of their naval buildup to delay an American buildup of their own. 8 0 President Roosevelt obliged. Even after the Japanese abrogated the naval treaties and walked out of the London Naval Conference of 1936, the United States continued for more than 18 months to abide unilaterally by the terms of the Washington and London Naval Treaties. Nor, during this time, would the President agree to step up the pace of naval building even to treaty limits, which, under the 1934 Vinson Bill, the United States would not reach until 1942. Instead, he proposed, for 1937, to build only 8 destroyers and 4 submarines. 81 In November of 1936, President Roosevelt proposed his neutralization schemes for the Mid-Pacific islands, which would have made American naval operations in the waters of the Western Pacific practically impossible. 82 T h e President and the State Department took the lead in opposing any fortification of America's bases in the Western Pacific heretofore prohibited by article XIX of the Washington Naval treaty. Similarly, the administration still declined to press Japan on the rumors that it had begun fortifying the Mandated islands of the Western Pacific in violation of its treaty obligations. 85 Nor, initially, would the administration press the Japanese on the rumors that the Yamatos vastly exceeded the treaty limits. 84 W h e n , in July 1937, the Japanese still refused to assure the administration that they would abide by the 14-inch limit, the President determined that the United States would exercise its option under the treaty to mount 16-inch

The London Naval Conference of 1955-1936 guns on its new battleships. Yet the President waited until the spring of 1938 to authorize an increase in the size and number of warships above treaty limits. Even then, the treaty powers underestimated the size and gunpower of the Yamatos, which they assumed displaced 45,000 tons each and carried only 16-inch guns. Thus, the United States, Great Britain, and France agreed, in May 1938, not to build their new battleships larger or more powerfully armed than that. 8 5 T h e Roosevelt administration's unilateral self-restraint stemmed from the same considerations motivating the President to pursue naval limitation so actively in the first place. Even after 1936, President Roosevelt and his State Department continued to worry, with good reason, that building above treaty limits would arouse intense domestic opposition among pacifists and Isolationist supporters of his domestic agenda. 8 6 Also, major naval buildup still ran against the President's fear of provoking an arms race, which he considered "the real root of world disease and war," his high regard for the naval treaties as "stabilizing force," and his conception of America's limited stakes in the Far East. 87 In this environment, the treaties seemed to form a psychological barrier to a major naval buildup for the American public, Congress, and the President. Or as Captain Schuirmann, a key advisor to Admiral Standley at the London Naval Conference of 1935-1936, ruefully put it in the spring of 1937: "The sooner we dropped the idea of treaty strength, now that the treaty has lapsed, the better it would be. T h e public seems to think that there is a treaty and cannot get it through their head that there is no quantitative limit on navies." 8 8 Wishful thinking and the tendency to assume American logic mirrored others' reinforced the President's convictions on the virtues of unilateral restraint. Throughout 1937, the President remained confident that Japan lacked the will or the resources to engage the United States in a concerted race. 89 His advisors dismissed as "bluff" rumors that Japan had determined to build battleships exceeding the 35,000-ton 16-inch gun limit. Hull, Davis, and Hornbeck advised the President not to build American battleships with "18-inch guns," because that would "initiate a naval race." Davis even wanted to retain the 14-inch limitation, because Japan might even build a 50,000-ton ship "if we decided on a larger gun." Although Davis' instincts for forbearance proved too much for the President, the administration remained hopeful that America's unilateral adherence to treaty limits would prompt the Japanese to reciprocate eventually. 90 Neither the President nor the vast majority of Americans would counte-

The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 nance an acceleration of America's naval buildup or building above treaty limits without full and unequivocal evidence that Japan had done so first. Recall, from chapter 4 that the United States lacked such evidence thanks to a combination of poor intelligence and the closed nature of Japan's political system. Indeed, judging from the archival record, the United States lacked even basic circumstantial evidence about Japan's Third Replenishment Program. American naval attachés complained bitterly of how little they knew, about the particulars of the Japanese buildup, because of the secrecy of Japan's budgetary proceedings in the Diet and the impenetrability of Japanese shipyards. 91 T h e n , too, Japanese civilian leaders continued to dissemble about their naval program. True, the Japanese rebuffed repeatedly American requests to disclose their naval program or to adhere unofficially to the naval treaties. Throughout 1937— 1938, however, they did deny any intention to exceed the qualitative or quantitative limits of the treaty. 92 This lack of solid evidence about Japanese naval building compounded the reluctance of the President to provoke a domestic controversy or an international showdown with Japan that he wished to avoid anyway; pari passu, the importance the administration and most Americans still attached to the treaties inclined the administration to be optimistic in its interpretation of partial and ambiguous evidence. 9 ' T h e Roosevelt administration's unilateral adherence to the treaties during 1937-1938, not only reflected, but seemed to reinforce and prolong, America's aversion to naval building. Finally, President Roosevelt abandoned his policy of unilateral adherence to the treaties under the cumulative weight of continued Japanese evasions, the outbreak of a full-scale Sino-Japanese War following the Marco Polo Bridge incident of July 1937, and Japan's bombing of the American gunboat Panay on 12 December 1937 as Japanese forces advanced on Nanking. In the winter of 1938, he instructed Congressman Vinson to introduce a bill raising the authorized strength of the Navy 20% above treaty limits. T h e President still proceeded cautiously. O n 17 May 1938, the Second Vinson Bill became law, but not before the President made a final unavailing plea to the Japanese to disclose information about their shipbuilding programs. 94 Even then, American naval building remained modest, especially in relation to the Japanese building program. As of 1939, the General Board envisaged building only 4 new carriers for the entire decade of the 1940s. Two of these new 27,000-ton Essex class carriers would merely replace

The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 the Lexington and the Saratoga. Instead, the Navy and Congress chose to give priority to replacing overage battleships and increasing the number of American battleships from IS to 18 as authorized under the Second Vinson Bill. T h e United States thus contemplated increasing its number of carriers and battleships by only 2 and 3 respectively above what it possessed under the Washington and the London Naval Treaties. Moreover, the Yamato class battleships also vastly exceeded the size and capability of the 45,000-ton Iowa.95 Nor did the program called for under the Second Vinson Bill more than keep pace with japan's building program. In 1939, Japanese responded by launching a Fourth Naval Replenishment Program, 83 warships in all, including 2 battleships and a carrier, which nearly equaled the size of the American program called for in the Second Vinson Bill. 96 T h e result was, in the words of eminent naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison, "the rapid deterioration of the American total strength, relative to the Imperial Navy's, from the beginning of the limitation treaties in 1922 to the outbreak of war in 1941. . . . Japan's total tonnage had risen (from 50%) to 81 percent of ours. Since we had to fight in the Atlantic as well as in the Pacific and because of our great inferiority of overseas bases, the Japanese Navy was then substantially superior to ours in the Central and Western Pacific Ocean." 9 7 T h e collapse of the Allied position in Europe and the American Navy's menacing reports about the growth of Japan's naval strength shocked the President and Congress into approving a major naval buildup aimed at providing for a two-ocean Navy with a genuine transoceanic offensive capability. In June of 1940, Congress approved and appropriated moneys for a Third Vinson Plan calling for the construction of 3 aircraft carriers, 8 cruisers, 52 destroyers, and 32 submarines, having a total of 400,000 tons. Upon completion of this construction program, the United States would have a fleet totalling nearly 2,100,000 tons, with 23 battleships. T h e bill also provided for 6,000 aircraft. Less than a month later, Congress approved the Stark Plan authorizing an increase in Navy planes to 15,000 and a 70% increase in the total tonnage of naval vessels: 250 ships in all, including five 60,000ton battleships, 19 carriers, six 27,500-ton battle cruisers, 150 destroyers, and 60 submarines. In less than two months, then, Congress had authorized double the number of ships the United States had built since the end of World War I. 9 8 Eventually, this massive building program would wipe away Japan's transitory naval advantage that it had secured thanks to a steady buildup

The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 during the duration of the treaties, a clandestine breakout thereafter, and unilateral restraint on America's part. As of 1941, however, the American building program had begun only barely to reverse the adverse trends in the naval balance. Collectively, the Japanese fleet still maintained better than an 8:10 ratio with that of the United States. T h e Imperial Navy still had more and better carriers and carrier aircraft than the American Navy, too. Belatedly, in July of 1941, President Roosevelt reversed four decades of policy by ordering the War Department to make the Philippines impregnable, but it was too l a t e . " Worse, the United States could not expect more than token aid from Great Britain in the event of war with Japan. Throughout the late 1930s, British civilian leaders delayed initiating a major naval buildup for many of the same reasons as the United States: the convictions of appeasers, particularly Prime Minister Chamberlain; budgetary scarcity; the priority of funding the rapidly expanding welfare state; faith in the possibilities of arms limitation by example. What resources the British allocated for defense went primarily to meeting the German air threat. By 1939, the Royal Navy would have had trouble merely contending with the combined German and Italian fleets. T h e fall of France in June of 1940, the loss of the French Navy, and Italy's declaration of war made transformed Great Britain's strategically difficult position in the Far East into an impossible one. If London sent even an inadequate fleet to Singapore, then this would leave the Italian Fleet dominant in the Mediterranean and perhaps allow the Italians to reinforce the German fleet, using bases in the north of France. Wisely, the government decided to concentrate the fleet in European waters to meet the German and Italian threat. 100 Although, in December of 1941, Winston Churchill determined to send Prince of Wales and the Repulse to Singapore in a last ditch effort to deter the Japanese, this token force of two battleships did not stand a chance against the Imperial Navy. The security of Great Britain's Far Eastern empire depended exclusively, by this time, on the deterrent effect of the American battlefleet on Japan. Worse still, the fall of France and Great Britain's precarious struggle for survival meant that the United States might have to face the Axis powers alone. T h e President would have to divert at least part of an already inadequate Pacific Fleet to defend the Atlantic should Great Britain fall. Even if Great Britain survived, which American naval planners thought doubtful circa the fall of 1940, the United States would need to use at least part of the fleet for convoying Great Britain essential

The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 supplies for its desperate struggle against Hitler's unrestricted U-boat campaign. President Roosevelt remained more optimistic about Great Britain's chances of survival than his admirals. By 1940, he and his advisors had come to envisage Germany, Italy, and japan as a gang of bandit states intent on mounting a global challenge to the rule of law, a conviction the Tripartite Pact of 27 September 1940 among Germany, Japan, and Italy strengthened immeasurably. Correspondingly, the President had come to envisage Great Britain's survival as essential to America's security. He and his advisors considered Germany as the primary threat. 101 T h e administration devised America's warplanning and priorities accordingly. Already, by 1938, a growing recognition of the gap between America's capabilities and objectives had prompted the Joint Board to abandon the short-war scenario of Orange. Instead, the revised plan called for a prolonged step-by-step advance across the Pacific, which forshadowed the island-hopping campaign the United States would employ during the Pacific War. By 1940, the United States had abandoned its traditional preoccupation with the Japanese threat. Admiral Stark's Plan Dog called for the Navy to adopt a purely passive and defensive posture in the Far East, while the United States waged an unlimited war in the Atlantic against the Nazis. Ultimately, however, the President and his advisors would not accept a totally passive policy vis-á-vis Japan in the Far East. Indeed, despite the warnings of American naval planners, the Presi-

TABLE 2 Naval Strength as of December 7, 1941102 Capital Ships Britain a n d D o m i n i o n s (Pacific) Royal Netherlands Navy (Pacific) U . S . Asiatic Fleet U.S. Pacific Fleet Total Allied Strength (Pacific)

Aircraft Carriers

2

Heavy

Light

Cruisers

Cruisers

Destroyers

Submarine

4

13

6

1

3 2

29 27

8

3

12

9

7 13 67

15

10

3

17

27

93

71

Imperial Japanese Navy

10

10

18

20

112

65

Total U . S . Strength

17

7

18

19

171

112

The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 dent and Secretary Hull accepted the British argument that the loss of their Asian Empire could drive Great Britain out of the war. 103 T h e Roosevelt administration's decision to define Great Britain's Asian empire as a vital interest cast the problem of Ghina in a new light. So did the linkage the administration had come to draw between the Nazi war aims in Europe and Japan's ambitions to establish a New Order in the Far East. Previously, despite their professed and genuine sympathies for China's plight, the President and the American public dismissed America's stakes in Asia as too limited to risk a war with Japan. Up until 1941, the United States had done little more than protest Japan's incursions in China other than to embargo aviation fuel, scrap iron, and steel. Now, the gap between America's capabilities and war plans, on one hand, and the objective of defending Britain's Asian empire, on the other, meant "that the United States needed China as much as China needed the United States." 104 The President and his civilian advisors worried that China's collapse would mean that Japan could dispatch many of its one million troops now tied down there for its Southward campaign. In the waning days of peace (November 1941), then, the Roosevelt administration determined to insist on making Japan's adherence to the Nine Power Treaty as the sine qua non of any settlement, not for China's sake, but for Great Britain's. 105 Meanwhile, in the summer of 1941, the administration retaliated for Japan's move into Indo-China by cutting off the supply of fuel oil vital to the Japanese Navy. To deter Japan from further aggression, the Roosevelt administration stationed a fleet in Pearl Harbor too small to defeat the Imperial Navy, but too large for it to ignore. 106 Hence, the Americans had decided to insist on restoring the status quo of 1931, just as Japan had attained a transitory but decisive superiority over the combined Pacific fleets of the Unite States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands. 107 For two decades, American naval planners had warned of the dangerous gap between America's capabilities and diplomacy in the Far East, which the American reaction to the naval treaties had codified and, to some extent, encouraged. Equally American civilian leaders had negotiated the naval treaties not according to the worst-scenario case, but based their case on the optimistic and fallacious assumption that the United States would not have to fight a two-ocean war. Nevertheless, President Roosevelt and his advisors reminded confident to the end that a combination of America's economic power and potential naval power would suffice to deter Japan. They were wrong. 108

The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 Was Japan's taansitoiy but decisive "maigin of naval superiority," which America's belated naval buildup after the fiali of France finally menaced, one of the major reasons for Japan's decision to attack the United States in December of 1941? 109 Stephen Pelz argues compellingly yes. 110 True, as Pelz also points out, the naval balance alone does not suffice to explain why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. This decision sprang from a cumulative and interrelated chain of events and circumstances, which need only a brief recital here. O n e was the Japanese government's—actually the military's—determination to establish a Great East Asia Co-Prosperity sphere, a veritable Japanese empire spanning from Korea to Burma and from the Yangtse to the mid-Pacific. T h e Japanese invasion of China proper (1937) constituted but one part of that overall design. 111 When unexpectedly, the Japanese Army could not subdue China quickly and as an increasing number of troops became tied down in the fight to eliminate the nationalists, a southward advance looked increasingly tempting as a way of cutting China's supply lines from the south and restricting aid from the W e s t . " 2 Simultaneously, German victories of 1939-1940, Allied naval weakness in the Pacific, Axis diplomacy, and increasing dominance of Japanese extremists conspired together to embolden Japan even further. In July of 1940, Prince Konoye formed his second cabinet, a coalition determined to increase authoritarianism at home, win the war in China, and make use of the European war to expand in Asia, just as Japan had done during World War I. France had fallen, while Great Britain's situation looked desperate. T h e Konoye Government seized the initiative. In the summer of 1940, Japan forced Great Britain into closing the Burma Road, moved troops into Northern Indo-China, and pressed the Dutch East Indies for special concessions on Indonesian oil, which the Dutch refused to give. Similarly, German victories strengthened the hand of extremists who wished to make Japan an active member of the Axis. Although a dwindling minority of moderates remained opposed to cooperating with the Nazis for fear of antagonizing Great Britain and the United States, this group had no control of the government's decisions. Konoye's foreign minister Matsuoka, confident of a German victory, pushed hard for an alliance, lest Japan lose the opportunity to inherit the Asian colonies of Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands. Also, the Konoye Cabinet expected a pact with the Nazis would deter the United States from resisting a southern advance, improve relations with the Soviet Union, then Germany's ally, and, thus, secure Japan's northern flank. O n 27 September

The London Naval Conference of 1935—1936 1940, Japan, Germany, and Italy signed the Tripartite Pact. T h e pact pledged the signatories to come to each other's assistance if any signatory was attacked by a power not currently involved in the war (excluding the Soviet Union). 115 Thereafter, to be sure, the Japanese government retained its independence from Hitler's war aims and objectives. When, on 22 June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the Japanese government continued to observe the Russo-Japanese Neutrality Pact of 16 April 1941, despite the urging of Hitler and Foreign Minister Matsuoka that Japan attack the Soviets. The German invasion and the neutrality pact had secured Japan's northern flank for a southern advance that, as the Japanese government saw it, could end the stalemate in China. Moreover, the Japanese remembered vividly the thrashing their army had received in several fierce encounters with Soviet troops along the Manchurian border during 1938— 1939. 114 Yet German victories of 1939-1941 played a major part; first, in the Japanese government's decision to drive southward even at the risk of war with the United States; then, in prompting Japan to strike the Western powers when the combination of Japan's naval superiority and the Axis alliance failed to deter the United States from opposing its southward advance aimed at establishing the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. 115 When, in July 1941, Japan's move into Southern Indo-China provoked the Americans, the British, and the Dutch to freeze Japanese assets and impose an oil embargo, Japanese decision-makers faced a reckoning: Japan could not wage war in China for much longer or conduct a campaign against the West without a resumption of petroleum supplies from the East Indies. Nor, as Admiral Nagano explained at the Imperial Conference of 6 September 1941, would Japan retain for much longer the margin of naval superiority necessary to carry out its strategy. In July and August of 1941, the Navy General staff had concluded that Japan would have a reasonable chance for victory against the United States so long as it retained a 5:10 ratio. Japan's ratio would reach its peak strength relative to the United States at the end of 1941 (70%) according to their estimates, while Japan's favorable naval balance would decline steadily thereafter: Japan would have only 65 percent of American naval strength in 1942, 50 in 1943, and only 30 percent by 1944." Whether or not a larger American fleet could have deterred Japan by December of 1941 remains an open question." 6 Perhaps the extremists who had come to dominate Japanese politics

190

The London Naval Conference of 1 9 Î 5 - 1 9 Î 6 would never have accepted the humiliation of restoring the status quo of 1931, as the Americans demanded, regardless of the circumstances. Actually, Japan demanded much more than that. T h e government offered, in the fall of 1941, to withdraw Japanese troops from Southern IndoChina, but only if the United States promised to lift the embargo and abandoned the Nationalists. 117 Nevertheless, Pelz argues compellingly, and from the original Japanese sources, that Japan's military leaders thought that expansion was not only necessary, but possible. America's naval weakness had tempted Japan to advance southward during the summer of 1940 and again in the summer of 1941. Japanese naval planners also regarded the Imperial Navy's transitory but decisive naval superiority as a necessary if not sufficient condition for their decision and strategy to fight the United States. To be sure, many Japanese conceded the vast disparity between Japan and America's warmaking potential. In 1941, for example, Japan had just one tenth the productive capacity of the United States. Japanese decisionmakers counted, though, on several developments to balance out this disparity. 118 When, in the summer of 1941, Japan had determined to pursue its southern advance even at the risk of war, Japanese decisionmakers fully expected Germany to defeat the Soviet Union, an assessment American naval planners shared." 9 T h e logic of Japanese planners ran thus. Preoccupied with the European situation and facing a Nazi empire by 1941 massively predominate in Europe, the United States would lack the resources simultaneously to defeat Germany and launch an offensive in the Pacific. 120 First, the transitory but decisive naval superiority the Imperial Navy had in hand would neutralize the American battlefleet at Pearl Harbor with a devastating carrier attack. In the next six months, Japanese armed forces would conquer Thailand, Malaya, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, the Bismark Archipelago, Java, Sumatra, South Burma, G u a m and Wake. T h e n , Japan would not only have isolated China, but obtained the territories and the resources necessary to wage a protracted defensive war against the United States. By the time the Americans rebuilt their crippled battlefleet, the Japanese armed forces expected to have established a concentric ring from the Aleutians to Burma, which the United States could not force without a long and bloody war of attrition. Japanese planners believed that the Americans lacked the will or the stamina to fight this kind of war to the finish. Under Japanese naval planners' senario, the United States would sue for a compromise peace,

The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 letting Japan retain its Asian Empire, just as Russia had done in 1905 to end the Russo-Japanese war. 121 A few naval moderates remaining in the Imperial Navy, notably Admiral Yamamoto, the architect of the tactically brilliant but strategically disastrous decision to attack the United States at Pearl Harbor, feared that the government had underestimated the tenacity of the Americans, whose immensely superior resources and productive potential would overcome Japan in the event of a long war. By 1941, however, Yamamoto and his fellow moderates amounted only to a small, uninfluential minority. The Japanese military, especially the middle-echelon officers who dominated both services, initiated the Pacific War confident of success. 122 Commentators have rightly criticized Japanese strategy in retrospect. In what Sir George Sanson describes as Japan's greatest blunder, the attack on Pearl Harbor roused the American people to fight to the finish—the very kind of war Japanese strategists had counted on the Americans not fighting and which the Japanese could not win. 123 Japanese naval planners had decided, at the last minute, to abandon their traditional strategy of having the American Navy come to the Western Pacific on the grounds that the United States would respond to any attack on British possessions as an attack on itself. Taking this logic one step further, Admiral Yamamoto argued for eliminating the American battlefleet at Pearl Harbor to secure the flank of Japan's Southern Advance. 124 Yet, had Japan attacked only British and Dutch possessions, President Roosevelt would have found it difficult to persuade an Isolationist Congress to fight for Great Britain's Asian empire rather than to avenge Pearl Harbor. 125 Japan also did not make the long-term preparations necessary to defend its defensive ring in the Pacific. Dazzled by the Imperial Navy's swift and spectacular victories, Japanese decisionmakers dropped the idea of consolidating their gains and unwisely determined to extend Japan's Pacific perimeter. Nor, of course, did the Nazis win the war in Europe or even force a draw. 126 Similarly, the course of the Pacific War confounded the doctrinal and technical assumptions of Japanese naval planners and naval planners everywhere: carriers and submarines, not battleships, determined its outcome. If, however, Japanese decisionmakers miscalculated badly in their decision to attack the United States in December of 1941, the record makes equally clear that Japan's transitory but decisive naval superiority was a vital element underlying their miscalculation.

CONCLUSION

This study has argued that, notwithstanding its positive accomplishments, the process of naval limitation also had significant costs for the United States. True, the naval treaties contributed to improving Anglo-American relations during the interwar years. It also is wrong to view the treaties and the process of naval limitation as the main causes for the Anglo-American naval unpreparedness that emboldened Japan to embark on its expansionist course during the 1930s or for Japan's unwillingness to match the democracies' restraint in naval building. T h e treaties rested, however, on a fallacious set of assumptions about the causes and consequences of competition in naval armaments, the potential of new technologies and its implication for naval doctrine, the dynamics of Japanese politics, and, ultimately, Japan's strategic intentions. If Anglo-American naval unpreparedness mainly reflected other forces at work in the democracies during the interwar years besides the process of naval arms limitation, the American reaction to the treaties and Japan's steady buildup correspondingly combined to give the latter naval superiority in the waters of the Western Pacific, without which its predatory policy toward China and drive for hegemony in the Pacific would have remained unthinkable. Nor, because of the naval treaties, could Great Britain or the United States build the number and type of ships that best suited the Royal or American Navy's strategic needs. Instead, British and American delegates spent more than fifteen years using the naval arms limitation talks to reduce each other's fleet below levels that Great Britain and the United States had a common interest in maintaining. Japan took

Conclusion advantage of the lavish and illusory expectations the process of naval limitation epitomized and encouraged: first to effect, during the duration of the treaties (1921-1936), a substantial increase in its absolute and relative strength; then, after the treaties expired, to achieve its breakout from the Washington Treaty system. Nor, in my estimation, does the positive impact that naval limitation had on Anglo-American relations outweigh its serious liabilities. Would Anglo-American relations really have deteriorated without the naval treaties? Was an Anglo-American naval race really a serious possibility? Would the United States and Great Britain have become serious enemies without naval arms limitation? If the answer to these questions is yes, then perhaps the naval treaties were well worth the price. This study has argued, however, that the right answers to these questions is probably no: that those who judge the naval treaties a success have exaggerated not only the intrinsic seriousness of Anglo-American problems during the interwar years, but also the positive impact of naval arms limitation on the course of Anglo-American relations. The central problem in Anglo-American relations during the interwar years was not possibility of war between the two countries; it was whether the democracies had the will and the foresight to unite against Germany, Japan, and Italy in time. Then was the experiment with naval limitation during the interwar years a total mistake? No. To paraphrase historian Richard Leopold's perspicacious assessment: it made sense to experiment with naval arms limitation from 1922 to 1930, when détente prevailed among the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. Perhaps the Washington Naval Treaty even contributed somewhat to the détente of the 1920s, which it symptomized. Naval limitation became folly only when the United States and Great Britain persisted in their efforts even after world conditions changed manifestly for the worse. 1 These general remarks are a prelude to the narrative of this chapter, which has two parts. Part I restates this study's findings thematically. Part II suggests briefly some preliminary comparisons between interwar efforts to limit naval armaments and arms control in the nuclear age.

I.

FINDINGS

Five major themes have run through this study of the United States and naval arms limitation 1921-1938. The first is how constantly events

Conclusion confounded American civilian leaders' hopes for and their assumptions underpinning naval arms limitation. T h e treaties failed to achieve their intended goal of "positively ending the arms race" and freezing the naval balance indefinitely. Nor did the process of naval arms limitation even divert or mute the military competition symmetrically. T o cite the most important asymmetry: Japan kept building warships even when the United States slowed its building program. Indeed, the record of naval arms limitation falsified thoroughly American civilian leaders' mechanistic views about the cause and dynamics of the naval competition among the United States, Great Britain, and japan, which dominated their thinking about naval limitation and deployment throughout the interwar years. Military building by one nation did not necessarily trigger an escalating cycle of specific or immediate reactions by other nations. Specifically, the American naval building program did not keep pace with Japanese naval building between 1921 and 1938. Moreover, America's unilateral restraint in naval building not only failed to induce Japan to reciprocate, but may have tempted the Imperial Navy to engage in an unrestrained naval race, which increased the risk of war. Similarly, events confounded the optimistic political assumptions underpinning America's search for naval limitation. Comparing their logic to that of the Japanese, assuming that Japanese civilian leaders operated under similar domestic constraints as their American counterparts, American civilian leaders overestimated the influence, moderation, and the resiliency of the Japanese moderates. Correspondingly, they underestimated Japan's will and impulse for empire. If, as this study has argued, Japanese hostility toward the naval treaties did not cause, but merely reflected, the radicalization of Japanese politics and the policy of expansion that followed, then these developments confounded the expectations of Americans that naval arms limitation would strengthen the hand of Japanese moderates in their dealings with the militarists. Only the General Board dissented fundamentally from American civilian leaders' optimistic assumptions about Japan's strategic intentions and America's naval needs. Nevertheless, no group or individual had a monopoly on forsight or the lack of it. If the General Board and naval opinion generally assessed the trends in Japanese politics and their grave implications internationally more accurately than other decisionmakers, then naval planners made their share of miscalculations too. World War II in the Pacific exposed the fallacies of battleship supremacy and the Mahan-

Conclusion ian vision of a decisive encounter American decisionmakers had envisaged as the regnant doctrine underpinning the treaty system, naval operations, and weapons procurement. The second theme is the primacy of politics in naval arms limitation. No formula or yardstick sufficed in itself to bring about the naval limitation agreements. On the contrary, the record of naval limitation suggests strongly that arms limitation will fail without corresponding political détente. Détente made naval limitation possible during the 1920s, just as Japan's determination to dominate China made failure inevitable during the 1930s. Although the naval treaties did serve as a mechanism for achieving a historic transformation in Anglo-American relations, those who attribute the improvement in Anglo-American relations mainly to the naval treaties confuse cause for effect. Ultimately, Great Britain and the United States succeeded in ending their naval rivalry not because of naval arms limitation, but because they shared free institutions, open societies, complementary objectives, and had no intention of fighting one another. British and American civilians envisaged the naval talks as a negotiation between friends, not actual or potential adversaries. Even the American Navy attached great importance to democracy as an ameliorating condition in Anglo-American relations, just as American naval planners' image of the Japanese government as militaristic and authoritarian shaped their hostile assessment of Japan. 2 Parity, too, was at heart a political principle. Because of asymmetries in geography, force structures, goals, and commitments, it became impossible to devise an operational measure for parity between Great Britain and the United States. British and American naval experts not only disagreed with each other, but among themselves, about the number and types of weapons necessary to achieve parity—as the debates over the ratios and the relative merits of the 8-inch versus the 6-inch gun cruiser that spanned three naval arms conferences attest. The nature of international negotiations compounded the problem. Because forces in being played such a large part in shaping their outcomes, the naval treaties ratified the existing naval balance with only minor adjustments at the margins. Nor, because of the domestic dynamics of the negotiations to limit naval weapons, would either the United States or Great Britain accept de jure the numerical asymmetries both parties had easily tolerated in the past de facto. Thus, the British and the Americans had to settle, in stead, for numerical parity. The third theme is the difficulty of meshing with foreign policy objec-

Conclusion tives. Indeed, American civilian leaders failed utterly to reconcile U.S. political commitments in the Far East with American naval capabilities —either by scaling back U.S. political commitments accordingly, or by pushing for a navy capable of enforcing the Open Door in China and defending the Philippines. Instead, the Nine Power Treaty codified America's expansive interpretation of the Open Door, just as the naval treaties made their enforcement in practice out of the question. This adverse naval balance not only weakened the democracies in their dilatory efforts to stem Japan's aggression during the 1930s, but also contributed to the Imperial Navy's dramatic success at the outset of the Pacific War. True, in the United States particularly, the movement for naval arms limitation epitomized the public's deep antinaval sentiment, which civilian leaders shared and encouraged. Yet if some critics have exaggerated the effects of naval arms limitation; if, occasionally, the treaties smoothed the way for naval building generally (e.g., the Vinson-Trammel Act of 1934) and for the development of certain weapons in particular, overall, the naval arms limitation process reinforced and perpetuated the reluctance of Presidents and Congress to build up even to treaty limits. Indeed, a vigorous American naval buildup would not occur so long as citizens and statesmen assumed that further naval limitation loomed on the horizon. President Coolidge pressed for a major naval buildup only after and because the Geneva Conference of 1927 failed. President Hoover refused to countenance even a modest building program so long as another naval conference offered hope of further reductions making building unnecessary. Even after the naval treaties expired, President Roosevelt refused to build above treaty limits or accelerate the pace of America's buildup to those limits called for in the Vinson-Trammel Act of 1934 until he had full and unequivocal evidence that Japan had already exceeded them. The fourth theme is that democracies fece major disadvantages in negotiating arms limitation agreements with more closed societies. The findings of this study contradict wholly the hypothesis of Steven Miller, one of the few scholars who had analyzed the domestic politics of arms control systematically, that the American political system inclines American negotiators to excessive intransigence and "thus constitutes a large part of the explanation of why the harvest of arms control has been disappointing. " 3 In the case of naval arms limitation, the dynamics of American politics had precisely the opposite effect—likewise for Great Britain. T h e demo-

198

Conclusion cratic governments of the United States and Great Britain regarded naval arms limitation not only as a virtue, but as a necessity: to satisfy public opinion, and to relieve pressure on their own defense budgets. Their electorates pressed for reduced taxes, economy in government, or spending on social programs as an alternative to increased naval building. Their formidable antidefense lobbies not only demanded unilateral concessions and arms limitation by example, but had the capacity to enforce these demands. Nor, with the exception of the Geneva Naval Conference of 1927, did their military establishments exert a major influence on the defense debate or the outcome of the negotiations. Indeed, their naval establishments were not uniformly hostile to the idea of naval limitations. In the United States, the arguments of treaty admirals, particularly Admiral Pratt, muted the impact of naval opposition. Often, British and American civilian leaders not only shared, but, encouraged, their publics' lavish expectations for naval limitation. Japan's commitment to genuine naval limitation also reached its apex during the liberal 1920s. W h e n Japan's constitutional government broke down irrevocably during the 1930s, so did its commitment to naval limitation. More closed societies seem to operate differently in the realm of arms limitation, as the Japanese case attests. Largely because of Japan's institutional arrangements and cultural legacy, the armed services and their priorities dominated Japanese politics in a way the Royal and American Navies could not. Even during the liberal 1920s, Japanese civilian leaders lacked either the political strength or the inclination of their American counterparts to slow down naval building considerably. Nor did Japanese leaders of the decade have to deal with the overwhelming pressure from an electorate clamoring for reduced defense spending and further naval limitation. Japan's constitutional collapse during the 1930s broadened the gap between its closed society and the open societies of the democracies, with grave consequences for naval limitation. T h e Japanese Army could flaunt the Nine Power Treaty, the Navy could plan its breakout from the naval treaties, both services could claim a huge share of the State's resources, all without encountering serious domestic opposition. A militaristic and authoritarian Japan could and did manipulate the arms negotiations and the democracies' enthusiasm for them to serve its revisionist ends. T h e s e asymmetries explain partly why the Japanese kept building even when the United States slowed down, which weakened America's bargaining leverage considerably. T h e s e asymmetries also explain partly why the

Conclusion United States failed to detect or respond effectively to Japan's systematic violations of the treaties. Where the American Navy operated under the watchful and distrustful eye of Presidents and Congressmen intent on complying with the treaties; where the Americans broke the rules only after debating such actions publicly and justifying them legally by the text of the treaties; where Japan could verify America's compliance by reading the American press or the Congressional

Record,

Japan's more closed

system allowed it to deceive the world about its record on compliance and the intensity of its naval buildup. Similarly, these asymmetries between open and closed societies explain partly how Japan secured its head start in the post-treaty naval race. Where President Roosevelt would have paid a high price domestically for building above treaty limits without full and unequivocal evidence that Japan had done the same, the Japanese government operated under no such constraints. Mendaciously, Japan used the negotiations to conceal its plans to break out of the treaties and to anesthetize public opinion in the democracies. In this way, Japan succeeded in delaying the American response to the Imperial Navy's clandestine buildup with a major building program of its own. T h e fifth theme is the importance of having a vigorous building program in being for bargaining leverage. Whether or not the British and the Japanese assessed America's resolve, circa 1921, correctly, their fear of the 1916 building program inspired them to accept Hughes' Stop Now plan at the Washington Conference. Conversely, the British and the Japanese had no such incentive to agree with the American proposals, made at the Geneva Naval Conference of 1927 and the London Naval Conference of 1930, to limit auxiliary craft at low levels. Nor did the modest American and British building programs, 1 9 3 0 - 1 9 3 5 , give Japan much incentive to compromise at the London Naval Conference of 1 9 3 5 - 1 9 3 6 either. Unfortunately, the record of naval limitation, 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 3 8 , illustrates how difficult it is to convince the American public, Congress, and even Presidents of the positive linkage between a vigorous building program and a favorable outcome to the naval arms limitation talks. As President Coolidge and Roosevelt discovered, the American public and Congress proved reluctant to fund weapons when hopeful that future naval agreements would make such increases unnecessary. Indeed, each and every proposed major increase for naval building, 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 3 6 ,

encountered

fierce and often paralyzing resistance. Proponents of naval reductions argued that building up even within treaty limits would hurt the chances

200

Conclusion of reaching further agreements to limit naval weapons; whereas forbearance would induce others to reciprocate. Why, building opponents asked likewise, should the United States undertake a major increase in naval building after signing naval agreements advertised as a significant step in reducing the risk of war, restraining arms competition, and permanently improving the climate of international relations? Often, proponents of a vigorous building program had great difficulty answering these arguments in a politically tenable way.

II. N A V A L A R M S L I M I T A T I O N A N D ARMS CONTROL TODAY To what extent does this prenuclear experience have theoretical and practical application to arms control in the nuclear age? Let us beware of the danger of false analogy. To repeat: every historical situation is in some way unique. So are contemporary efforts to limit nuclear weapons. Doubtless, the awesome destructive power of the Soviet and American nuclear arsenals give both sides a stronger incentive to reach arms accords than the United States, Great Britain, and Japan had during the interwar years. Ominously, however, the vulnerability of the U.S. to devastating nuclear attack also means that there is less chance of recovery than during the interwar years should arms control lead to perilous weakness, the consequence of which may now be total defeat in war or capitulation. Then, too, the political context of Soviet-American arms talks differ, in some fundamental way, from that of the interwar naval talks. First, although the Anglo-American dimension of naval arms limitation raises some striking parallels with nuclear arms control negotiations, the differences are more notable than their similarities. The Soviet Union and the United States may have a common interest in avoiding nuclear war, but, to say the least, do not share either a common conception of global order or the cultural and institutional affinities that facilitated the regulation of the Anglo-American naval race. Second, contemporary Soviet-American arms talks are bilateral, not multilateral, negotiations—although the need for the United States to reconcile its arms control positions with the NATO commitments and the pressure it faces from the NATO allies to pursue arms negotiations give Soviet-American arms control a multilateral dimension. Third, when their theories originated during the 1960s, arms controllers envisaged their aims as merely managing and stabilizing the strategic competition between enemies. Indeed, their conception of stra-

Conclusion tegic stability may even warrant increases in certain categories of weapons to enhance deterrence based on mutual vulnerability. 4 In many ways, though, the similarities between nuclear and naval arms limitation seem more important than the differences. Soviet and American political asymmetries raise some of the same kinds of problems for their arms talks as Japanese and American political asymmetries did during the internar years—particularly in the critical areas of intelligence, verification, and compliance. T h e concepts of parity and ratio also have played a major part in the course and outcome of Soviet-American negotiations. Nor, as the unrelenting debate over parity and appropriate force levels attests, have Soviet or American negotiators devised a way to invest these concepts with practical content for strategy and operations. If the American military and preparedness lobbies have more influence than the naval lobby did during the interwar years, then a formidable coalition of interests continues to exert intense and, often, irresistible pressure on the President and Congress to reduce military spending and negotiate arms reductions. Decisionmakers and attentive publics continue likewise to debate the implications of rapidly evolving military technologies for arms control, strategy, and operations. Witness, for example, the debate over strategic defense. In the same vein, events also have confounded many of the lavish hopes and expectations for the SALT process—particularly that the SALT Treaties would end the race for strategic defense, mute the military competition symmetrically, and contribute substantially to facilitating Soviet-American détente. Think, too, of the difficulty the United States faces in reconciling nuclear parity that the SALT process has codified with its commitment to defend Western Europe by resort to the first use of nuclear weapons, if necessary. Indeed, this problem would have a familiar ring to American decisionmakers who sought to reconcile U.S. support for the Open Door in China and the defense of American possessions in the Western Pacific with the naval treaties. So ends the story of naval limitation, 1921-1938. If, like any case study, this case study raises more questions than it can hope to answer, then the contemporary significance of naval treaties seems sufficiently compelling to place the burden of proof on those who deny its significance.

APPENDIXES

A P P E N D I X A T o n n a g e allowed under the Washington Treaty of 1922 and the L o n d o n Naval Treaty of 1930 United States Number

Tonnages

British Empire Number

Tonnages

Capital Ships (not to exceed 35,000 tons; guns not in excess of 16 inches)

15

525,000

15

525,000

Aircraft Carriers (not to exceed 27,000 tons except not more than 2 of not more than 33,000 tons allowed with guns not in excess of 8 inches; 10,000-ton carriers restricted to guns not in excess of 6.1 inches).

'

135,000

a

135,000

Japan Number 9

'

Tonnages 315,000

81,000

204

Appendixes

A P P E N D I X A T o n n a g e allowed u n d e r t h e W a s h i n g t o n T r e a t y of 1922 a n d t h e L o n d o n Naval T r e a t y of 1930 United States Number Cruisers (not to exceed 10,000 tons, with guns in excess of 6.1 inches.

18

Tonnages 180,000

British E m p i r e Number 15

Tonnages 146,800

Japan Number 12

Tonnages 108,400

Cruisers (not to exceed 10,000 tons, with guns not in excess of 6.1 inches.

143,000

192,200

100,450

Destroyers 1500 tons (not to exceed 1850 tons with guns not in excess of 5.1 inches).

24,000

24,000

40,800

126,000

126,000

64,700

52,700

52,700

,201,700

763,050

Destroyers not over 1500 tons with guns not in excess of 5.1 inches. Submarines (not to exceed 2000 tons with guns not to exceed 5.1 inches, except 3 not exceeding 2800 tons, with guns not in excess of 6.1 inches allowed).

52,700

1,186,200

a

SOURCE: Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1933, pp. 4-5. Ceilings on aggregate tonnage and the size of individual units, but not on the number of vessels. J

Appendixes

A P P E N D I X Β T o n n a g e of C o m p l e t e d Ships in 1922 After S c r a p p i n g by Treaty (In t h o u s a n d s of tons) U.S.

Japan

France

Italy

526 13 183 363 49

559 88 393 245 76

301 15 142 65 24

221 25 142 36 31

182

1134

1361

547

455

318

Capital Ships Carriers Cruisers Destroyers Submarines Totals

Br. E m p .

—

85 33 18

C o m p l e t e d T o n n a g e at E n d of L i m i t a t i o n T r e a t i e s in 1936, E x c l u d i n g Ships O b s o l e t e f r o m Age (In t h o u s a n d s of tons) U.S. Capital Ships Carriers Cruisers Destroyers Submarines Totals

Br. E m p .

Japan

France

Italy

464 81 249 216 68

475 115 359 191 52

312 68 242 96 66

186 22 147 115 78

172 97 55

1078

1192

784

548

411

87 —

C o m p l e t e d T o n n a g e in 1941, E x c l u d i n g S h i p s O b s o l e t e f r o m Age (In t h o u s a n d s of tons) U.S. Capital Ships Carriers Cruisers Destroyers Submarines Totals SOURCE:

Br. E m p .

Japan

France

Italy

534 135 329 237 117

443 161 471 268 55

357 178 299 154 107

177 22 150 114 61

164

1352

1398

1095

524

468

—

119 101 84

Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, l:lix-ix.

206

Appendixes

A P P E N D I X C Naval B u i l d i n g Programs o f t h e United States and Japan, 1922-1939 Appropriation Year 1922

USA 2 aircraft carriers

Japan 2 aircraft earners 3 cruisers 10 destroyers 11 submarines

1923

3 cruisers 7 destroyers 6 submarines 3 cruisers

1924

5 destroyers 7 submarines 1925

2 cruisers 2 submarines

3 cruisers 5 destroyers 3 submarines

1926

2 cruisers 5 destroyers 5 submarines

1927

5 cruisers

1 aircraft carrier 2 cruisers 5 destroyers 7 submarines

1928

1 aircraft carrier 1 cruiser 6 destroyers 4 submarines

1929

6 cruisers 1 submarine

3 cruisers 5 destroyers 5 submarines 2 minelayers

1930 1931

1 aircraft carrier

4 destroyers

1 cruiser

3 submarines

1 cruiser

4 destroyers

8 destroyers 2 submarines

SOURCE: Roskill, 1:580-586; Military History Section, Armed Forces for the Far East, Iapáñese Monograph No. 149; Congressional Record, 1922-1940; Silverstone, U.S. Warships of World War //; pp. Π . "President Roosevelt held off constructing these ships pending the outcome of the London Naval Conference of 1935-1936.

Appendixes

APPENDIX C (continued) Appropriation Year 1932

1933

1934

1935

1936 1937

1938

1939

b

Japan

USA 1 cruiser

2 6 23 4 4 14 6

aircraft carriers cruisers destroyers submarines cruisers destroyers" submarines"

1 aircraft carrier 15 destroyers 6 submarines 12 destroyers 6 submarines 2 battleships 4 8 destroyers 4 submarines

4 4 7 6 2 1 8 8

battleships cruisers destroyers submarines battleships aircraft carrier destroyers submarines

4 4 4 1 1 3

cruisers destroyers submarines minelayer aircraft carrier destroyers

1 seaplane carrier 2 destroyers 1 submarine 1 aircraft carrier conversion 2 cruisers 2 destroyers 5 submarines 2 destroyers 1 minelayer 2 battleships 2 aircraft carriers 2 cruisers 16 destroyers 4 submarines 1 minelayer 1 seaplane carrier 11 submarines 9 mineweepers 6 subchasers 2 battleships 1 aircraft carrier 6 cruisers 1 seaplane carrier 24 destroyers 26 submarines

T h e Naval Appropriation Bill for 1937 made the construction of these battleships contingent on the President's determination that the Japanese had also begun new battleships.

208

Appendixes

A P P E N D I X D Military Aircraft Production of the United States and Japan, 1932-1939

1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939

USA

Japan

593 466 437 459 1141 949 1800 2195

691 766 688 952 1181 1511 3201 4467

SOURCE: Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, p. 324.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION 1. See, for example, Paul Nitze, "Assuring Stability in an Era of Détente"; Richard Pipes, "Why the Soviet Union Thinks It can Fight and Win a Nuclear War," Commentary (August 1977), 77(1): 21-34. 2. For examples of such liberal dismay, see Steven E. Miller, "Politics Over Promise: Domestic Impediments to Arms Control." 3. Nor is there sufficiently complete and unbiased information even for SALT. The accounts of the Soviet perspective, for example, are useful but by necessity rely heavily on informed speculation. For example, see Mason Willrich, ed., SALT and the Soviet Union; Thomas Wolfe, The SALT Experience. Accounts of the American perspective are more reliable, but still suffer from the limited information, distorted judgment, and selective memory characteristic of memoirs and journalistic history. For example, see Henry Kissinger, White House Years, chs. 5, 7, 13, 20 and 28; Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, chs. 12, 20 and 28; John Newhouse, Cold Dawn, the Story of SALT; Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle, chs. 5 and 9. Indeed, journalistic history does not obey the rules of scholarship and is especially prone to the shortcoming discussed above. See, for example, Strobe Talbot, End Game: The Inside Story of SALT II; Talbot, Deadly Gambits; Theodore Draper, "Journalism, History and journalistic History," New York Times Book Review, 9 December 1984, p. 3. 4. Colin S. Gray, "Across the Nuclear Divide—Strategic Studies, Past and Present"; Gray, Strategic Studies, A Critical Assessment, especially ch. 4; Gray, Strategic Studies and Public Policy: The American Experience. Although the brunt of Cray's critique is directed at strategic theory in general, he does discuss the failings of arms control theory and its core premises: deterrence theory, the actionreaction arms race, and theories on the relationship between the arms race and political conflict. Gray does not disparage the important contributions of the firstgeneration arms control thinkers. On the contrary, he acknowledges the strategic

Introduction community's great debt to their work. For example, see Donald G. Brennan, ed., Arms Control, Disarmament, and National Security; David Frisch, ed., Arms Reduction: Programs and Issues; Thomas Schelling and Morton Halperin, Strategy and Arms Control; Hedley Bull, The Control of Arms Race: Disarmament and Arms Control in the Missile Age. Cray does argue, however, that expanding our horizons to include prenuclear experiences will improve the quality and clarity of strategic thought. 5. See Miller, "Politics over Promise," pp. 6 7 - 9 1 and Michael Krepon, Strategic Stalemate: Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control in American Politics, pp. 108-145. Krepon provides a more balanced analysis of how our domestic process affects the negotiations. He acknowledges that arms control lobbies have often paralyzed the development of new weapons systems and weakened U.S. bargaining leverage considerably. He agrees with Miller, however, that the system has often allowed hawkish elements to block worthwhile arms control endeavors too freely. This study argues, to the contrary, that, in the case of the naval treaties, domestic politics inclined negotiators and Congress to unilateral concessions and arms control by example, not to intransigence. For some long overdue but preliminary analysis along these lines, see Philip Towle, Arms Control and EastWest Relations, pp. 7 9 - 9 8 , 115-130; Richard Pipes, "Democracy and Culture: Negotiation Styles," in Richard Starr, ed., Arms Control: Myth Versus Reality, pp. 154-162. Conference; 6. Thomas H. Buckley, The United States and the Washington Roger Dingman, Power in the Pacific (covering the Washington Conference— especially good on the Japanese side of the story); Raymond O'Connor, Perilous Equilibrium: The United States and the London Naval Conference of ¡930; Stephen Pelz, The Race to Pearl Harbor; The Failure of the Second London Naval Conference and the Onset of World War ¡I (analyzing the relationship between the failure of the Second London Naval Conference and the outbreak of World War II in the Pacific). Moreover, some recent writings on arms control have recognized the value of studying the naval arms limitation process. See, for example, Charles H. Fairbanks, Jr., "The Washington Naval Treaty, 1922-1936," in Robert Art and Kenneth Waltz, eds., The Use of Force, 3d ed. (New York: University Press of America, 1983); Coit D. Blacker and Gloria Duffy, International Arms Control: Issues and Agreement. 7. See Buckley, Dingman, Johnson, ibid. These writers note the parallels between Great Britain and the United States on one hand, the United States and the Soviet Union, on the other. Conversely, the author finds the differences between them more notable than their similarities. 8. In a brief but valuable essay written to inspire further research, Hedley Bull has suggested some lessons the naval treaties may have for Soviet-American arms control in the nuclear age. Hedley Bull, "Strategic Arms Limitation: The Precedent of the Washington and London Naval Treaties," in Morton Kaplan, ed., SALT. Problems and Prospects, pp. 27-30. Robert Hoover has also written a short monograph on the subject in Arms Control: The Interwar Naval Agreements. More recently—indeed after the author completed his second draft of this study

Introduction —Christopher Hill has published an account of the naval negotiations, chiefly from the vantage point of British decisionmakers: Christopher Hill, Britain, America and Naval Arms Control, 1921-1937 (London: Macmillan, 1987). But I have undertaken here to do more than duplicate their work. Generally, Hoover did not address the same questions or give the same answers as this study. Nor does he cover the London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 or the futile attempts to preserve the treaty system that followed. Similarly, Hill's study complements, but does not preemt, this one: like Hoover, Hill does not address systematically the issues of verification, parity, the consequences of political asymmetries on the course and outcome of the negotiation, or the effects of the naval arms limitation on the procession of naval design, doctrine, and deployment. Nor does he devote much attention to the Japanese side of the story. I believe that Hill exaggerates the possibility of Anglo-American conflict during the interwar years and the degree to which the naval negotiations ameliorated Anglo-American tensions. 9. For another useful study covering the entire period of interwar naval arms control, although by no means the final word on the subject, see Richard Bums and Donald Urquidi Disarmament in Perspective, Vol. 3: Limitation of Seapower. (This study relies mainly on secondary sources but it does cover the issue of verification with respect to the naval treaties better than anything else. I dispute, however, many of their conclusions in general and those relating to verification in particular.) 10. See Michael W. Doyle "Kant: Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs," Part I, Journal of Philosophy and Public Affairs (1983), 12(3): 205-235. Doyle argues compellingly that the realist paradigm of international politics, in its many variants, foils to explain a striking fact: that democracies do not fight one another. This predisposition to peace among democracies he attributes to the ameliorating effect of shared values, constitutionalism, the rule of law, limited government, free enterprise, the veneration of individual rights. Doyle's findings are significant, not only for scholarship in general but for this study in particular. Indeed, they mesh well with four major arguments of this study: (1) that previous studies of the naval treaties have overestimated the degree of Anglo-American emnity; (2) that attributing the improvement in Anglo-American relations to the naval treaties confuse cause and effect; (3) that, more than coincidentally, Japanese support for naval limitation reached its apex of the height of liberalism in prewar Japan and collapsed when the rule of the moderates collapsed; (4) that internal arrangements matter in evaluating the possibilities of whether arms control will succeed or fail. 11. I realize that Japan's political system during the interwar years defies easy classification. Even in the 1930s, the Japanese system retained elements of pluralism. Even in the 1920s, Japan remained essentially authoritarian. Yet it remains true that liberalism reached its zenith in Meiji-Japan during the 1920s and that Japan's system became increasingly militarized and authoritarian thereafter. Surely it is fair to classify the Japanese system of the Meiji Era as more authoritarian than open. Surely, however, it remains important to note the important differences between the militarism and authoritarianism of the Japanese state during the 1930s, on one hand, and Nazism or Communism, on the other. For an excellent

212

Introduction analysis of the failure of democracy in prewar japan, see Robert Scalapino, Democracy and the Party Movement in Prewar Japan; Cordon Mark Berger, Parties out of Power in Japan, 1931-1941. 12. Ernest May, Lessons of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy; Richard Neustadt and Ernest May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers. 13. As an example of this danger for arms control: political scientists in general and some arms controllers in particular have rediscovered the revisionist viewpoint on the origins of World War I—that a mixture of misperception, a spiralling arms race, and rigid military doctrine and planning caused a war nobody wanted. See, for example, Ole Holsti, Robert North, and Richard Brody, "Perception and actions in the 1914 Crisis," in J. David Singer ed.. Quantitative International Politics, pp. 123-158; Stephen Van Evera, "the Cplt of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War," and Jack Snyder, fCivil-Military Relations and the Cult of the Offensive, 1914-1984," both in Steven Miller, ed.. Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War, pp. 58-147. Snyder and Van Evera, among others, have invoked this interpretation of the 1914 analogy to illuminate the danger of accidental war and to prescribe agreements aimed at averting a replay of the disaster of 1914. 1 agree wholly, however, with those critics who argue that contemporary arms controllers have a flawed understanding of the 1914 analogy—that Germany and German ambitions, not arms, misperceptions, technology, or military doctrine, caused World War 1; that Germany, circa 1914, was unappeasable. See, for example, Patrick Glynn, "The Sarajevo Fallacy—The Historical and Intellectual Origins of Arms Control Theology," pp. 3-32; Donald Kagan, "World War I, World War II, World War III," pp. 21-40. The historiography on World War I is too vast a subject to cover here. For the seminal work that argues powerfully that Germany deserves primary responsibility for the origins of the First World War, see Fritz Fisher, Germany's Aims in the First World War. See also James Joll, The Origins of the First World War (New York: Longman, 1984) for a splendid summary of the historiographical debate.

I. T H E S T R A T E G I C S E T T I N G 1. O'Connor, Perilous Equilibrium, pp. 7 - 8 . 2. Ibid., pp. 3-4. 3. E. B. Potter, ed., See Power: A Naval History, pp. 193-197. 4. Armin Rappaport, The Navy League of the United States, pp. 4 5 - 4 7 . 5. Arthur Link, Wilson the Diplomatist, pp. 32-34. 6. Rappaport, The Navy League and the United States, p. 61. 7. Sprout and Sprout, Toward a New Order of Seapower, pp. 73-80. 8. Potter, Sea Power, p. 232. 9. For an excellent account of the history of British seapower, see Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, pp. 205-238. 10. Potter, Sea Power, pp. 180-197. 11. Robert H. Ferrell, Woodrow Wilson and World War 1: 1917-1921, pp. 2-10. True, as Ferrell and others point out, Wilson feared the consequences for

1. T h e Strategic Setting American security should Germany or Russia establish hegemony in Europe, which largely determined his decision of war. Still, Wilson's regard for democracy and his fear of authoritarianism also determined his choice of allies and adversaries. 12. John Chalmers Vinson, The Parchment Peace: The United States and the Washington Conference, pp. 35-48. 13. See contTa Warner Schilling, "Admirals and Foreign Policy, W13-1919." Schilling's study stops at 1919, just when Benson retired as Chief of Naval Operations; thereafter, American naval opinion toward Great Britain began to soften considerably. True, Benson was not the only prominent American naval officer who considered Great Britain a possible enemy, before or after 1921. After Benson retired as Chief of Naval Operations in 1919, however, the weight of American naval opinion considered Japan, not Britain, the nation's primary enemy. 14. Sprout and Sprout, Toward a New Order of Seapower, pp. 71, 75. 15. Mary Klachko, "Anglo-American Naval Competition, 1918-1922," pp. 26-27, 177-187. 16. Selig Adler, The Uncertain Giant: U.S. Foreign Policy, 1921-1941, pp. 77-82. 17. Buckley, The United States and the Washington Conference, pp. 25-26. 18. Stephen Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, Vol. I: 1919-1929, pp. 215-227. 19. Sprout and Sprout, Toward a New Order of Seapower, pp. 82-83. 20. Michael Vlahos, The Blue Sword: The Naval War College and the American Mission, 1919-1941, pp. 99-113. To be sure, the Americans retained a war plan in respect to Great Britain, War Plan Red, and engaged in hypothetical encounters accordingly. Still, the Americans regarded War Plan Red as more of an exercise than a plan for real or likely contingency. See also William Braisted, "On the American Red and Orange Plans, 1919-1939," in Gerald Jordan, ed., Naval Warfare in the Twentieth Century, pp. 167-185. 21. Hugh Borton, Japan's Modem Century, pp. 15-16. 22. Japan's absorption of Western ideas remained largely instrumental during the Meiji Era. For example, see Kurt Singer, Mirror and the Jewel, pp. 98-101. 23. Paul Johnson, Modern Times, p. 177. 24. Richard Storry, A History of Modern Japan, pp. 105-106. 25. Edwin O. Reischauer, The United States and Japan, pp. 64-83. 26. Borton, Japan's Modem Century, pp. 203-234. 27. For an excellent account of the deliberations leading up to the RussoJapanese War, see Shumpei Okamoto, The Japanese Oligarchy and the RussoJapanese War, pp. 57-100. Ian Nish, The Origins of the Russo-Japanese War. 28. Charles Neu, The Troubled Encounter: The United States and Japan, pp. 29-97; Akira Iriye, Across the Pacific, pp. 111-137. 29. Ibid. 30. A. Whitney Criswold, The Far Eastern Policy of the United States, pp. 341-379. 31. Ferrei 1, President Woodrow Wilson and World War I, pp. 120, 149-151.

1. The Strategic Setting 32. Neu, The Troubled Encounter, pp. 98-101. 33. Griswold, The Far Eastern Policy of the United State*, pp. 243-246. 34. ¡bid., pp. 246-247. 35. Sadao Asada, "Japan and the United States, 1915-1925," pp. 121-126. 36. William E. Livezey, Mahan on Seapower, pp. 207-209, 215-217, 221. 37. Vlahos, The Blue Sword, pp. 113-132. 38. See, for example, Records of the General Board, 438-1/Ser. 1088 (a), 12 September 1921, Naval Historical Division, Department of the Navy, Washington, D.C.: Hereafter cited as CBP. with appropriate series and document numbers. For a similar analysis done by the War Department, see Department of State Papers, Record Group 59, No. 500, 41a/121, 31 October 1921, National Archives, Washington, D.C.: Hereafter cited as D/S with appropriate document numbers and record groups. See also Asada, "Japan and the United States," pp. 215-216; and Gerald Wheeler, Prelude to Pearl Harbor: the United States Navy and the Far East 1921-1931, pp. 45-51 for a historical discussion of this viewpoint. 39. Livezey, Mahan on Seapower, pp. 49-52, 300-306; Philip A. Crowl "Mahan: A Naval History," in Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy, pp. 459-462, 474-275. 40. Sprout and Sprout, Toward a New Order of Seapower, p. 237. 41. Pelz, The Race to Pearl Harbor, p. 89. 42. Potter, Sea Power, p. 237. 43. Vlahos, The Blue Sword, p. 119. 44. William Braisted, The United States Navy and the Far East 1909-1922, pp. 511-521. 45. Wheeler, Prelude to Pearl Harbor, pp. 82-83; Michael K. Doyle, "The United States Navy and War Plan Orange, 1933-1940: Making a Virtue of a Necessity," pp. 49-61; Louis Morton, "War Plan Orange: Evolution of a Strategy," 228-250. 46. Schilling, "Weapons Doctrine and Arms Control: A Case from the Good Old Days," in Art and Waltz, The Use of Force, pp. 193-214. 47. Ernest Andrade, Jr., "Submarine Policy in the United States Navy, 19191942." So did the British: See Stephen Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, I, pp. 344-347; Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm, pp. 500-501. 48. Clay Blair, Jr., Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against fapan, pp. 46-50, 59-63. Interestingly, the United States had determined to use submarines against commerce even before Pearl Harbor, although apparently not before 1939. What accounts for this change in doctrine? The author can only speculate. Perhaps this decision reflected the abandonment of a short war scenario for the Pacific. Perhaps, too, it reflected naval planners' changing assessment of the American people's willingness to wage unrestricted submarine warfare. 49. Writing on the eve of war (1941), Bernard Brodie also failed to recognize fully that the carrier had supplanted the battleship. For example, see Bernard Brodie, Seapower in the Machine Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), pp. 432-433. This is not to criticize Brodie, but only to point out the

1. T h e Strategic Setting limits of human foresight. If Brodie and other bright minds could make the mistake during the interwar years, surely it could happen again in the nuclear age. 50. For an excellent account of Mitchell's ideas and impact, see Alfred F. Hurley, Billy Mitchell, especially pp. 5 8 - 6 0 as it relates to supporters of airpower in the Navy. 51. Ronald Spector, The Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with }apan, pp. 19-24. 52. Hurley, Billy Mitchell, pp. 6 8 - 6 9 . 5?. Archibald D. Tumbull and Clifford L. Lord, History of United States Naval Aviation, pp. 200-201. 54. What accounts for this failure to envisage the future role and importance of the carrier? Partially, at least, it reflects the inherent conservation of military establishments everywhere, specifically their propensity to fit new weapons into existing doctrines and organizational terms. For another interwar example of this phenomenon, see Richard Challener, The French Theory of the Nation in Arms, 1866-1939. (France fit the airplane and the tank into existing doctrine; it did not modify doctrine to accommodate these weapons). 55. See Potter, Sea Power, pp. 236-286; Borton, Japan's Modem Century, pp. 221-250; Doyle, "War Plan Orange," pp. 52-60. 56. For an excellent discussion of these points and the problem of conducting a transoceanic advance generally, see Brodie, Seapower in the Machine Age, pp. 120-123; and Schilling, "Admirals and Foreign Policy, 1913-1919," pp. 7 - 1 1 . 57. Wheeler, Prelude to Pearl Harbor, p. 55. 58. Sprout and Sprout, Toward a New Order of Seapower, pp. 4 8 - 5 0 . 59. Asada, "The Imperial Japanese Navy and the Politics of Naval Limitation, 1918-1930," p. 2. Graciously, Professor Asada sent the author a copy of this indispensable essay promptly and at his own expense. 60. Ibid., pp. 2 - 3 . 61. Clark G. Reynolds, "The Continental Strategy of Imperial Japan," pp. 67-71. 62. Ibid. For another detailed account of the Japanese military's continentalism and their philosophy of expansionism, see also Mark R. Peattie, Ishiwahara Kanjiand Japan's Confrontation with the West, pp. 8 - 9 , 15-19, 4 8 - 8 3 ; Fujiwara Akira, "The Role of the Japanese Army," in Borg and Okamoto, eds., Pearl Harbor as History: Japanese American Relations: 1931-1941, pp. 189-197. 63. Sadao Asada, "The Japanese Navy and the United States," in Borg and Okamoto, Pearl Harbor as History, pp. 234-236. 64. Asada, "The Imperial Japanese Navy and the Politics of Naval Limitation," pp. 7 - 8 . 65. Ibid., pp. 5-12. 66. Sadao Asada, "Japanese Admirals and the Politics of Naval Limitation: Kato Tomosaburo vs. Kato Kanji," in Gerald Jordan, ed., Naval Warfare in the Twentieth Century, pp. 144-149. 67. Dingman, Power in the Pacific, pp. 122-124.

2. Domestic Politics of Naval Limitation

II. T H E D O M E S T I C POLITICS O F N A V A L L I M I T A T I O N 1. John Chalmers Vinson, Parchment Peace: The United States and the Washington Conference, p. 47. 2. Robert Ferrell, Peace in Their Time: The Origins of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, p. 5. 3. C. Leonard Hoag, Preface to Preparedness: The Washington Conference and Public Opinion, p. 17. In its original form, the Hensley Resolution called on all powers to observe a one-year naval holiday. 4. Bowen, "The Disarmament Movement," p. 5. 5. Klachko, "Anglo-American Naval Competition," pp. 192-194. 6. Sprout and Sprout, Toward a New Order of Seapower, pp. 112-121. 7. Vinson, The Parchment Peace, p. 47. 8. Congressional Record (Vol. 60), 66th Cong., 3d Sess., 10 December 1920, pp. 204-206. 9. S. J. Resolution 225, Congressional Record (Vol. 60), 66th Cong., 3d Sess., 14 December 1920. 10. Congressional Record, (Vol. 60), 66th Cong., 3d Sess., 14 December 1920, pp. 310-312. Throughout the debate, Borah returned to this theme constantly. For example, see Congressional Record (Vol. 60), 66th Cong., 3d Sess., 28 February 1921, pp. 4046-4048, and 1 March 1921, 4170-4173. Borah told Hoag that his primary motive for pushing Naval limitation was not economy, but peace. Hoag, Preface to Preparedness, p. 49. This assessment conforms with that of Vinson. See John Chalmers Vinson, William Borah and the Outlawry of War, pp. 1-56. 11. For an account of what peace groups wanted and the extent to which they influenced the political process, see Charles Chatfield, For Peace and fustice: Pacifism in America ¡9H-I94I (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1971), pp. 143-168. 12. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Naval Affairs, Hearings on Disarmament, 66th Cong., 3d Sess., pp. 557-604. 13. John Chalmers Vinson, The Parchment Peace, p. 56. 1 did not undertake a comprehensive search of the press on the matter of disarmament. Also, the Washington Conference predates the development of reliable polling techniques; for an impressionistic account of public sentiment in respect to naval limitation, see also the William Borah Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., boxes 190-192. 14. For the full debate, see Hearings: Disarmament in its Relations to the Naval Policy of the United States, pp. 517-639. 15. See Borah—Fullam correspondence, January 20-31, 1921, Borah Papers. 16. Congressional Record (Vol. 60), 66th Cong., 3d Sess., 15 January 1921, p. 1996; 12 Feb. 1921, pp. 2825-2828; 3 March 1921, p. 4273. 17. Records of the General Board, Senate Document, No. 66, 66th Cong., 3d Sess., pp 925-933.

2. Domestic Politics of Naval Limitation 18. Congressional Record (Vol. 60), 66th Cong., 3d Sess., pp. 2889, 295?, 3006. 19. Ibid., p. 3150. 20. Ibid., pp. 3152-3156. 21. Ibid., p. 2825. 22. For a full account of the amendments and the debate, see ibid., pp. 4141— 4173. 23. Robert Murray, The Harding Era: Warren G. Harding and His Administration, pp. 140-146. 24. Vinson, The Parchment Peace, pp. 73-80. 25. Hoag, Preface to Preparedness, p. 65. 26. Braisted, United States Naval Policy in the Far East, ¡909-1922, pp. 492-493; Murray, The Harding Era, pp. 140-146. 27. For a full account of this debate, see Congressional Record (Vol. 61), 67th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 617-672, 1413-1426, 3179-3180. 28. Vinson, The Parchment Peace, pp. 90-92. 29. Braisted, United States Naval Policy and the Far East, p. 502, 503. 30. Vinson, William Borah and the Outlawry of War, pp. 44-56; Robert Maddox, William E. Borah and American Foreign Policy, pp. 88-90. 31. In my view, contemporary scholarship on the naval arms limitation has wrongly identified economics as the main cause. For example, see Bernard Brodie, "On the Objectives of Arms Control," in Art and Waltz, The Use of Force, 2d ed., p. 437 ("The Motivation on all sides [of Naval Treaties] was entirely economic"); see also Asada, "Japan and the United States, 1915-1925," for a similar interpretation. Curiously, Asada cites Vinson in support of this conclusion; yet, as in the present study, Vinson stresses the importance of the arms race as an inspiration for naval arms limitation. See Vinson, The Parchment Peace, pp. 5356. 32. From Charles Evans Hughes to Franklin Roosevelt, from William Borah to Cerald Nye, the apocalyptic and mechanistic vision of the arms race dominated American thinking about naval arms limitation. What follows will substantiate this claim. 33. Quoted in Vinson, The Parchment Peace, p. 56; also quoted in Walter Lippmann, U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic, p. 54. 34. Hoag, Preface to Preparedness, p. 78. 35. Ferrell, Peace in Their Time, pp. 10-26. See also L. Ethan Ellis, Republican Foreign Policy, 1921-1933. 36. Adler, The Isolationist Impulse, pp. 170—173. Some revisionist historians challenge the traditional view that the United States remained largely Isolationist during the interwar years. For some prominent examples of this type of literature, see Emily Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982); Michael Hogan, Informal Entente: the Private Structure of Cooperation in Anglo-American Economic Diplomacy; Warren Cohen, Empire Without Tears: American Foreign Relations, ¡9211933. Cohen also provides an excellent bibliography of revisionist works dealing with the interwar years. I find this revisionist interpretation unpersuasive. What is

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2. Domestic Politics of Naval Limitation more, Cohen arid other revisionists do not and cannot dispute the central point of the traditionalist interpretation of American foreign policy: that most American statesmen during the interwar years did not consider interests in Asia or Europe worth the cost or risk of war. 37. Adler, p. 140. 38. Towle, Army Control and East-West Relations, pp. 115-130. 39. Pipes, "Diplomacy and Culture," pp. 154-155. 40. On the question of the affinity between democracy and arms control, see Philip Towle's perspicacious observations in Arms Control East-West Relations, p. 115. 41. Roland Chaput, Disarmament in British Foreign Policy, especially chapters I and 2. 42. Charles Loch Mowatt, Britain Between the Wan, ¡918-1940, pp. 1 - 4 , 132-139; Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill, Prophet of Truth, I922-I939 (Boston: Atlantic, 1977), pp. 65-112. 43. Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, I, pp. 206-216. 44. Klachko, "Anglo-American Naval Competition," pp. 225-228. 45. Dingman, Power in the Pacific, pp. 116-118. 46. Ibid., p. 119. 47. For the full text of the Lee-Roosevelt correspondence, see Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Papers, National Archives, Washington, D.C., 11 and 30 March 1921. Hereinafter cited as Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Papers. 48. Sprout and Sprout, Toward a New Order of Seafiower, p. 129. 49. William Roger Louis, British Strategy in the Far East 1919-1939, pp. 18-49. 50. Asada, "Japan and the United States 1915-1925," pp. 135-138; "Report of the Committee on the Anglo-Japanese Alliance," January 1921, Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, 1st Ser., 14: 221-227. Hereafter cited as DBFP with appropriate series and volume. 51. Ibid. 52. Louis, British Strategy in the Far East, pp. 51-77. 53. Borton, Japan's Modem Century, pp. 140-143; Robert Reischauer, Japan, Government and Politics (New York: Thomas Nelson, 1935), pp. 22-35. 54. Robert Scalapino, "The Foreign Policy of Modern Japan," in Roy Macridis, ed., Foreign Policy in World Politics, pp. 277-280. 55. Yale Maxon, Control of Japanese Foreign Policy: A Study in Civil-Military Rivalry, 1930-1945, pp. 1-15, 35-45. 56. Borton, Japan's Modem Century, p. 146. 57. Misawa Shigeo and Ninomiya Saburo, "The Role of the Diet and Political Parties," in Borg and Okamoto, eds., Pearl Harbor as History: Japanese-American Relations, 1931-1941, pp. 319-324. 58. Borton, Japan's Modem Century, p. 144. 59. Scalapino, Democracy and the Party Movement Prewar Japan, chs. 5 and 6. See also Peter Duus, Party Rivalry and Political Change in Taisho Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968).

3. The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 60. ¡bid., ch. 7. See also Arthur Tiedemann, "Big Business and Politics in Prewar Japan," in James Morley, ed., Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan, pp. 267-288. 61. Maxon, Control of Japanese Policy, pp. 27-33. 62. Scalapino, Democracy and the Party Movement in Prewar Japan, pp. 216-220. 63. Akira Iriye, After Imperialism: The Search for a New Order in the Far East, 192I-193J, pp. 8-22. Iriye notes that Japanese moderates had imperial ambitions for the Asian Continent. See also Asada, "Japan and the United States, 1915-1925," p. 164. Asada concedes, too, that the ideology of a have-not nation ran strongly, even among Japanese liberals. 64. Ian Nish "Japan and Naval Aspects of the Washington Conference," in William Beasley, ed., Modern Japan, p. 68. 65. Scalapino, Democracy and the Party Movement in Prewar Japan, pp. 217-219. 66. Dingman, Power in the Pacific, pp. 131-135. 67. Ibid., Asada, "Japan and the United States, 1915-1925," pp. 160-164. 68. Asada, "Japanese Admirals and the Politics of Naval Limitation," pp. 146-149.

III. T H E W A S H I N G T O N C O N F E R E N C E O F 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 2 1. Roger Dingman, especially, gives President Harding too much credit, or more precisely, in my view, too much responsibility, for the accomplishments of the Conference. Correspondingly, he gives too little of both to Secretary Hughes. From what I found in the Harding Papers—precious little—the President did nothing more than ratify Secretary Hughes' plans. He did not inspire, revise, or challenge them. For example, see Wanen G. Harding Papers, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio, Boxes 237-239, 446-448. The Library of Congress has reproduced this set in its entirety and I used its collection. 2. For an excellent discussion of how Hughes' domestic background influenced his outlook on world affairs, see Betty Clad, Charles Evans Hughes and the Illusion of Innocence, pp. 153-162. 3. Ibid. See also Charles Evans Hughes, "The Development of International Law," American Society of International Law: Proceedings (1925), 19: 3-5. 4. Hughes, "Institutions of Peace," American Society of International Law," American Society of International Law: Proceedings (1929), 23: 1-13. 5. Hughes, "Possible Gains," American Society of International Law: Proceedings (1927), 21:9. 6. U.S. Senate, Conference on the Limitation of Armaments, Senate Document 126, 67th Cong., 2d Sess. (Washington, D.C.: 1922), p. 45. Hereinafter cited as Conference; Beerits Memorandum, "Treaty for the Limitation of Naval Armaments," Charles Evans Hughes Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Hereinafter cited as Charles Evans Hughes Papers.

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The Washington Conference of 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 2 7. Hughes, "Some Observations on Recent Events," American Society for International Law, Proceedings (1926), 20: 13. 8. Beerits, "The Treaty for Limitation of Naval Armaments," Charles Evans Hughes Papers. 9. Hughes, "Possible Cains," p. 8; also quoted in Clad, Chartes Evans Hughes, p. 279. See also "Some Observations on Recent Events," p. 3, for yet another favorable reference on Hughes' part to Lord Grey's views on the origins .of World War I. 10. "Possible Gains," p. 9. 11. Ibid., p. 8. 12. Hughes, "Some Observations on Recent Events," p. 14; "Possible Gains," pp. 9-10. Π . Conference, p. 248. 14. Hughes, "Possible Gains," p. 8. 15. Beerits Memorandum, "Far Eastern Questions," Charles Evans Hughes Papers; Merlo Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes, pp. 501-504. 16. Asada, "Japan and the United States, 1915-1925," pp. 202-203. 17. Glad, Charles Evans Hughes, pp. 321-329. 18. Hughes, "Possible Gains," p. 10. 19. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1921, Vol. I, pp. 25-28, 36-53. Hereinafter cited as FRUS with appropriate year and volume number. 20. FRUS 1921, 1: 56-57; Hughes Memorandum, 14 July 1921, Charles Evans Hughes Papers. 21. Dingman, Power in the Pacific, pp. 193-195. 22. Louis, British Strategy in the Far East, pp. 86-97. 23. FRUS, 1921, 1:61. 24. Sprout and Sprout, Toward a New Order of Seapower, p. 139; Approvingly, Root would describe the results of the Conference as a "complete negation of naval strategy"; quoted in Philip Jessup, Elihu Root, pp. 449-452. 25. Hughes to Denby, 1 September 1921, GBP. 26. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. to Admiral Rodgers, 27 July 1921, GBP. 27. GB. 438-1/1088, 12 September 1921, GBP. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. See also GB. 438-1/1088 (g), 4 November 1921, GBP. 31. GB. 438-1/1088, 12 September 1921, GBP. 32. Ibid. See also GB. 438-1/1088 (c), 3 October 1921, GBP. 33. Ibid. 34. GB. 438-1/1088 (a), 17 September 1921, GBP. 35. See, for example, Captain W. D. Puleston, The Armed Forces of the Pacific, pp. 171-219 for an example of how the concept of ratio dominated naval thinking. 36. GB. 438-/1088 (a), 17 September 1921, GBP. 37. ¡bid.

3. The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 38. Ibid. Curiously, the Board's initial plan failed to take into account that this margin of American superiority would diminish over time, as Japan replaced its older ships with more modem ones. Perhaps this failure on the Board's part to grasp fully the implications of their initial plan reveals the American Navy's fundamental uncertainty about the ratio and number of American ships vis-à-vis Japan necessary to defeat the Imperial Navy in the Western Pacific. Or perhaps the Board simply miscalculated. 39. GB. 438-1/1088 (c), 8 October 1921, GBP. 40. GB. 438-1/1088 (g), 20 October 1921, GBP. 41. For example, see Memorandum on Naval Matten Connected With the Washington Conference, 1921-1922, Part II, GBP. In preparation for the conference, the General Board surveyed the views of 26 naval officers. Twenty-two responded: 2 out of 3 recommended a ratio of at least 2:1 with respect to Japan; 18 out of 22 recommended equality with Great Britain. Like the Board, most assumed that Japan, not Britain, had become the primary enemy. 42. Gerald Wheeler, Admiral William Veazie Pratt, U.S. Navy, p. 182. 43. Denby to Hughes, 10 October 1921, D/S File No. 500, A41a/110, RG59, NA. I cannot determine whether or not Denby actually disagreed with the Board's plan on the merits. I can only speculate that the Secretary refused to endorse the report, regardless of his personal views, because he anticipated Hughes' rejection and the President endorsing Hughes. 44. GB. 438-1/1088 (d), KOctober 1921, GBP. 45. As far as I can discover, the Board did not offer this line of reasoning systematically until the preliminaries to the Geneva Naval Conference of 1927. See, for example, GB. 438-1/1347 (a) and (b), 3 June 1927, GBP. 46. Braisted, United States Naval Policy and the Far East, 1909-1922, p. 588. 47. Blakeslee Report, "The Existing Strategic Situation in Respect to the Limitation of Armaments," Charles Evans Hughes Papers. 48. Diary of Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., 20 October 1921, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Papers. 49. Conference, p. 248. 50. Hughes to Denby, 25 October 1921, GBP. 51. GB. 438-1/1088 (a), 17 September 1921, GBP. 52. Denby to Hughes, 26 October 1921, D/S File No. 500, A4h/548 1/3(3), RG59, NA. 53. GB. 438-1/1088 (a), 17 September 1921, GBP. 54. FRUS, 1922, 1: 71. 55. Asada, "The Imperial Japanese Navy and the Politics of Naval Limitation, 1918-1930," p. 9. 56. Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, 1:309-310. 57. Conference, pp. 147-149. 58. Charles Melhom, Two Block Fox: The Rise of the Aircraft Carrier: 19111929, pp. 82-83. See also "Characteristics of Aircraft Carriers," GB. 420-7/1073, 27 June 1921; GB. 420-1/1087, 27 July 1921, GBP.

3. The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 $9. Blakeslee Report, "The Existing Strategic Situation in the Pacific in Relation to Limitation of Armaments," Charles Evans Hughes Papers. 60. GB. 438-1/1088 (dd), 15 November 1921, GBP; "The Report of the Advisory Committee (American) on Submarines," 6 January 1922, Charles Evans Hughes Papers. 61. GB. 438-1/1088 (o), 26 October 1921, GBP. 62. Ibid. 63. Beerits, 'Treaty on the Elimination of Naval Armaments," Charles Evans Hughes Papers. The General Board wanted the new 40,000-ton capital ships partly because of the need for designing such ships to withstand air and submarine attack. 64. Charles Evans Hughes, Notes, Charles Evans Hughes Papers; "Minutes of the American Delegation," D/S File No. 500, A41/12R, 16 November 1921, RG45, NA. 65. "Limitation of Armaments," Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Papers. 66. Beerits Memorandum, "The Treaty for the Limitation of Armaments," Charles Evans Hughes Papers. 67. GB. 438-1/1088 (y), 27 October 1921, GBP. 68. ¡bid. 69. Denby to Hughes, GB. 438-1/1164, 23 February 1923. 70. Secretary of War Weeks to Hughes, D/S File No. 500, A4B/127, 3 March 1923, RG59, NA. 71. GB. 438-1/1088 (ν), 5 November 1921, GBP. 72. GB. 438-1/1088 (b), 3 October 1921, GBP. 73. Beerits, "The Treaty for the Limitation of Naval Armaments," Charles Evans Hughes Papers. 74. Conference, pp. 45-49. 75. Ibid., pp. 49-50. 76. Sprout and Sprout, Toward a New Order of Seapower, pp. 151-159. Journalist and historian Mark Sullivan captures vividly the spirit of the euphoric reaction that greeted Stop Now. See Mark Sullivan, Τhe Great Adventure at Washington: The Story of the Conference (New York: Doubleday, 1922), pp. 1 34. 77. Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, II, 1930-1939, pp. 226-231. 78. Roskill, 1: 344-347. 79. DBFP, 2d Ser., 4: 476-477, 480-481, 484-485. For the same reason, the American Navy also opposed the idea of a complete Naval Holiday. See "Report of the Advisory Committee as to a Naval Holiday," 30 November 1921, Charles Evans Hughes Papers. 80. James Neidpath, The Singapore Naval Base and the Defense of Britain's Eastern Empire, 1919-1941, pp. 37-55. 81. Ibid. 82. DBFP, 1st Ser. 4: 497-499, 503-505, 516; Indeed, Balfour conceded privately that war between France and England was unthinkable (p. 505). Not only that: he conceded, too, that France's fleet did not constitute a genuine threat to Great Britain.

3. The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 83. Asada, "The Imperial Japanese Navy and the Politics of Naval Limitation, 1918-1930," pp. 11-13. 84. For an excellent discussion of France's viewpoint on the proper relationship between disarmament and security, see Wolfers, Britain and France between the Two Wars, pp. 11-127. 85. Sprout and Sprout, Toward a New Order of Seapower, pp. 181-187. 86. Dingman, Power in the Pacific, pp. 202-203. 87. See "Memorandum," FRUS 1922, 1: 75-83; Diary of Theodore Roosevelt Jr., 21 November 1921, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Papers. 88. GB. 438-1/1088 (gg), 22 November 192ÏT GBP. 89. "Minutes of the American Delegation," November 16, 1921, D/S File No. 500, A 41/12, RG45, NA. 90. Most authorities have concluded that the Americans benefited at Washington from her cryptographers having broken the Japanese code. For example, see Braisted, The United States Navy and the Far East, 1909-1922, pp. 607-608; Asada, The Enigma of Herbert O. Yardley, in "Japan and the United States, 1915-1925," pp. i-xiii; Ronald Lewin, The American Magic, p. 21. 91. Dingman, Power and the Pacific, pp. 204-211; Asada, "Japan and the United States 1915-1925," pp. 234-238; FRUS 1922, 1: 90-99. 92. DBFP, 1st Ser. 14:503-505. 93. FRUS 1921, 1:99-111. 94. ¡bid., 114-127. 95. Charles Evans Hughes, Notes, pp. 278-279; Blakeslee Report, "The Existing Strategic Situation in the Far East," Charles Evans Hughes Papers; Hughes, "Possible Gains," p. 10. 96. For a detailed account of the negotiations leading up to the Four Powers Treaty, see Buckley, The Washington Conference, pp. 145-157. For the text of the treaty, see Conference, pp. 889-892. For a detailed account of the negotiations about the Mandates, see Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes, pp. 445-452; FRUS 1922, 2: 599-602. 97. Indeed, even Asada concedes that the Four Power Treaty left the Japanese Navy with "unchallengeable dominance of Far Eastern Waters, and thus indirectly implied Nippon's potential supremacy in East Asia. " Asada, "Japan and the United States, 1915-1925," p. 241. 98. FRUS 1922, 1: 130-142. 99. For example, see chs. 1 and 6 of this study on how the United States rebuffed Creat Britain's please for an alliance. 100. Conference, pp. 76-95. 101. FRUS 1922, 1: 135-142. 102. For a sample of those who regard the naval treaty as giving free rein to the development of the aircraft carrier, see Waldo H. Heinrich, Jr., "The Role of the U.S. Navy," in Borg and Okamoto, Pearl Harbor as History, JapaneseAmerican Relations 1931-1941, pp. 197-244; Philip T. Rosen, "The Treaty Navy, 1919-1937," in Kenneth J. Hagan, ed.. In Peace and War: Interpretation of American Naval History, 1775-1984, 2d ed., pp. 219-237. 103. Thomas Hone, "Spending Patterns in the United States Navy, 1921-

224

3. The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 1941," Armed Forces and Society, pp. 444-449; See also Hone, "The Effectiveness of the Washington Treaty Navy;" Spector, Eagle Against the Sun, pp. 222?. 104. Indeed, Hughes regarded the limitation of these "Monster Ships" (aircraft carriers) as one of the chief accomplishments of the conference. Hughes, "Possible Gains," p. 11. 105. Conference, pp. 258-359; Sprout and Sprout, Toward a New Order of Seapower, pp. 358-360. 106. Diary of Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., 3 and 4 January 1922, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Papers. 107. FRUS 1922, 1: 168; quoted also in Sprout and Sprout, Toward a New Order of Seapower, pp. 237. 108. Diary of Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., 11 and 12 January 1922, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Papers. 109. Conference, pp. 771-786. 110. Sprout and Sprout, Toward a New Order of Seapower, pp. 211-213; Braisted, The United States Navy and the Far East, 1909-1922, pp. 632-637; Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes, p. 483. 111. Roskill, British Naval Policy between the Wars, 1: 323-330. 112. Conference, pp. 490-506. 113. Conference, p. 812. 114. Sprout and Sprout, Toward a New Order of Seapower, p. 313. 115. Conference, pp. 886-889. 116. Blair, Silent Victory, pp. 52-53. 117. Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes, pp. 491-500. 118. Conference, pp. 871-886. 119. See Samuel Flagg Bemis, "Main Trends in American Foreign Policy," in Frank Davison and George Viereck, Jr., eds., Before America Decides: Foresight in Foreign Affairs (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938), p. 87, quoted in O'Connor, Perilous Equilibrium, note 31. 120. Most contemporary studies take the positive point of view. See, for example, Buckley, The Washington Conference, pp. 187-189 (Buckley criticizes Hughes for hyperbole in describing American's stakes in the region, but, overall, regards highly most of Hughes' accomplishments at Washington and his conception of the national interest.); Dingman, Power in the Pacific, pp. 215-219; Asada, "Japan and the United States, 1915-1925," pp. 348-354. 121. Wheeler, Prelude to Pearl Harbor, pp. xi-xii; O'Connor, Perilous Equilibrium, p. 7; Vinson, Parchment Peace, pp. 213-217. 122. See especially Asada, "Japan and the United States, 1915-1925," pp. 196-205. Curiously, Asada commends Hughes for his strategic realism constantly; yet he then goes on to undermine his case. To illustrate: he notes that Hughes chose the most optimistic assumptions of rival policy advisors; on one hand, Hughes had great faith in China's capacity for evolutionary democratic reform. On the other, he saw nothing incompatible between American and Japanese interests in the region. Simultaneously, he took an expansive view of the Open Door and a benign view of Japanese intentions in East Asia.

4. Confounded Expectations 123. Ibid., pp. 281-293. 124. For an extended discussion of how American States envisaged the problem of China, see FRUS 1921, 1: 313-355. 125. Beerits, "Far Eastern Questions," Charles Evans Hughes Papers. 126. FRUS 1922, 2: 591-599. 127. Louis, British Strategy in the Far East, pp. 191-197. 128. Beerits, "Far Eastern Questions," Charles Evans Hughes Papers. 129. On this point, Buckley agrees with the author. See Buckley, The Washington Conference, p. 153. 130. Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes, p. 502. 131. Herbert Feis, The Road to Pearl Harbor, pp. 291-333. 132. See Johnathan G. Utley, Going to War with Japan, 1937-1941, p. 203. 133. Glad, Charles Evans Hughes and the Illusion of Innocence, pp. 321-329. 134. Robert Osgood, Ideals and Self-Interest in American Foreign Relations, pp. 334-346. 135. Conference, p. 248. 136. Ibid., p. 753. 137. Hoag, Preface to Preparedness, pp. 143-145. 138. Congressional Record (Vol. 62), 67th Cong., 2d Sess., pp. 4671-4693, 4708-4719. 139. Vinson, The Parchment Peace, pp. 196-213. 140. Buckley, The Washington Conference, p. 173. 141. For a response that typifies the Navy's reaction to the Washington Treaty, see Dudley Knox, The Eclipse of American Seapower; See also GB. 420-2/1108, 29 March 1922, GBP, and Sprout and Sprout, Toward a New Order of Sea Power, pp. 268-271. 142. Wheeler, Admiral William Veazie Pratt, U.S. Navy, pp. 185-186. 143. Diary of Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., 27 January 1922, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Papers. Notably, both Roosevelt and Admiral Coontz later repudiated the treaty and regretted their roles in the negotiations. See Laurence Douglas, "Robert Edward Coontz," in Robert Love, Jr., ed., The Chiefs of Naval Operations, p. 30. 144. Ibid., 16 January 1922. 145. Louis, British Strategy in the Far East, p. 107; Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, I, pp. 329-330. 146. Malcolm Kennedy, The Estrangement of Great Britain and Japan, p. 111. 147. Asada, "Japan and the United States, 1915-1925," pp. 348-359. 148. Bowen, "The Disarmament Movement," pp. 85-91. IV. C O N F O U N D E D E X P E C T A T I O N S 1. Edward Beach, The United States Navy, pp. 444-447; Ronald Spector, Professors of War: The Naval War College and the Development of the Naval Profession, p. 147; James and William Belote, Titans of the Seas, pp. 14-19. 2. GB. 420-2/1108, 29 March 1922, GBP. 3. Rosen, "The Treaty Navy," pp. 224-225.

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4 Confounded Expectations 4. For example, see GB. 420-8/1294, 3 September 1925; GB. 420-8/1304, 3 December 1925; GB. 420-8/1374, 5 April 1928, GBP. 5. Gerald Wheeler, "Mitchell, Moffett, and Airpower," pp. 79-81. 6. Spector, Τhe Eagle and the Sun, pp. 22-23. 7. Ian Tumbull and Clifford Lord, History of United States Naval Aviation, pp. 270-271. 8. Ibid., pp. 271-273. 9. Pratt to the Secretary of the Navy, 27 March 1933, Official File 18, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Papers, Hyde Park, New York (Hereinafter cited as O F 18, FDR Papers): "It is easily seen that the battleship is the most useful type. It is the backbone of the fleet. " 10. Thomas Hone, "The Effectiveness of the Washington Treaty Navy," pp. 37-49; Hone, "Spending Pattern of the United States Navy, 1921-1941," pp. 445-458. 11. Blair, Silent Victory, pp. 54-58. 12. Richard Dean Bums, "Regulating Submarine Warfare, 1921-1941: A Case Study in Arms Control and Limited War," pp. 56-61. 13. Rosen, "The Treaty Navy," pp. 224-225. 14. Michael Doyle, "The United States Navy—Strategy and Far Eastern Policy, 1931-1941," 52-60; Morton, "War Plan Orange," pp. 229-233; Vlahos, The Blue Sword, p. 120. 15. For example, see Joint Army-Navy Basic War Plan Orange, August 1922, Joint Board 305 (Ser. 208), Joint Army-Navy Records, Record Group 225, National Archives. Hereinafter cited as JB. 305 (Ser. 208) RG 225; NA; JB. 225 (Ser. 208), 17 August 1922, RG 225, NA. 16. Asada, "The Imperial Japanese Navy and the Politics of Naval Limitation, 1918-1930," pp. 14-18. 17. Akira, "The Role of the Japanese Navy," pp. 189-193; Robert Butow, Τojo and the Coming of War, pp. 24-25. 18. Peattie, Ishiwahara Kanji and Japan's Confrontation with the West, pp. 67-83. 19. Pelz, The Race to Pearl Harbor, pp. 29-39. 20. Arthur Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies: The Royal Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy, Strategic Illusions, pp. 296-318. 21. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun, p. 45. 22. Stephen Howarth, The Fighting Ships of the Rising Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1895-1945, pp. 217-218; Menori Jentschura, Dieter Jung, and Peter Mickel, Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1889¡945, pp. 83-84. Carl Boyd, "The Japanese Submarine Force and the Legacy of Strategic and Operational Doctrine Developed Between the World Wars," pp. 27-28. 23. 24. 25. 26.

Pelz, The Race to Pearl Harbor, p. 35. Akira, "The Role of the Japanese Army," pp. 188-190. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, pp. 275-277. Roskill, Navy Policy Between the Wars, 1: 354.

4. Confounded Expectations 27. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: The Prophet of Truth, ¡922-1939, pp. 82-83. 28. Neidpath, The Singapore Naval Base and the Defense of Britain's Eastern Empire, 1919-1941, pp. 11-15, 48-51. 29. ibid., pp. 102-122. 30. Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, 1: 330-333, 344-345. 31. Ibid., pp. 467-497. 32. See Appendix A; see also Military Historical Section Headquarters, Army Forces Far East, "Japanese Monograph No. 145: Outline of Naval Armaments and Preparation for War," in The War in Asia and the Pacific, pp. 1-5. 33. U.S. Congress, Senate Committee or Naval Affairs, Building up the United States Navy to the Strength Permitted by the Washington and London Naval Treaties, 1932, Hearings on S. 51, 72dCong., IstSess., p. 3. 34. Wheeler, Prelude to Pearl Harbor, p. 142. 35. Earl Pomeroy, Pacific Outposts, p. 110. 36. Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies, pp. 296-318. 37. See Appendix A. 38. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, p. 284. 39. See note 42, chapter 2. 40. FeiTell, American Diplomacy During the Great Depression, pp. 65-71. 41. Ralph Levering, The Public and American Foreign Policy, 1918-1978, pp. 50-52. 42. Vinson, William E. Borah and the Outlawry of War, pp. 44-56. 43. Ferrei 1, American Diplomacy During the Great Depression, pp. 26-33. 44. Throughout the interwar years, particularly during the 1920s, Congress not only set the agenda but largely determined national policy in respect to naval arms limitation and naval building. It is appropriate, therefore, to focus heavily on Congressional debates and roll-calls as the most important sources of American naval arms limitation policy and its relationship to spending of national defense. The author based his assessment in the above text on a detailed study of relevant Congressional hearings and floor debates for the decade, particularly those in connection with the major naval authorization and appropriations bills. 45. House Committee on Naval Affairs, Hearings on H.R. 7359, 70th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 1188. Idem, Hearings Before the Committee on Naval Affairs on Sundry Legislation Affecting the Naval Establishment, 1922-1923, p. 341. As later chapters will show, President Hoover, too, would rationalize his refusal to support building up to the treaty limits using the same logic as Representative McClintock and his cohorts. 46. James Crowley, Japans Quest for Autonomy: 1930-1938, pp. 30-31. 47. Maxon, The Armed Forces and Control of Japanese Foreign Policy, pp. 27-29; Borton, Japan's Modem Century, pp. 310-311. 48. Paul Johnson, A History of the English Speaking People, pp. 384-385; Chaput, Disarmament and British Foreign Policy, pp. 40-45; Keith Middlemas, The Strategy of Appeasement, pp. 12-19. In the United States, the most intense supporters of naval limitation and opponents of American naval building came

4. Confounded Expectations disproportionately from the ranks of the progressive Isolationist block in Congress; in Great Britain, Appeasers often stood at the forefront of the movement for naval limitation and against naval building. What accounts for this affinity between the inclination to isolationism and appeasement, on one hand, and arms limitation, or the other? Some of the answers are common to both groups. In the first place, Isolationists and Appeasers tended often to doubt either the morality or utility of a resort to force. Similarly, both groups tended to subscribe to the mechanistic explanations of the cause and probable consequences of an arms race. Conversely, both groups inclined to envisage arms limitation not only as a way to improve the climate of international relations, but to deprive their respective countries of the means, thus the temptation, to fight. 49. Keith Middlemas and John Barnes, Baldwin, pp. 329-3 BO, 368-373, 730-788. 50. Martin Gilbert, The Roots of Appeasement, pp. 105-116; Benjamin Sachs, /. Ramsay MacDonald in Thought and in Action, pp. 470-567. 51. For example, see Lippmann, U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic, pp. 54-58; the preface of Admiral Hany Yamell, in Hoag, Preface to Preparedness; Merze Tate, The United States and Armaments, p. 196. 52. For example, see Andrade, "The United States Navy in the Disarmament Era," pp. 77-82; Rosen, "The Treaty Navy," pp. 224-237; Heinrich, "The Role of the United States Navy," pp. 197-224. 53. Ibid., Heinrich and Rosen. 54. Hone, "Spending Patterns of the U.S. Navy, 1921-1941," pp. 444-449. 55. Norman Friedman, U.S. Aircraft Carriers, pp. 1, 63-65. 56. "Characteristics of Aircraft Carriers," GB. 429-7/1218, 24 May 1924, GBP. This set of documents indicates clearly that (1) the Board preferred 27,000ton carriers and (2) its anticipation of bigger and faster aircraft was a major reason why. 57. Ibid.; Friedman, U.S. Aircraft Carriers, pp. 65-68; Norman Polmar, Aircraft Carriers, pp. 68-71. 58. Ibid. ; Melhorn, Two Block Fox, pp. 108-111. Friedman bases his analysis on a comprehensive reading of the archival record, particularly GB. 420-8, 19211940, which deals thoroughly with all aspects of carrier design and the underlying rationales. Indeed, even MofFett, the principal proponent of smaller carriers, recognized the manifest superiority of the larger carriers individually over smaller units. Given, however, the Washington Treaty limits, which limited indirectly the number of large units the U.S. could build, Moffett believed that the Navy needed the largest number of carriers possible so as to minimize the risk of losing a great number of planes if one or two carriers were sunk. See also "Characteristics of Aircraft Carriers," GB. 420-7/1362, 1 November 1927, GBP. 59. "Characteristics of Aircraft Carriers," GB. 420-7/1372, 16 March 1928, GBP. 60. Melhom, Two Block Fox, p. 100. 61. "Characteristics of Aircraft Carriers," GB. 420-7/1623, 14 June 1933; GB. 420-7/1682, 11 March 1935, GBP. Again, the aggregate tonnage limits affected the Navy's design choice: With 53,500 tons of carrier allotment remaining, the

4. Confounded Expectations Board tells us, the U.S. could build two 20,000-ton carriers and a 13,500-ton carrier; or three 17,500-ton carriers. The documents indicate, too, that the American Navy would have preferred an even larger carrier but for the treaties. 62. Hone, "The Effectiveness of the Washington Treaty Navy," ^ 57; Belote and Belote, Titans of the Seas, p. 18. "Characteristics of Aircraft Carriers," GB. 420-7/1675, 4 May 1935, GBP. 63. Friedman, U.S. Aircraft Carriers, p. 134. "Characteristics of Aircraft Carriers," GB. 420-7/1826, 11 December 1938, GBP. 64. ¡bid., pp. 135-143. 65. Hone, "The U.S. Naval Spending, 1921-1941," pp. 445-446. 66. Ibid. 67. Norman Friedman, U.S. Cruisers, p. 110. 68. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun, p. 21. 69. Norman Friedman, l/.S. Battleships, pp. 209-243. 70. Ibid., pp. 243-310. 71. Hone, "The Effectiveness of the Washington Treaty Navy," p. 56. 72. Towle, Arms Control and East-West Relations, p. 161. 73. Andrade, "United States Naval Policy in the Disarmament Era," p. 119. 74. For example, see Michael West, "Laying the Legislative Foundation: The House Naval Affairs Committee and the Construction of the Treaty Navy, 19261934," pp. 7-57. 75. I found nothing of significance about Coolidge's views on naval affairs in the President's private papers—available at the Library of Congress. Felicitously, Coolidge's public utterances and actions attest clearly to his view on the subject. See also Robert Ferrell, The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy. Vol. 11: Frank B. Kellogg and Henry L. Stimson, p. 93. 76. For a sample of President Coolidge's public utterances on the subject, see Howard Quint and Robert Fenell, eds., The Talkative President: The Off the Record Press Conferences of Calvin Coolidge, pp. 103-147. 77. Ibid., pp. 147-174. 78. Quoted in Literary Digest (March 1925), 84(10): 9. 79. Congressional Record (Vol. 66), 68th Cong., IstSess., p. 55. 80. Congressional Record (Vol. 69), 68th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 95. 81. FRUS 1927, lrviii. 82. Wheeler, Prelude to Pearl Harbor, pp. 118-119. 83. For example, see the dialogue between Congressman McClintock and Admiral Hughes. U.S. Congress, House Committee on Naval Affairs, Hearings onH.R. 7359, p. 849-851. 84. Ibid., The Testimony of Admiral Jones, pp. 1169-1225. Neither I nor others have found out why the American Navy continued to make its argument for more naval building in reference to Great Britain. Perhaps it was because the Navy assumed that Congress would attach some importance politically to the idea of numerical parity, which the United States then lacked. 85. Quoted in Literary Digest (3 March 1928), 87(10): 10-11. 86. See, for example, Congressional Record (Vol. 70), 70th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 4837-4839, 4844-4876, 4850-4852, 4861-4864, 4893-4898.

229

230

4. Confounded Expectations 87. William Foster Trimble, "The United States Navy and the Geneva Conference for the Limitation of Armaments, 1927," pp. 420-421, 428—433; Congressional Record (Vol. 80), 70th Cong., 2d Sess., pp. 2179-2194, 24152463, 2838-2864. Essentially, the debate paralleled the debate in the House during the previous session. Progressive Isolationists and militant arms controllers, often one and the same, argued that the bill represented a dangerous step toward an arms race, bankruptcy, and war. Conversely, supporters argued that the bill would allow the United States to negotiate from a position of strength. 88. Robert Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression, p. 73. 89. D/S File No. 500, Al 5/817, RC59, NA. 90. Ibid., Congressional Record, 70th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 2178-2179, 3008. Again, Borah invoked the World War I apology, specifically the revisionist view of the consequences of the Anglo-German naval race. 91. Stephen Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, I, p. 420; Alan Ravan and John Roberts, British Battleships of World War II, pp. 293-315. 92. Ibid., pp. 128-143; Towle, Arms Control and East-West Relations, pp. 115-121. 93. Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, I, pp. 449-450; Wheeler, Prelude to Pearl Harbor, pp. 147-148. 94. Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, II, pp. 226-231. 95. Kobayashi Tatsuo, "The London Naval Treaty, 1930," in James Morley ed., Japan Erupts: The London Naval Conference and the Manchurian Incident, 1928-1932, pp. 102-117; Chihiro Hoyosa "Britain and the United States in Japan's View of the International System, 1919-1937," in Ian Nish, ed., AngloJapanese Alienation, J919-1952, pp. 7-10; Asada "The Japanese Navy and the Naval Limitation, 1918-1930," p. 53. 96. Pelz, The Race to Pearl Harbor, pp. 29-41. 97. For example, see Malcom Kennedy, The Estrangement of Japan, p. I l l ; Marder, Old Friends and New Enemies, p. 6; Paul Johnson, Modem Times, p. 188.

98. Ibid.; See also Asada, "The Role of the Japanese Navy," pp. 229-231. Sometimes, Asada seems to imply that the treaties contributed to the radicalization of the Japanese Navy; at other times, he seems to argue to the contrary: that the debate over the naval treaties merely reflected, but did not cause, the radicalization; Nish, A Short History of Japan, pp. 155-156. 99. Ibid., Asada; Marder, Old Friends and New Enemies, pp. 22-28. 100. Borton, Japan's Modem Century, pp. 182-189; Peattie, Ishiwahara Kanji, pp. 12-14. 101. Asada, "The Japanese Navy and the Politics of Naval Limitation, 19181930," p. 39. 102. Scalapino, Democracy and the Party Movement in Prewar Japan, pp. 224-231; Berger, Parties out of Power in Japan, 1931-1941. 103. Also, the U.S. Navy's fleet exercises (1925) momentarily caused some friction between Japan and the United States but tensions quickly subsided. Neu, The Troubled Encounter, pp. 116-125. 104. Akira Iriye, Across the Pacific, p. 310.

4. Confounded Expectations 105. Borton, Japan's Modem Century, p. 310. 106. Singer, Mirror, Sword and Jewel, pp. 151-155; Richard Stony, The Double Patriots, p. 1-50. 107. Hugh Byas, Government by Assassination, pp. 173—191. 108. Scalapino, Democracy and the Party Movement in Prewar Japan, pp. 231-239. 109. Nish, A Short History of Japan, pp. 147-149. 110. Scalapino, Democracy and Party Movement in Prewar Japan, 292-293. 111. Iriye, Across the Pacific, pp. 146-149; O. Edmund Clubb, 20th Century China, pp. 122-157. 112. Ibid. 113. Peattie, Ishiwahara Kanji, pp. 87-107. 114. Ian Nish, Japans Foreign Policy, 1869-1942, pp. 154-160. 115. Iriye, After Imperialism, pp. 193-214. 116. Storry, A History of Modern Japan, pp. 175-177. 117. During the 1920s, the British modernized the bridges on their battleships. The Italian battleships of the Littoro Class, begun in 1934, would displace 41,000 tons. Towle, Arms Control and East-West Relations, p. 138; Raven and Roberts, British Battleships, pp. 130-131. Although, perhaps not technically a violation of the Washington Navy Treaty, the way in which the British calculated tonnage, legend tonnage, aroused some controversy at the Geneva Conference of 1927. Upon completion of the Nelson and the Rodney, Great Britain would actually have 607,950 tons of battleships to only 511,445 tons for the Americans —a ratio of 6 to 5 in Britain's favor. The Americans commented about this disparity at the conference, but as hi as I can tell, did nothing about it. See the Diary of Admiral Frank Schofield, Naval Advisor to the American Delegation at the Geneva Conference, GBP; also cited and recounted in Burns, The Limitation ofSeapower, note 57, p. 283. 118. Friedman, U.S. Battleship, p. 190. 119. GB. 420-2/1153, 29 November 1922; GB. 420-2/1155, 19 December 1922, GBP. 120. FRUS 1923, 1: 27. 121. Ibid., 24-30. 122. Ibid., 30-32. 123. FRUS 1924, 1:7. 124. GB. 420-2/1155, 19 December 1922; GB. 438-1/1212, 23 April 1922, GBP. 125. FRUS 1924, 1:9-11. 126. Quint and Ferrell, eds., The Talkative President, pp. 152-153; FRUS ¡924, 1: 13-14; CafFery to Hughes, D/S No. 500, A4/b/291a, 5 January 1925, RG59, NA (re: Japan's view that gun elevation does not violate the Washington Naval Treaty); See also 500, A4b/144 1/2, 3 May 1923; 500, A4b/292, 5 January 1925 (re: the Japanese view of the legality of gun elevation). 127. Ibid.; FRUS 1924, vol. 1. 128. Ibid., 14-17. 129. Congressional Record (Vol. 66), 69th Cong., IstSess., pp. 1964-1970.

232

4. Confounded Expectations Π0. Quint and Ferrell, eds., The Talkative President, p. 158. 131. Andrade, "United States Naval Policy in the Disarmament Era," pp. 9 6 98. 132. Wilbur to Houghton, 15 January 1927, GBP. 133. Houghton to Wilbur, D/S File No. 500, A4b/327, 13 July 1927, RC59, NA. 134. Wheeler, Prelude to Pearl Harbor, pp. 111-112. 135. GB. 420-7/1218, 24 May 1924; GB. 420-7/1241, 11 September 1924; GBP. 136. For example, see Rear Admiral Taylor to Admiral Pratt, 3 September 1922, William Veazie Pratt Papers, Operational Archives of the Navy Historical Division, Washington, D.C. (Hereinafter cited as Pratt Papers); GB. 420-7/1287, 2 July 1925, GBP. 137. Ibid. ; See also GB. 420-7/1289, 28 August 1925, GBP. 138. For example, see Memoranda from Pratt to Wilbur, 19 June 1925, 2 July 1925, 14 July 1925, all in the Hilary Jones Papers, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. (Hereinafter cited as Hilary Jones Papers.) 139. Hughes to Pratt, 2 May 1925; Charles Evans Hughes Papers. 140. Friedman, Aircraft Carriers, pp. 39-46. 141. Howarth, The Fighting Ships of the Rising Sun, p. 163. 142. Belote and Belote, Titans of the Seas, pp. 19-21; Roskill, Νaval Policy Between the Wan, 2: 26. Between 1935 and 1938, the Japanese added weight to the flightdecks of the Kaga and Akagi, which increased their displacements to 41,000 tons each. Jentschura, Jung, and Michels, Warships of the Japanese Navy, pp. 42-43. 143. For example, see the conclusions of the Army's Pearl Harbor Board, quoted in Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes, p. 451; see also Pusey's conclusion, p. 452. 144. Thomas Wild, "How Japan Fortified the Mandated Islands," United States Naval Institute Proceedings (1955), 81(4): 402. 145. Christopher Thome, The Limits of Foreign Policy: The West, the League and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1931-1933, p. 67. 146. Richard Dean Bums, "Inspection of the Mandates, 1919-1941," 445462. 147. Dorothy Borg, The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis of 19331938, pp. 235-254. 148. Wheeler, Prelude to Pearl Harbor, pp. 87-88; Philip A. Crowl, cited in Borg, The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis, note 13, ch. 8, p. 605. 149. Burns, "Inspection of the Mandates, 1919-1941," p. 445. 150. Wild "How Japan Fortified the Mandates," pp. 402-403. 151. Fred Charles Ilde, "After Detection What," 209-210. 152. Ibid. 153. William Sebald, With MacArthurin Japan, p. 30. 154. Whenever a researcher has to rely on the naval records at the National Archives to make his case, he ought to state any conclusions with caution. Even

4. C o n f o u n d e d E x p e c t a t i o n s the most diligent researcher may miss pertinent information, because the records are poorly indexed and organized. 155. For example, see Weekly Reports of American Naval Attaches, 0-1-M, 12491 CA, RC38 NA: File No. 405-100 14 March 1928 (re: inspection of the Uraga and Yokohama dockyards; idem, 22 April 1930 (re: Funinaga shipbuilding plant); File No. 405-300, 5 February 1934 (re: Japan inspection of Ishi Kawajima shipyard). 156. Pomeroy, Pacific Outposts, pp. 107-108. 157. FRUS 1929, 3:256-262. 158. Wheeler, Prelude to Pearl Harbor, p. 88. 159. Borg, The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis, pp. 237-238. 160. Skinner to Stimson, 20 August 1932, D/S File No. 894/30.75; Cole to Stimson, 20 August 1932, D/S File No. 894/30.76; Weekly Intelligence Summary, c-lO-E-212, 15 September 1933, RG59, NA. 161. Joseph Grew, Ten Years in Japan, pp. 84-85. 162. Burns, "Inspection of the Mandates, 1919-1941," p. 455. 163. FR US ¡936, 4: 984-992; Idem, Japan, ¡931-1941, pp. 307-309. 164. Richard Dean Bums, "International Arms Inspection Policy Between the World Wars," 587-595. 165. GB. 438-1/1164, 26 February 1923, GBP. 166. Bums, "International Arms Inspection Policy between the World Wars," 587-595. 167. GB. 438-2/1693, 1 May 1935, GBP. Indeed, The President determined that if nothing else, the United States must come out of the Second London Naval Conference with an agreement among the participants to exchange information about their respective shipbuilding programs. Apparently, the problem of verifying the accuracy of such information never occurred to him. 168. Borg, The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis, pp. 244-247. 169. Jeffrey Dorwart, Conflict of Duty: The United States Navy's Intelligence Dilemma, 1919-1945, p. 26. 170. Davis to Hull, 16 January 1936, D/S File No. 500, A15 A5/631, RG59, NA. 171. Pelz, The Race to Pearl Harbor, p. 200. 172. David Kahn, "The United States views of Germany and Japan in 1941," in Ernest May, ed.. Knowing One's Enemies: Intelligence Estimates Between the Two World Wars, pp. 477-478; (Kahn quotes the widely inaccurate observations of such eminent naval experts as Fletcher Pratt and Captain Puleston). 173. See FRUS 1936, 4: 986. (When the Japanese refused the Roosevelt administration's request for the U.S. destroyer Alden to visit some of the closed parts of the Mandates, Secretary of State Hull declined to press the point because it wasn't worth provoking a "showdown" with Japan.) 174. In chapter 6, this study will have a great deal more to say about the domestic politics of naval limitation (U.S.) during the 1930s. It suffices to say here that President Roosevelt not only feared Senator Nye and his minions politically; he not only wanted their support for his domestic program. Initially, he also

4. Confounded Expectations shared many of their views (if not their intense convictions) about the causes of war and the conditions of peace. See Robert Divine, The Illusion of Neutrality, pp. 57—161 for a detailed analysis of how the Isolationist bloc in Congress influenced the American domestic debate on Foreign Policy—not only for neutrality legislation and naval limitation, but against naval building. For a good assessment of Senator Nye's thinking about arms and naval arms control, see Wayne Cole, Senator Gerald P. Ν ye and American Foreign Relations, pp. 124129. Although President Roosevelt opposed the Neutrality legislation, he did not invest his political capital to oppose it. Indeed, his sense of political realities and his own instincts inclined to him to Appeasement until well into the 1930s. See Borg, The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis, pp. 519-544 (in respect to President Roosevelt's instincts to accommodate Japan and limit America's involvement in Asia); See also Arnold Offner, American Appeasement; United States Foreign Policy and Germany, 1933-1938. (This excellent study shows that, in respect to Europe, too, President Roosevelt inclined to Appeasement until the late 1930s.) 175. Dunn Memoranda: 26 October 1936, D/S File No. 500, Al 5 A5/835; D/S File No. 500, A15/A5, 839, 2 December 1936, RG59, NA. (The British and the Americans held back on pressing the Japanese to clarify the rumors about the Yamatos exceeding treaty limits for fear of infuriating the Japanese at this delicate phase in their relationship. ) 176. FRUS Í936, 4: 984-992. 177. Borg, The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis, pp. 251-252. 178. FRUS, Japan 1931-194], 1: 83-87. 179. On President Hoover's Foreign Policy with respect to the China Crisis, see Thorne, The Limits of Foreign Policy, pp. 3-14, 59-77, 278-282; Norman Graebner "Hoover, Roosevelt and the Japanese," in Borg and Okamoto, Pearl Harbor as History, pp. 25-52; On Roosevelt's Foreign Policy and the Far East (pre-1939), see Borg, The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis, especially pp. 519-544; Utley, Going to War with fapan, pp. 3-42. 180. George Till, "Perceptions of Naval Power Between the Wars, the British Case," in Philip Towle, ed., Estimating Military Power, p. 179. 181. Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, 2: 420. 182. Till, "Perceptions of Naval Power Between the Wars," pp. 179-180; Peter Lowe, "Great Britain's Assessment of Japan Before the Outbreak of the Pacific War," in May, ed., Knowing One's Enemies, pp. 459-462. 183. Quester, Deterrence Before Hiroshima, pp. 82-90. 184. On British passivity in respect to Japan's violations of the Nine Power Treaty, see Louis, British Strategy in the Far East, 1919-1939, pp. 171-205; Christopher Thome, Allies of a Kind, pp. 16-20. 185. Records of the Geneva Conference for the Limitation of Naval Armaments, pp. 3-4. (Hereinafter cited as Geneva Conference.) 186. Ibid., pp. 8-13. 187. For an extensive analysis of the Geneva Naval Conference, see L. Ethan Ellis, Frank B. Kellogg and American Foreign Relations, 1925-1929, pp. 158164; Trimble, "The United States and the Geneva Naval Conference for the

5. The London Naval Conference of 1930 Limitation of Naval Armaments, 1927," pp. 151-341; see also FRUS 1927, 1: 1 157. 188. Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wan, I, pp. 499-500; Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Νaval Mastery, pp. 278-279. 189. Geneva Conference, pp. 70-71, 82-88, 117-127. 190. GB 438-1/1347(a), 3 June 1927, GBP; Wheeler, Prelude to Pearl Harbor, pp. 142-144. 191. FRUS 1927, 1:152-153. 192. Geneva Conference, pp. 54-55; GB. 438-1/1347(b), 3 June 1927; GB. 438-1/1347(j), 3 June 1927, GBP. 193. Geneva Conference, pp. 59-61, 71-72; Asada, "The Japanese Navy and the Politics of Naval Limitation, 1918-1930," pp. 29-31. 194. See Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, 1: 514; Ferrell, The American Secretaries of State, 11: 97-100; Tate, The United States and Armaments, pp. 143-145, 156-158. 195. Wheeler, Prelude to Pearl Harbor, pp. 142-145. 196. O'Connor, Perilous Equilibrium, pp. 18-19; Ferrell, The American Secretaries of State, 11:93, 101-104. 197. See chapter 3 of this study for an analysis of how the fear of the 1916 program inspired flexibility on the part of Great Britain and Japan. V. T H E L O N D O N NAVAL C O N F E R E N C E O F 1930 1. John Richard Meredith Wilson, "Herbert Hoover and the Armed Forces," pp. 1-7. Quoted in Harold Wolfe, Herbert Hoover: Public Servant and Leader of the Loyal Opposition, p. 167; See also Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression, p. 42; William Starr Meyers, The Foreign Policy of Herbert Hoover, pp. 1-2. 2. I enjoyed my visit to the Hoover Library at West Branch Iowa immensely, but found little concerning the President's views on arms limitation available in the public record. Felicitously, there is nothing ambiguous about Hoover's attitude about naval limitation; what is more, his actions matched his convictions. See Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, II, pp. 330, 338. 3. The Public Papers of Herbert Hoover: 1929 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1974), pp. 233-236. (Hereinafter cited as the Public Papers of Herbert Hoover.) 4. Hoover, Memoirs, 2: 320. 5. Public Papers of Herbert Hoover: 1929, pp. 233-236. 6. Herbert Hoover and Hugh Gibson, The Problems of Lasting Peace, pp. 242-243. 7. The Public Papers of Herbert Hoover: 1929, p. 165. 8. The Public Papers of Herbert Hoover: 1932-1933, pp. 268-269. 9. Hoover, Memoirs, 2: 331; Myers, Foreign Policies of Herbert Hoover, pp. 17-18. 10. See Charles Krauthammer, "The New Isolationism," in Charles Krauthammer, Cutting Edge (New York: Random House, 1985), pp. 148-161.

5. The London Naval Conference of 1930 He makes this distinction between different variants of isolationism, eloquently and forcibly. 11. The Public Papers of Herbert Hoover: 1932-1933, p. 270. 12. The Public Papers of Herbert Hoover: 1929, p. 295. 13. Wilson, "Herbert Hoover and the Armed Forces," pp. 17-18, 20. 14. Hoover, Memoirs, 2: 180. 15. Ibid., pp. 362-379. 16. Eugene Lyons, The Herbert Hoover Story, pp. 221-223; Wilson, "Herbert Hoover and the Armed Forces," pp. 220-222. 17. The Public Papers of Herbert Hoover: 1929, p. 285. 18. Charles Dawes, Journal of an Ambassador to Great Britain, p. 75. 19. Ibid., pp. 76-77. 20. Henry Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War, pp. 163-164. 21. See, for example, Hoover to Stimson, 30 August 1929, D/S File No. 500, Al5A1/44, RG59, NA. In this memorandum, the President suggested to the Secretary that the Shearer Affair "may be a useful public example and one which we may need before we are finished." 22. For an extensive discussion of the Shearer Affair, see George Fagan, "Anglo-American Naval Relations, 1927-1937," pp. 121-131. 23. Ibid. 24. DBFP, 2d Ser., 1: 78. 25. Wilson, "Herbert Hoover and the Armed Forces," pp. 79-87. 26. Thome, The Limits of Foreign Policy, pp. 83-86. 27. Richard Currant, Secretary Stimson: A Study in Statecraft, pp. 43-45; Elting Morrison, Turmoil and Tradition: A Study of the Life and Times of Henry L. Stimson, pp. 303-304. 28. Robert FeiTell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression, pp. 42-43. 29. Henry Stimson Diary, Henry L. Stimson Papers, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., 23 January 1930. (Hereinafter cited as Stimson Diary.) 30. Current, Secretary Stimson, p. 69. 31. Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service, p. 164. 32. Hoover, Memoirs, 2: 346. 33. The Public Papers of Herbert Hoover: 1929, p. 109. 34. Raymond G. O'Connor, "The Yardstick and Naval Disarmament in the 1920s," pp. 445-448. 35. FRUS 1929, 1: 99. 36. Stimson to Gibson, 19 May 1929, D/S File No. 500, A15A3/3, RC59, NA. 37. See chapter 4, note 54. 38. Memorandum of a conversation among Hoover, Gibson, and the Secretary, 6 June 1929, D/S File No. 500, A15A3/6 1/2, RG59, NA. 39. GB. 438-1/1427, 10 June 1929, GBP. 40. Hoover to Adams, 14 June 1929, Hilary Jones Papers. 41. Jones to Adams, 18 June 1929, GBP. 42. Memorandum of a conversation among Stimson, Hoover, and Dawes, 6

5. The London Naval Conference of 1930 June 1929, D/S File No. 500, A15A5/321 1/2; Hoover Memorandum 26 June 1930, D/S File No. 500, A15A3/30, RG59, NA. 43. GB. 438-1/1437, 13 July 1929, GBP. 44. ¡bid. 45. ¡bid; GB. 438-1/1427, 10 June 1929, GBP. 46. See FRUS 1929, 1: 120-152; Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service, pp. 164-165. 47. ¡bid ; FRUS ¡929, 1: 153. 48. President Hoover's Declaration on the Cruiser Bill of 13 February 1929, 23 July 1929, Herbert Hoover Papers, West Branch Iowa. (Cited hereinafter as the Herbert Hoover Papers.) 49. FRUS ¡929, I. 159-161. 50. ¡bid., 167-168. 51. ¡bid., 191-194. 52. DBFP, 2d Ser., 1:47-51. 53. GB. 438-1/1444-A, 11 September 1929, GBP; Hoover to Stimson, 11 September 1929, File No. 500, A15A3/329, RG59, NA. 54. ¡bid. 55. Dawes, Journal of an Ambassador to Great Britain, pp. 77-78. 56. FRUS ¡929, 1: 209-213; DBFP, 1:61-63. 57. FRUS ¡929, 1: 224-225. 58. DBFP, 2d Ser., 1: 106-116; Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression, p. 79. 59. DBFP, 2d Ser., 1: 128-131. 60. Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War, pp. 166-167. 61. DBFP, 2d Ser., 1: 106-116. 62. For example, see Memorandum of a conversation among Stimson, Marriner, and Admiral Long, 22 October 1929 re: the primacy of the battleship and the importance of building such ships as big and as heavily armed as possible to conduct a transoceanic advance across the Western Pacific, GBP; Memorandum of a conversation among Stimson, Captain Jackson, and Marriner, 23 October 1929, 250 U.S./6, RG43, NA; Memorandum of a conversation between Stimson and Admiral Hough, 26 October 1929, 250 U.S./7 RG43; Memorandum of a conversation among Pringle, Marriner, Stimson, and Cotton, D/S 250/74, RG43; NA; Memorandum of a conversation among Stimson, Rear-Admiral Moffett, and Marriner, 22 November 1922, D/S File No. 500, A15A3/449, RG59, NA. 63. ¡bid. 64. Lawrence Douglas, "Submarine Disarmament, 1919-1936," p. 184. 65. Memorandum of a conversation among Stimson, Rear-Admiral Moffett, and Marriner, D/S File No. 500, A15A3/449, RG59, NA. 66. O'Connor, Perilous Equilibrium, p. 58. 67. DBFP, 2d Ser., 1: 106. 68. ¡bid. 69. Wheeler, Prelude to Pearl Harbor, pp. 117-119. 70. GB. 438-1/1435-2, 14 August 1929, GBP. 71. D/S 250/43, 10 October 1929, RG43, NA.

238

The London Naval Conference of 1930 72. Roskill, Naval Policy between the Wars, II, pp. 51-55. 73. Ibid.; DBFP, 2d Ser., 1: 207-209. 74. Iriye, Across the Pacific, pp. 162-165; Borton, Japans Modern Century, p. 314. 75. Ibid.; Iriye, After Imperialism, pp. 260-264; Peattie, ¡shawahara Kanji, pp. 101-115. 76. Asada, "The Imperial Japanese Navy and the Politics of Naval Limitation, 1918-1930," pp. 35-38. 77. Ibid., pp. 39, 41-42. 78. FRUS 1929, 1: 307-313. 79. Iriye, Across the Pacific, pp. 166-167; Stimson to Hoover, 19 January 1930, Confidential Telegrams, RG43, NA. 80. Wolfers, Britain and France Between the Two Wars, pp. 24-28. 81. O'Connor, Perilous Equilibrium, pp. 54-56. 82. FRL/S 1929, 1: 59-61; DBFP, 2d Ser., 1: 98. 83. Memorandum, Department of Western European Affairs to the Secretary re: the Italian viewpoint, D/S file No. 500, A15A3/284, 14 October 1929, RG59, NA. 84. "Tentative Plan of the American Delegation," 24 January 1930, Stimson Diary; the daily log of Rear Admiral Harold Train, 25 January 1930, (hereinafter cited as Train's Log), GBP. 85. Memorandum of Admiral Hilary Jones, 28 January 1930, Train's Log. GBP. 86. Memorandum by Captain Van Keuren, 28 January 1930, Train's Log, GBP. 87. Memorandum by Admiral Pringle, 29 January 1930, Train's Log, GBP. 88. Ibid. 89. Memorandum by Admiral Yamell, 29 January 1930, Memorandum by Admiral Hepburn, 29 January 1930, Train's Log, GBP. 90. Pratt to Stimson, 13 February 1930, Pratt Papers. 91. Ibid. 92. Wheeler, Admiral William Veazie Pratt, pp. 309-310. 93. GB. 438-1/1465, 6 January 1930, GBP. The Board agreed to reduce numbers, because it feared that Congress would not fund battleship modernization fully with or without a treaty. 94. Memorandum by Rear Admiral Moffett, 28 January 1930, Train's Log, GBP. 95. Ibid. 96. Recall from chapter 4 that the Board settled on the smaller carrier in order to get the maximum number of units within the Washington Treaty aggregate tonnage. 420-7/1218, 24 May 1924, GBP. Lest the reader became confused, the General Board never determined precisely what the United States needed to accomplish the operational requirements of War Plan Orange. What the Board and other naval planners concluded unambiguously was that the naval treaties did not provide enough. 97. GB. 438-1/1464, 3 January 1930, GBP.

5. The London Naval Conference of 1930 98. Memorandum of a conversation among MacDonald, Stimson, Adams, and Reed, 3 February 1930, Stimson Diary. 99. Ibid. 100. Memorandum by Admiral Jones, 5 February 1930, Train's Log, GBP. 101. FR US 1930, 1: 13. 102. ¡bid., 18. 103. ¡bid., 33. 104. Cotton to Stimson, 5 March 1930, #177, RG43, NA. 105. Stimson to Cotton, 6 March 1980, #178, RG43, NA. 106. See U.S. Department of State, Conf. Ser. No. 6, Proceedings of the London Νaval Conference of 1930, Part 3, Article 4 (1) and (2). (Hereinafter cited as London Conference of 1930.) 107. DBFP, 2d Ser., 1:227-233. 108. FR US 1930, 1: 26-27. 109. Memorandum of a conversation with MacDonald, 17 January 1930, Stimson Diary. 110. Memorandum of a conversation with MacDonald, 23 February 1930, 500, A15A3/702, RG59, NA. 111. Asada, "The Japanese Navy and the Politics of Naval Limitation, 19181930," pp. 42-48. 112. Crowley, Japan's Quest for Autonomy, p. 52. 113. O'Connor, Perilous Equilibrium, p. 80. 114. Cotton to Stimson, 5 March 1930, #177, #175, RG43, NA. 115. ¡bid., Cotton to Stimson, 6 March 1930, #181. 116. Asada, "The Japanese Navy and the Politics of Naval Limitation, 19181930," p. 46. 117. FRUS 1930, 1: 35, 52-54, 60-61. 118. /¿id., 60-61. 119. Asada, "The Japanese Navy and the Politics of Naval Limitation, 19181930," pp. 45, 49. 120. Borton, Japans Modern Century, p. 315. 121. Wheeler, Prelude to Pearl Harbor, p. 177. 122. Pratt Memorandum, 24 March 1930, Train's Log, GBP. 123. DBFP, 2d Ser., 1: 211-226; London Conference of 1930, pp. 227-234. 124. Throughout the naval arms control process, the General Board emphasized that France posed no threat to the United States, militarily or politically. Although the British and the French often did not cooperate, no one expected them ever to fight either. Wolfers, Britain and France Between the Two Wars, pp. 380-390. 125. ¡bid. 126. Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression, pp. 95-100; Hoover, Memoirs, 2: 348; Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War, p. 167. 127. Wolfers, Britain and France between the Two Wars, pp. 212-222. 128. Engely, TAe Politics of Naval Disarmament, pp. 141-150. 129. London Conference of mo, pp. 215-217.

239

5. The London Naval Conference of 1930 BO. Ibid., pp. 204-207. 131. Ibid., pp. 207-214. 132. Ibid., pp. 218-220. 133. Ibid., pp. 77-93. 134. Ibid., p. 289. 135. Ibid., p. 290. 136. I bid., p. 291. 137. Ibid., pp. 106-107. 138. Ibid., p. 281. 139. Ibid., pp. 279-291, 290. 140. Ibid., p. 281. 141. Public Papen of Herbert Hoover: 1930, pp. 125, 128. 142. For sample of press reaction, see boxes 288-293, RG45, NA; only the Heart Press opposed the treaty unequivocally. 143. O'Connor, Perilous Equilibrium, p. 104. 144. For the text of those speeches, see London Conference of 1930, pp. 274296. 145. O'Connor, Perilous Equilibrium, p. 110. 146. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Treaty of the Limitation of Naval Armaments, 71st Cong. 2d Sess. (Hereinafter cited as Foreign Relations Committee: Hearings on the London Naval Treaty); Senate Committee on Naval Affairs, Hearings on the London Naval Treaty of 1930, 71st Cong., 2d, sess. (Hereinafter cited as Committee on Naval Affairs: Hearings on the London Naval Treaty). 147. Foreign Relations Committee: Hearings on the London Naval Treaty; see the testimony of Rear Admiral Bristol, pp. 226-234; testimony of Rear Admiral Hough, pp. 257-294; Testimony of Rear Admiral Standley, pp. 315-317. 148. Ibid., testimony of Rear Admiral Jones, pp. 89-99, 121-136, 159-170. 149. Ibid., testimony of Rear Admiral Schofield, pp. 235-245; testimony of Admiral Charles F. Hughes, pp. 281-298. 150. Ibid., pp. 62-77. 151. Ibid.; see also the testimony of Secretary Stimson, pp. 1-62. The secretary lavished praise on the accomplishments of the treaty in the same way as he had done ever since the end of the conference. He added one other confident prediction to his testimony—that the treaty would result in an orderly building program up to the treaty limits. 152. Pratt, "Effects of the London Naval Treaty," 7 April 1930, Pratt Papers. 153. Admiral Yamell, "Memorandum on the London Treaty," undated, GBP. james Crowley has used the testimony of Yamell and other American admirals who supported the treaty to argue that the terms of the London Naval Treaty disadyantaged Japan and that everybody in the American Navy knew it. See Crowley, Japan's Quest for Autonomy, pp. 51-81. I disagree wholly with Crowley's use of evidence and the conclusion he draws ttom it. First, the testimony of the treaty's supporters did not represent U.S. Naval opinion generally, but only a tiny minority. Naval opinion remained intensely dissatisfied with the 10:6 ratio, because it gave Japan naval supremacy in the Western Pacific. Curiously, Crowley

6. Confounded Expectations Again concedes that the 10:6 ratio agreed to at Washington gave japan such supremacy, but argues that a 10:6 in auxiliaries would not. Had technological conditions changed so dramatically since 1922 to explain why Japan needed a 7:10 ratio in auxiliaries in 1930 when earlier a 6:10 ratio in capital ships and carriers would suffice? The answer is no. Actually, advances in land-based aviation improved Japan's strategic situation vis-à-vis the United States, given the constraint of the Washington and London Naval Treaties: in the event of war, the Japanese would engage the American battlefleet in a location where Japan could bring land-based aircraft to bear. Second, the Reed-Matsudaira Compromise gave the Japanese almost everything it had asked for de jure and more than that de facto. In the third place, the Pacific War would show that the American Navy had rightly objected to the Washington and London ratios and force levels as perilous. 154. Ibid., Admiral Yamell, "Memorandum on the London Naval Treaty." 155. Committee on Naval Affairs: Hearing on the London Naval Treaty, pp. 269-287. 156. Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, II, pp. 65-67. 157. See, for example, Baron Kumao Harada, Saionji- Harada Memoirs: Fragile Victory, Prince Saionji and the 1930 London Naval Treaty, pp. 14-70; Kobayashi Tatsuo "London Naval Treaty," pp. 85-117; Borton, japan's Modern Century, pp. 314-315; Crowley, Japan's Quest for Autonomy, pp. 69-78. 158. Ibid. 159. O'Connor, Perilous Equilibrium, pp. 105-107. 160. On the other hand, the treaty required the United States to scrap considerable tonnage in overage destroyers and cruisers. 161. Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War, p. 174. 162. Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression, p. 107. 163. Ibid.; Crowley, Japan's Quest for Autonomy, pp. 68-77; Bums, Limitation of Seapower, pp. 118-120; Adler, Uncertain Giant, p. 130. 164. Borton, Japan's Modem Century, p. 315; Maxon, The Control of Japanese Foreign Policy, pp. 75-78. 165. Andrade, "United States Naval Policy in the Disarmament Era," pp. 232-234; Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service, pp. 167-174; Bowen, "The Disarmament Movement, 1918-1935," pp. 178-179; Burns, The Limitation of Seapower, pp. 118-120. VI. C O N F O U N D E D E X P E C T A T I O N S A G A I N 1. GB. 420-2, 16 October 1930, GBP; Wilson, "Herbert Hoover and the Armed Forces," pp. 60-61, 69; H.R. 8230 (A Bill to Authorize the Construction of Certain Naval Vessels for Replacements and for Other Purposes, 22 January 1932). 2. Ibid., Wilson, pp. 61-74. 3. The Public Papers of President Herbert Hoover, 1932-1933, pp. 267-274; Hoover, Memoirs, 2: 352-353. By offensive weapons, he meant bombing airplanes, tanks, chemical warfare, and all mobile guns. 4. Ibid., pp. 211-218; Stimson Diary, 22-24 May 1932; FRUS ¡932, 1: 154-

6. Confounded Expectations Again 158, 180-184; G.B. 438-2/1521-3, May 1932, GBP; GB. 438-2/1521-AA, 18 January 1933, GBP. 5. Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression, pp. 151-193. 6. Public Papers of Herbert Hoover, 1932-1933, pp. 267-274, 601; Nancy Harrison Hooker, ed., The Moffat Papers: Selections from the Diplomatic Journals of fay Pierrepont Moffat, 1919-1943, pp. 66-69. 7. Alan Nevins, The United States in a Chaotic World, p. 183. 8. Thome, The Limits of Foreign Policy, pp. 74-77. 9. Ibid., pp. 152-162, 192-201. 10. For example, see Andrade, "United States Naval Policy in the Disarmament Era," pp. 262-266; Robert Levine, "The Politics of Naval Rearmament, 1930-1938," pp. 1-38. 11. Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1932, p. 5; Japanese Monograph No. 145, p. 4; Howarth, The Fighting Ships of the Rising Sun, pp. 17-18. 12. Paul Johnson, Modern Times, pp. 244-247. 13. John B. Wilson, "The Quaker and the Sword: Herbert Hoover's Relations with the Military," 41-47. 14. Public Papers of Herbert Hoover, 1932-1933, p. 601; Myers, State Papers, 2:42. 15. Dawes, Diary, pp. 75-78. 16. Quoted in West, "Laying the Legislative Foundation: The House Naval Affairs Committee and the Construction of the Treaty Navy, 1926-1934," p. 245. 17. Wilson, "Herbert Hoover and the Armed Forces," pp. 53-81. 18. For example, see United States Senate, Committee on Naval Affairs, Hearings on S. 51, A Bill to Authorize the Building up of the United States Navy to the Strength Permitted By the Washington and London Naval Treaties, fanuary 7, 8, and 9, Ì932, pp. 1-94; United States Senate, Committee on Naval Affairs, Hearings to Authorize the Construction of Certain Naval Vessels for Replacement and Additions, and for Other Purposes (H.R. 6661) and (H.R. 8230), pp. 539703; and the floor debate of S. 51, Congressional Record (Vol. 75), 3 May 1932, pp. 9364-9340; 3 May 1932, pp. 9464-9483, 5 May 1932, pp. 9639-4640. 19. Pratt to the Secretary of the Navy, 24 March 1933, Pratt Papers. 20. True, as Waldo Heinrich Jr. points out, U.S. naval appropriations doubled between 1933 and 1937. See Heinrich, "The Role of the United States Navy," in Borg and Okamoto, Pearl Harbor as History, p. 119. Nevertheless, the reader ought not allow these figures to mislead him about the vigor of President Roosevelt's pre-1938 naval program. Consider that the doubling of appropriations, 1933-1937, is measured against the very low base figures of the Hoover years. Not until 1938—when, finally, he had full and unequivocal evidence that Japan had exceeded the Washington and London Treaty limits—would the President (1) accelerate the pace of the construction program called for in the first Vinson bill or (2) authorize building above treaty limits even after the treaties had expired on 31 December 1936. Meanwhile, as Morison points out, Japan continued to improve its relative naval strength vis-à-vis the United States right up through the summer of 1940. Morison, History of Naval Operations in World War ¡I, 3: 3031; ibid., 1: iix.

6. Confounded Expectations Again 21. Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Shall We Trust Japan?" Asie, July 1923. 22. Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Our Foreign Policy. A Democratic View," Foreign Affairs, July 1928. 23. Myers, State Papers of Hoover, 2: 556; Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, (New York: Random House, 1948), 1: 880. 24. Franklin Roosevelt to Norman Davis, 5 October 1934, Edgar Nixon, ed., Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, 2: 227-229. 25. GB. 420-2/1741, 9 May 1937, GBP. 26. Rappaport, The Navy League, pp. 157-158. 27. Robert Dallek, Franklin Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, ¡932¡945, pp. 75-76. 28. For an exhaustive discussion of the President's decision to use NIRA funds for shipbulding and the politics of the Vinson-Trammel Act, see West, "Laying the Legislative Foundation," pp. 273-405. 29. For example, see Congressional Record, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., 30 January 1934, pp. 1587-1639. 30. Dallek, Franklin Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, pp. 87-88. 31. For example, see Congressional Record (Vol. 78, Part 2), 73d Cong., 2d Sess., 5 and 6 March 1934, pp. 3481, 3681-3689, 3782-3805. For an analysis of Senator Nye's views about arms, arms limitation , the causes of war, the conditions of peace, and their affinity with his isolationism, see Wayne Cole, Gerald P. Nye and American Foreign Relations, pp. 124-129. 32. Congressional Record, Ibid., pp. 3477-3496, pp. 3780-3813. 33. Adler, The Isolationist Impulse, pp. 230-236; F.D.R. to Nye, 18 June 1934, OF 404A, FDR Papers. 34. Ibid., Moffat to Hull, 21 February 1934, FDR Papers. 35. Divine, The Illusion of Neutrality, pp. 57-161. 36. The Public Papers of Franklin Roosevelt, 1:264-265. 37. GB. 420-2/1619, December 1935, GBP. 38. Levine, "The Politics of Naval Rearmament, 1930-1938," pp. 218-222; John C. Walter, "William Harrison Standley" in Love, ed., The Chiefs of Naval Operations, pp. 93-94; Roskill, British Naval Policy between the Wars, 1:580584. 39. Borg, The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis, pp. 519-526. 40. Arnold Offner, The Origins of the Second World War: American Foreign Policy and World Politics, 1917-1941, pp. 104-152. 41. F.D.R. to Malcom Peabody, 14 August 1933, FDR Papers. The President confided freely that the size of Great Britain's navy did not alarm him; whereas Japan's growing naval might did. 42. For example, see Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind. 43. For example, see Hoover, Naval Arms Control, pp. 100-101; Asada, "The Japanese Navy and the United States," p. 243. 44. Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, 3:19-20; ibid., l:iix. I have modified these carrier figures to take into account Japanese and American violations with respect to carrier tonnage. 45. Doyle, "The U.S. Navy and War Plan Orange, 1933-1940: Making

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6. Confounded Expectations Again Necessity a Virtue," pp. 53—59; Morton, "The Evolution of War Plan Orange," pp. 228-235; Spector, Eagle Against the Sun, pp. 55-58. 46. Ibid. 47. Roskill, British Naval Policy Between the Wars, 1:580-584. 48. Roskill, British Naval Policy Between The Wars, 2:228-232. 49. Ibid., pp. 286-289; Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, pp. 288. 50. Robert Shay, British Rearmament in the Thirties; Politics and Profits (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 9 2 - 1 5 8 . 51. Neidpath, The Singapore Naval Base and the Defense of Great Britain's Eastern Empire, 1919-1941, pp. 122-129. 52. For example, see A. L. Rowse, Appeasement: A Study in Political Decline, 1933-39, pp. 3-30; Larry Fuchser, Neville Chamberlain and Appeasement: A Study in the Politics of History, pp. 24-41; Margaret George, The Warped Vision, British Foreign Policy, 1933-1939, pp. 3-55; Gilbert, The Appeasers, pp. 3 - 2 5 ; pp. 485-496, Gilbert, Winston Churchill, The Prophet of Truth, 1922-1939, 549-581. 53. Ann Trotter, Britain and East Asia, 1933-1937, pp. 1 - 2 3 ; Louis, British Strategy in the Far East, 1919-1939, pp. 171-205. 54. Fuschser, Neville Chamberlain and Appeasement, pp. 31-34. He shows compellingly how the analogy of 1914 drove Chamberlain's policy of appeasement; see also A. J. P. Taylor, English History, 1919-1945, pp. 361-370; Donald Kagan, "World War I, World War II, World War III," pp. 21-40, Martin Ceadel, Padfism in Great Britain: 1 9 I 4 - I 9 4 5 , pp. 169-192. 55. Quester, Deterrence Before Hiroshima, pp. 82-90. 56. Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain, pp. 245-259. 57. Quoted in Fuscher, Neville Chamberlain and Appeasement, pp. 45; also quoted in Churchill, The Gathering Storm, pp. 141-142. 58. Trotter, Britain and East Asia, 1933-1937, pp. 54-60. 59. Ibid.; Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain, pp. 245-254; Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, p. 286. 60. Ibid. 61. Kagan, "World War 1, World War II, World War II," p. 28. See also Thomas Sowell, "Visions of War and Peace," Encounter (December 1987), 49(5). 4 0 - 5 2 . Sowell makes a brilliant comparison between Chamberlain's and Churchill's views on the causes of war and the conditions of peace. 62. Roskill, British Naval Policy Between the Wars, 2:285-288. 63. Middlemas and Barnes, Baldwin, pp. 762-774. 64. Wolfers, Britain and France Between the Wars, pp. 365-379; WheelerBennett, Munich: A Prologue in Tragedy, pp. 243. 65. Churchill, The Gathering Storm, pp. 94. 66. Borton, Japan's Modem Century, pp. 332-334. 67. William Beasley, The Modern History of Japan, 2d ed., pp. 236-255. 68. For an extended discussion of these events from the Japanese viewpoint, see Shimada Toshihiro, "Designs on North China, 1933-1937," in James Mor-

6. Confounded Expectations Again ley, ed.. The China Quagmire: Japans Expansion on the Asian Continent, 1933¡941, pp. 11-229. 69. Borg, The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis, chap. 2. 70. Scalapino, Democracy and the Party Movement in PreWar Japan, pp. 357-373; Maxon, Control of Japanese Foreign Policy, pp. 92-93. 71. Neu, The Troubled Encounter, pp. 151-153. 72. Storry, The Double Patriots, pp. 96-123. 73. Pelz, The Race to Pearl Harbor, pp. 13-20. 74. Peattie, Ishiwahara Kanji, pp. 186-191; Stony, The Double Patriots, pp. 126-152. 75. Asada, "The Japanese Navy and the United States," pp. 2 2 5 245. 76. Even the moderates within the Japanese Naval establishment aspired for Japan to dominate East Asia. Not ends, but only means, distinguished their views from those of the Fleet Faction's. See, for example, Pelz, The Race to Pearl Harbor, pp. 214-215; Hiroyuki Agawa, The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy, pp. 22-23. As Yamamoto put it: "I feel keenly that the time has come for this mighty empire rising in the east to devote itself, with all due circumspection, to advance its own fortunes. The example afforded before the Great War by Germany—which if only it had exercised forbearance for another five or ten years would by now be unrivaled in Europe—suggests that the task facing us now is to build up our strength calmly and with circumspection." 77. Asada, "The Japanese Navy and the United States," pp. 232-234. 78. Ibid. On genkokujo generally, see Richard Smethurst, A Social Basis for PreWar Japanese Militarism, (Berkeley: University California Press, 1974), p. 164; Maxton, Control of Japanese Foreign Policy, pp. 105-107. 79. Howarth, The Fighting Ships of the Rising Sun, p. 183. 80. Ibid., pp. 198-199; Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, 3:22-23. 81. Asada, "The Japanese Navy and the United States," pp. 236-237; Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies, pp. 306-307; Belote and Belote, Titans of the Seas, pp. 23-24. 82. Howarth, The Fighting Ships of the Rising Sun, pp. 217-218; Spector, Eagle Against the Sun, p. 47. 83. Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies, pp. 305-307. 84. Military History Section Headquarters, Armed Forces Far East, Japanese Monograph No. 149: Outline of Naval Armament and Preparation for War, 2:12.

85. Asada, "The Japanese Navy and the United States," p. 243. 86. Ibid. Professor Asada gives more plausibility to the claim that Japan's naval building programs were a reaction to the first Vinson bill of 1934 than Professor Pelz does. In the author's view, Pelz makes the better case with respect to Japan's assessment of American building and the decision to break out of the naval treaties. The text of the chapter presents the substance of Pelz's argument. 87. Pelz, The Race to Pearl Harbor, pp. 32-33.

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6. Confounded Expectations Again 88. Ibid., Spector, Eagle Against the Sun, p. 47. 89. U.S. Naval attachés had reported that the Japanese counted on America's lack of will to run a naval race, as evidence by America's neglect of its naval establishment. For example, see C-10-E, 212, 11 May 1933, RG80, NA. ("Already Japanese writers are visualizing the naval race after 1936. . . . America's intention to place one third of its fleet in rotating reserve to discharge 1000 officers, and to cut naval appropriations is most welcome to the Japanese. It makes them all the more certain that they can maintain their fleet at practical parity with ours.") Naval Attaché Report 186, 3 August 1934, DS File No. 500, A 15A5/179, RG59, NA. "Most Japanese are convinced that they can maintain parity with any Navy the United States may be expected to build. . . . the Japanese are convinced that the United States is a "pacifist country," that she wants peace above all things and that she will do anything in her power to maintain peace. . . . the Japanese want peace also, but they want their supremacy in the Orient even more than peace.") 90. Pelz, The Race to Pearl Harbor, pp. 35-39; Japan's attrition strategy remained the same throughout the interwar years; hence the author will not recapitulate it here. See chapters 1, 4, and 7, for a detailed discussion of that strategy as Japanese naval planners envisaged it. See also Paul Kennedy, "Japanese Strategic Decisions, 1939-1945," in Paul Kennedy, Strategy and Diplomacy, 1870-1945, pp. 181-187. 91. Ibid. 92. Pelz, The Race to Pearl Harbor, pp. 45-61. 93. Ibid. 94. Quoted in ¡bid., pp. 62-63.

VII. THE L O N D O N NAVAL CONFERENCE OF 1 9 3 5 - 1 9 3 6 AND ITS AFTERMATH 1. FR US 1934, 1:222-230. 2. Ibid., pp. 232-236. 3. Memorandum of Norman Davis, 28 April 1934, Norman Davis Papers, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. (Hereinafter cited as Davis Papers.) 4. Roskill, Νaval Policy between the Wars, 2:287-289. 5. See Memoranda of the meetings between the British and American delegations, 18, 20, 21, and 27 June 1934, GBP. 6. Ibid. 7. For example, see Memoranda of Admiral Leigh, 4, 13, and 19 July 1934, GBP. 8. GB. 438-1/1640, 1 October 1934, GBP. 9. Friedman, U.S. Battleships, pp. 237-241. 10. GB. 438-1/1640, 1 October 1934, GBP. 11. Ibid. Recall, from chapter 4, that the aggregate tonnage restrictions the Washington Naval Treaty imposed on carriers influenced the American Navy's choice of design for the Yorktown class carriers. Even in the early 1930s, the

7. The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 Board considered the 27,000-ton carrier optimal. Nevertheless, the Board settled on building two 20,000-ton carriers and one 13,500-ton carrier to get the maximum number of adequate carriers within the 53,000 remaining tons of the U.S. Navy's Washington Treaty carrier allotment. For an extended discussion of the American Navy's logic with respect to the 20,000-ton carrier, see GB. 420-7/1623, 17 June 1933; GB. 420-7/1636, 17 November 1933; GB. 420-7/1662, 28 June 1934, GBP. 12. FRUS, 1934, 1:277. 13. Ibid., 237-238. 14. Ibid., 284, 296-297. 15. DBFP, Ser., 13:6-10; Davis Memorandum, 20 June 1934, Davis Papers; FRUS 1934, 1:279, 287. 16. FRUS 1934, 1:284. 17. Davis Memorandum, 28 April 1934, Davis Papers. 18. Memorandum of a conversation between Admiral Standley and Captain Shimomura, 5 August 1934; GBP; memoranda of conversation between the American and Japanese delegations, 24 October, 29 October, 31 October, and 3 December 1934, Davis Papers. 19. Davis, memorandum of 28 April 1934, Davis Papers. 20. Hornbeck to Hull, 4 October 1934, Davis Papers. 21. F.D.R. to Davis, 9 November 1934, Davis Papers; Hull to Davis, 17 November 1934, Cordell Hull Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (hereinafter cited as the Hull Papers); Grew to Hull, 27 October 1934, D/S File No. 500, A15A5/372; Hombeck Memorandum, 26 September 1934, D/S File No. 500 A15A5/192 1/2, RG59, NA. 22. Ibid.; FRUS ¡934, 1:304-306. 23. Ibid.; FRUS, ¡934, 1:301-303. 24. Moffat Papers, 3 October 1934, pp. 116-118; Roosevelt to Davis, 5 October 1934, Davis Papers. 25. DBFP, 2d Ser. 8:23-61. 26. Ibid., 100-111. 27. Quoted in Crowley, Japan's Quest for Autonomy, p. 199. 28. Ibid.; Pelz, The Race to Pearl Harbor, pp. 62-63. 29. Undersecretary Neville to Hull, D/S File No. 500, A15A5/210, 5 October 1934; Grew to Hull, 17 October 1934, D/S File No. 500 A15A5/204, RG59, NA. 30. DBFP, 2d Ser., 8:72. 31. Ibid., 73-76. 32. Memorandum of a meeting between the American and Japanese Delegations, 31 October 1934, Davis Papers. See also memorandum of the meeting between the American and Japanese delegations, 24 and 29 October 1934, Davis Papers. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. See also memorandum of a conversation between Standley and Yamamoto, 3 December 1934, Davis Papers. 35. DBFP, 2d Ser., 8:72-76, 90-100, 115-121.

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7. The London Naval Confcience of 1935-1936 36. Memoranda of meetings between the British and the American Delegations, 14 and 23 November 1994, Davis Papers. 37. F.D.R. to Hull, 14 November 1934, D/S File No. 500, A15A5/253 1/2, RG59, NA. 38. F.D.R. to Davis, 9 November 1934, Davis Papers. 39. Hull to Davis, 17 November 1934, Hull Papers; See also FRUS, ¡934, 1:237-328, 353-354, 364-365. 40. Roosevelt to Davis, 9 November 1934, Davis Papers. 41. Moffat Memorandum, 26 September 1934, GBP; Moffat Memorandum, 2 September 1934, GBP. 42. Hull to Davis, 28 November 1934, Davis Papers; See also Hull to Nye, 500A15A5/371, January 1935, RG59, NA. (The Secretary gingerly criticized Nye for his 23 December 1934 interview with Osaka Mainichi, in which the Senator called for the United States to grant japan parity.) 43. DBFP, 2d Ser., 8:92-100; FRUS 1934, 1:328-331, 351-353. 44. Roosevelt to Hull, 7 December 1934, Davis Papers. 45. FRUS, 1934, 1:381-398. 46. Roosevelt to Davis, 14 November 1934, Davis Papers. 47. FRUS 1934, 1:361-363. 48. DBFP, 2d Ser., VIII: 118-124, 127-131, 147-150, 156-161. 49. FRUS 1935, 3:821, 829, 855. 50. Levine, "The United States and the Politics of Naval Rearmament," pp. 218-222. 51. The President's statement of 27 September 1935, GBP. 52. DBFP, 2d Ser., 3:300-441, 931-938; Robin Rudoff, "The Influence of the German Navy on the British Search for Naval Arms Control, 1928-1935," pp. 220-274. 53. Anthony Eden, Facing the Dictators, pp. 594, 600-602. 54. Cordell Hull, Memoirs, pp. 347-418. As for public opinion and rearmament circa 1935; George Gallup remarked after the Second World War: "One of the first polls we took in the business was on the question of appropriating money for the Army and the Navy . . . back in 1935. We found in that very early poll that the people were strongly in favor of increasing appropriations. . . . at a time when Congress was going exactly in the opposite direction." Quoted in Watson, The United States Army in World War II: The Chief of Staff, Prewar Plan and Preparations, pp. 16-18. 55. Indeed, many of the President's domestic advisors envisaged the 1934 Vinson-Trammel Act mainly as a domestic relief measure. When naval building clashed with the President's domestic agenda, the latter generally won out. See Levine, "The Politics of Naval Rearmament, 1930-1938," pp. 469-488. 56. Hull, Memoirs, 1:447-448. 57. GB. 420-2, 1686, 24 May 1935; GB. 420-2/1727, 22 July 1936; the President's statement of 27 September 1935, GBP. 58. Memorandum of a meeting at the White House to discuss the forthcoming London Naval Conference, 23 November 1935, D/S File No. 500, A15A5/564, RG59, NA.

7. T h e L o n d o n Naval C o n f e r e n c e of 1 9 3 5 - 1 9 3 6 59. Ibid.; Borg, The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis, 1933-1938, pp. 112-113. 60. Memorandum of meeting in the Secretary's office with returning members of the American delegation, 8 January 1935, D/S File No. 500, A15A5/365, RG59, NA. 61. Bingham to Hull, 29 April 1935, Hull Papers; FRUS J935,111:148. Hirota and Matsudaira voiced optimism, to the British and the Americans, that the government will rein in the extremists and negotiate genuinely for arms limitation. 62. GB. 420-2/1741, 9 May 1937, GBP. 63. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, pp. 286-288, Shay, British Rearamament in the Thirties, pp. 58-91. 64. Gilbert, The Roots of Appeasement, pp. 105-116; Winston Churchill, The Prophet of Truth, pp. 549-581. 65. Fuschser, Neville Chamberlain and Appeasement, pp. 45, 197-202; Churchill The Gathering Storm, pp. 137-140. 66. Neidpath, The Singapore Naval Base and The Defense of Great Britain's Far Eastern Empire 1919-1941, pp. 112-129; Trotter, Britain and East Asia, 1933-1937, pp. 54-60. 67. FRUS 1935, 1:132-138; Summary of the American Position on Naval Limitation, 23 November 1935, GBP; DBFP, 2d Ser., VIH:679-684. 68. U.S. Department of State, Conf. Ser. No. 24, The London Νaval Conference of 1935, pp. 5-7, (Hereinafter cited as London Naval Conference of 1935.) 69. Ibid., pp. 132-140, 196-212. 70. Ibid., pp. 437, 439. 71. Ibid., pp. 28-40. 72. Quoted in Berg, "The United States and the Breakdown of Naval Limitation, 1934-1939," p. 206. 73. Ibid., pp. 206-207. 74. New York Herald Tribune, 14 April 1936. 75. ¡bid. 76. United States Congress, 74th Cong., 2d Sess., Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings on the London Naval Treaty, 1936, 14 May 1936 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1936), pp. 35-63; Congressional Record (Vol. 80), 74th Cong., 2d Sess., 13 May 1936, pp. 7425-7437, 18 May 1936, pp. 7587-7601. 77. Roskill, British Naval Policy Between the Wars, II, pp. 320-321; Churchill, The Gathering Storm, pp. 137-140. 78. Pelz, The Race of Pearl Harbor, pp. 167-178. 79. Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies, pp. 296-318; Belote and Belote, Titans of the Seas, pp. 23-24; Military History Section Headquarters, Army Forces Far East, Japanese Monograph No. 149, pp. 1-11. 80. Till, "Perceptions of Naval Power Between the Wars," pp. 174-194. 81. Levine, "The Politics of Naval Rearmament, 1930-1938," pp. 459-488. 82. Borg, The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis, 1933-1938, pp. 244245.

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250

7. The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 83. Ibid., pp. 247-251; William Langer and Everett Gleason, The Challenge to Isolation, p. 150. 84. Dunn Memoranda of 2 and 3 December 1936, D/S File Nos. 500, A15A5/839, 500, A15A5/841, RG59, NA; FRUS, fapan: 1931-1941, 1:298306. 85. Ibid.; FRUS, 1938, 1:892-902, 911-913, 916-917. On the size of the Iowas, see Friedman, U.S. Battleships, pp. 276-310. 86. Levine, "The Politics of Naval Rearmament, 1930-1938," pp. 459-488. 87. GB. 420-2/1741, 9 May 1937; GB. 420-2, 1724, 18 February 1937, GBP. Franklin Roosevelt to Sir Arthur Willerts, PPF 4715, 2 August 1936, F.D.R. Papers; Langer and Gleason, The Challenge to Isolation, pp. 11-15. 88. Memorandum of a conversation among Hull, Davis, Hornbeck, Dunn, Pell, Dye, and Schuirmann, 12 March 1937, GBP. 89. Pelz, The Race to Pearl harbor, pp. 200-201. 90. Memorandum of a conversation among Hull, Davis, Hornbeck, et all, 12 March 1937, GBP. 91. For example, see American Naval Attaché Reports 1-63 (Tokyo), 18 January 1937-18 June 1938, RG38, NA. 92. FRUS, fapan, 1931-1941, 1: 298-306. 93. See the discussion in chapter 4 on verification. 94. Lynwood Oyos, "The Navy and United States Far Eastern Policy, 19301939," pp. 278-281. 95. Belote and Belote, Titan of the Seas, pp. 24-25. 96. Japanese Monograph No. ¡49, pp. 17-25, 34-37. 97. Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, I, p. iviii. 98. Ibid., Japanese Monograph No: 160, pp. 1-40; Allan R. Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the Common Defense, A Military History of the United States of America, pp. 394-396. 99. ibid. 100. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, pp. 289-303; Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, pp. 323-369; Shay, British Rearmament in the Thirties, pp. 228-280; Stephen Roskill, White Ensign, the British Navy at War, 1939-1945, pp. 19-32; Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies, pp. 75-89, 365-394. 101. James Herzog, Closing the Open Door. American-Japanese Diplomatic Negotiations, 1936-1941, pp. 40-92; Louis Morton, Strategy and Command: The First Two Years—The United States Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific, pp. 1-29; Utley, Going to War Against Japan, pp. 67-91. 102. Paul Silverstone, U.S.Warships of World War II, (New York: Doubleday, 1970), pp. 13; H. P. Willmott, Empires in the Balance: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies to April 1942, p. 62. Like myself, Willmott emphasizes the importance of the Second Vinson Bill in Japan's decision for war, because it would have eventually wiped out Japan's naval superiority on which its strategy depended.

7. The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 103. Leutze, Bargaining for Supremacy, pp. 197-235. 104. Utley, Going to War With Japan, pp. 202-203. 105. Feis, The Road to Pearl Harbor, pp. 221-250, 291-319. 106. Herzog, Closing the Open Door, pp. 137-162; Langer and Gleason, The Undeclared War, pp. 38-46. 107. Feis, The Road to Pearl Harbor, pp. 241-254. 108. Herzog, Closing the Open Door, pp. 228-241; Utley, Going to War with Japan, pp. 157-192. 109. Willmott, Empires on the Balance, p. 116. 110. Pelz, The Race to Peart Harbor, pp. 212-229. Pelz's account is consistant with most scholarly accounts of why japan went to war, although some revisionists persist in identifying the West, not the Japanese military, as primarily responsible for the Great Pacific War. For example, see Butow, Tojo and the Coming of the War, pp. 310-363; Nobuka Ike, ed., Japan's Decision For War: Records of the 1941 Policy Conferences; Christopher Thorne, The Issue of War, States, Societies and the Far Eastern Conflict of 1941-1945, pp. 13-48; Asada, "The Japanese Navy and the United States," pp. 254-255. For a revisionist account, see James B. Crowley, "A New Deal for Japan in Asia: One Road to Pear Harbor," in James Crowley, ed., Modern Asia, Essays in Interpretation (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970). 111. For example, see Joyce Lebra, Japans Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in World War II. 112. See Morley, ed., The China Quagmire: Japans Expansion on the Asian Continent, 1933-1941, pp. 289-379. 113. Butow, Τojo and the Coming of War, pp. 133-163; Borton, Japan's Modern Century, pp. 347-369; James Morley, ed., Deterrent Diplomacy: Japan's Road to the Pacific War, pp. 191-257; Morley, ed., The Fateful Choice, Japans Advance into Southeast Asia 1939-1941, pp. 195-225. 114. Kennedy, "Japans Strategic Decisions, 1939-1945," pp. 182-183. 115. Butow, Tojo and the Coming of War, pp. 133-163; Ike, Japan's Decision for War (in its entirety). 116. Pelz, The Race to Pearl Harbor, pp. 191-197. 117. Feis, The Road to Pearl Harbor, pp. 223-224. 118. Pelz, The Race to Pearl Harbor, pp. 217-226; Sansom, "Japan's Fatal Blunder," pp. 208-209. 119. Ibid. 120. Thome, The Issue of War, p. 14; Butow, Tojo and the Coming of War, 310-365; Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies, pp. 242-265. 121. Sansom, "Japan's Fatal Blunder," pp. 208-210; Kennedy, "Japan's Strategic Decisions, 1939-1945," pp. 181-195; Reynolds, "The Continental Strategy of Imperial Japan," pp. 65-69. 122. Asada, "The Japanese Navy and the United States," pp. 244-246; Pelz, The Race to Pearl Harbor, pp. 217-226; Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies, pp. 254-264. 123. Sansom, "Japan's Fatal Blunder," pp. 209-210.

7. The London Naval Conference of 1935-1936 128. Louis Morton, "The Japanese Decision for War," 1325—1335; Cordon Prange, Af Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: McGraw Hill, 1981), pp. 547-550, 582-583. 125. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun, pp, 83-84. 126. Kennedy, "Japan's Strategic Decisions, 1939-1945," pp. 181-195; Sansoni, "Japan's Fatal Blunder," pp. 208-212. VIII.

CONCLUSION

1. Richard Leopold, The Growth of American Foreign Policy, p. 450. 2. See note 11, Introduction. Indeed, the Anglo-American experience with naval arms limitation stands as a compelling example of Michael Doyle's important insights about the reasons why democracies do not fight one another. 3. Miller, "Politics over Promise," p. 70. 4. See also Thomas Schelling, Strategy of Conflict; Schelling, Arms and Influence. Soviet-American arms control, as practiced before Ronald Reagan, had its origins and drew its intellectual support from sources more diverse than just game theory and abstract, mechanistic strategizing. It drew heavily, too, from the writings and advocacy of Sovietologists who dissented sharply from the traditional cold war assessment of Soviet motives and conduct. Where, in theory, the game theorist/strategist camp of arms controllers argued essentially that, regardless of intentions, the iron logic of mutual vulnerability in the nuclear age would lead inexorably to a common recognition of the virtues of Soviet-American arms control aimed at stabilizing the strategic balance at the lowest levels possible, political arms controllers viewed the Kremlin leadership as a group of cautious pragmatists, not ideologues; Soviet Foreign Policy as largely opportunistic, reactive, and defensive, not a grand design for world conquest; arms control as a promising way to alleviate East-West tensions for which arms, misperceptions, mistakes, and the actions of both sides were largely to blame. In practice, however, the outlook of the two camps complemented one another nicely. Most technical/ strategic arms controllers assessed Soviet intentions as much more benign and like our own than cold warriors tend to do. Similarly, political arms controllers tend generally to view the objective of avoiding nuclear war as a mutual SovietAmerican imperative transcending political differences. For an excellent and sympathetic summary illustrating the congeniality of views between technical and political arms controllers, see Krepon, Strategic Stalemate, pp. 21-28. For an excellent survey of the origins and evolution of technical arms control theories, see Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, pp. 160-178. To illustrate, the present writer would put Marshall Shulman, Cyrus Vance, and George Kennan into the political camp; Robert McNamara, Paul Warnke, and Robert Jervis into the technical camp. All share, however, a more benign view of Soviet intentions and conduct then their hawkish critics do. See Shulman, "SALT and the Soviet Union," pp. 116-117; Vance, Hard Choices, pp. 99-119, 349-367; George Kennan, The Nuclear Delusion, pp. 175-215; Robert McNamara, Blundering into Disaster; Randall Forsberg, Richard Garwin, Paul Warnke, and Robert Dean, Seeds of Promise, pp. 93-142; Robert Jervis, The ¡¡logic of American

8. Conclusion Nuclear Strategy. (Although not a study of arms control per se, Professor Jervis's work is a vigorous defense of the robustness of Mutual Assured Vulnerability and the illogic of countervailing nuclear strategies. He views the strategic intentions of the USSR or as he calls them, the Russians, as more benign than arms control critics tend to.)

253

BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE

This study has drawn from an array of primary and secondary sources for the American side of the story of naval arms limitation, 1921-1938. To begin with the primary sources: the records of the General Board at the Washington Navy Yard provide the best source, not only for American naval policy in particular, but for all aspects of American policy in respect to naval limitation. The State Department's Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States also provide an excellent general account of the important issues relating to naval limitation. The general records of the Departments of State, Navy, and War at the National Archives in Washington add some important details to the story, although they proved less useful than the author anticipated. Collectively, the records of the General Board and the Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States contain almost all of the important information about naval arms limitation available at die National Archives. For the Washington Conference, the private papers of Charles Hughes and Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. yielded an abundance of valuable information. So, too, did the private papers of Henry Stimson and William Pratt for the London Naval Conference of 1930. For the London Naval Conferences of 1935-1936, the papers of Norman Davis proved indispensable. On the relationship between naval limitation and American deployment decisions, the Congressional Record in general and the hearings of the House and Senate naval affairs committees and appropriations subcommittees provide the best and truly excellent sources. The papers of Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt also shed light on this important but elusive subject. On the relationship between naval arms limitation on one hand, and American naval doctrine, design, and deployment decisions on the other, the records of the General Board again provide the best and an excellent source. For the British and Japanese sides of the story, this study has relied largely on secondary sources, although the Foreign Office's Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939 and the records of the International Military Tribunal for the

256

Bibliographic Note Far East proved useful, too. For all sides of the story of naval limitation, then, certain secondary sources proved essential. For the American side, this study profited greatly from studies by Dorothy Borg, William Braisted, Bernard Brodie, Norman Friedman, Thomas Hone, William Langer and Everett Cleason, Warner Schilling, Harold and Margaret Sprout, Jonathan Utley, and Gerald Wheeler, to name only a few. For the Japanese side, the works of Sadao Asada and Stephen Pelz proved indispensable; the works of Hugh Borton, James Crowley, Roger Dingman, Akira Iriye, James Morley, Mark Peattie, and Robert Scalapino were particularly useful. For the British side, the works of Paul Kennedy, William Roger Louis, and Stephen Roskill fall into the category of indispensable, while the works of Roland Chaput, Martin Gilbert, James Neidpath proved particularly useful. Nor does this even begin to exhaust the list of secondary sources that illuminated my thinking about arms control generally and naval limitation in particular. A formal and comprehensive bibliography follows.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MANUSCRIPT SOURCES: GOVERNMENT AND PRIVATE

GOVERNMENT

MANUSCRIPTS

U.S. Department of State. Decimal File. Record Group 59: Foreign Affairs Branch, National Archives. Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armaments. Files of the American Delegation. Record Group 43: Foreign Affairs Branch, National Archives. London Naval Conference of 1930. Files of the American Delegation. Record Group 43: Foreign Affairs Branch, National Archives. London Naval Conference of 1935. Files of the American Delegation. Record Group 43: Foreign Affairs Branch, National Archives. U.S. Joint Board of the Army and Navy. Records of the Joint Board of the Army and the Navy. Record Group 225: Naval Records Branch, National Archives. U.S. Navy Department. General Records of the Navy Department. Record Group 80: Naval Records Branch, National Archives. Records of the Office of Naval Intelligence. Record Group 38: Naval Records Branch, National Archives. Records of the Navy Department. Record Group 45: Naval Records Branch, National Archives. Records of the Department of the U.S. Navy Relating to Naval Fleet Problems I to XXII, 1923-1941, M964: Rolls 1-23, National Archives. Records of the General Board. Naval Historical Division, Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D.C.

PRIVATE

MANUSCRIPTS

Benson, William S.: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington D . C . Borah, William: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington D . C .

Bibliography Castle, William R.: Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa. Coolidge, Calvin: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Davis, Norman R.: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Fullam, William F.: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Harding, Warren G.: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Hoover, Herbert: Herbert Hoover Presidential Library. Hughes, Charles Evans: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Hull, Cordell: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Jones, Hilary: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Kellogg, Frank B.: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Pratt, William Veazie: Naval Historical Division, Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D.C. Roosevelt, Franklin Delano: Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York. Roosevelt, Theodore Jr.: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Root, Elihu: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Stimson, Henry L.: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Standley, William: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Yamell, Harry E.: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

PUBLISHED GOVERNMENT GREAT

DOCUMENTS

BRITAIN

Woodward, E. L. and Rohan Butler eds., Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939. 1st, 2d, and 3d Series, 1919-1939. London: HMS Office, 19491975. Parliamentary Debates. House of Commons. 1921-1922, 1927, 19291930, 1935-1938.

JAPAN Records of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.

UNITED STATES Congress. House of Representatives. Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations. Hearings on the Navy Department Appropriation Bill for 19211938. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1921-1938. Committee on Naval Affairs. Hearings on Sundry Legislation Affecting the Naval Establishment (1921-1938). Washington, D C : GPO, 1921-1938. Senate. Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations. Hearings on the Navy Department Bill for (1921-1938). Washington, D.C.: GPO, 19211938. Committee on Naval Affairs. Hearings on Sundry Legislation Affecting the Naval Establishment (1921-1938). Washington, D C : GPO, 1921-1938.

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INDEX

Action-reaction theorem, 3 Adams, Charles, 140 Adler, Selig, 31 Admiralty, see Board of Admiralty (Great Britain) Agricultural Marketing Act (U.S.), 150 Aircraft, 18-19, 86; Japanese, 76-77; in naval planning, 73, 74-75, 78, 155; role of, 21, 82, 86; and submarine threat, 17 Aircraft carriers, 17-18, 125; agreements regarding London Naval Conference of 1930, 130, 132-34, 140; agreements regarding Washington Conference, 63-64; design of, 84-86; effects of naval treaties on U.S., 84-86; issue, London Naval Conference of, 1935-1936, 167, 179; Japanese, 99; proposed elimination of, 163; ratios, 1, 52. 55; U.S.. 26, 27, 9899 Aircraft production, 208 Airpower: British, 1 57; importance of, 125. 144; Japanese, 160-61 Akaga (cruiser), 76 Akagi (carrier), 99 Aleutian Islands, 61 Amami-Oshima, 61 Amau statement, 1 59 Amphibious warfare, 75, 77 Anglo-American-French accord, 87 Anglo-American naval talks, 118-28, 144

Anglo-American relations, 9-11, 22, 118, 119; effect of Washington Naval Treaty on, 70; importance of democracy in, 49; and Japan's participation in treaty system, 165-74, 176, 177. 178; and London Treaty of 1930, 141-42, 143-44; naval limitation in, 112, 116, 200; naval treaties in, 193-94, 196; war unthinkable in, 11, 36, 49, 89, 144 Anglo-German naval race, 8, 23, 25, 30, 150, 152, 172, 177-78 Anglo-German Naval Treaty, 107-8, 157, 175, 177, 178, 180 Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902, 9, 35-36, 49, 52, 71; abrogation of, 67-68, 92; replaced by Four Power Treaty, 2; termination of, 58, 65, 77-78 Anti-Appeasers (Great Britain), 178 Appeasement, 11, 143, 156-58, 165, 16768, 169, 176, 177, 178 Araki, Sadao, 159 Armaments, 85, 86, 90-91; issue in London Naval Conference of 1935-1936, 165-66, 167, 172, 179 Armed forces (Japan), see Military Arms control, 3, 145; domestic politics and, 88-90; in nuclear age, 200-1; theory and practice of, 1-5 Arms limitation: and appeasement, 156-57; in closed societies, 36; and democracy, 3, 32-33; by example, 152, 185, 198; in

278

Index Aims limitation (Continued) Hoover's policy, 114-18; and open societies, 36; partial, 44; and preservation of peace, 114, 118; support for, in U.S., 23-32, 105; works best when least needed, 144; see also Naval limitation Arms race, 27, 29, 83, 139, 152; British and, 177-78; as cause of war, 45, 48, 52, 79, 82, 150, 151, 153, 156-57, 182; causes of, 114; dynamics of, 30-31; fear of, 32; parity and, 49; Roosevelt's desire to prevent, 176-77; U.S. fear of provoking, 150 Arms reduction. 114, 121, 167, 176-77; in London Naval Treaty of 1930, 139; proposed, 170; U.S., 148 Asada, Sadao, 67, 75 Asdic (SONAR), 17, 58 Asia, 7; see also Far East At ago (cruiser), 99 Australia, 36 Auxiliary craft, 1, 19; in Geneva Naval Conference, 108-10; in London Naval Conference of 1930, 134; in London Naval Conference of 1935-1936. 16566; in naval planning, 76-77, 78; ratios, 52; in Washington Conference, 63-65 Aviation, see Aircraft Baldwin, Stanley, 82, 118, 119, 155, 157, 167-68, 172, 175 Baldwin Government (Great Britain), 11, 107 Balfour, Lord. Arthur, 59, 61. 65, 67, 71 Bargaining leverage: naval building program in, 199-200 Battleflect: in naval planning, 73, 75; parity in, 51; U.S., 18, 19 Battle of Jutland, 8 Battleship(s), 2, 66, 74, 91, 103; dominance of, 27, 34. 63. 77, 78, 81, 86, 124; gun elevations (U.S.), 96-98; Japan, 161; in naval planning, 73, 75; naval treaties' effects on U.S., 86-87; obsolescence of, 18, 26; proposed elimination of, 163; provisions regarding London Naval Treaty of 1930, 137-38; relative importance of, 125; tonnage ratios. 1; in U.S. domestic politics, 30; in U.S. strategic requirements, 167

Battleship supremacy (doctrine), 16, 17. 21. 34, 63, 75. 125, 132; assault against, 74; fallacy of, 4, 195-96 Beatt>, Adm. Earl, 34 Bennett resolutiort, 23 Benson, Adm. William, 10 Bismark (battleship), 107 Bismark Archipelago, 190 Bombers, 18, 161 Bonin Islands, 61 Board of Admiralty (Great Britain), 33, 5859, 61, 78, 108-9; and British naval strength in Far East, 157-58; and London Naval Conference of 1930, 125; and London Naval Treaty of 1930, 140-41; and parity for Japan, 174; and two-power standard. 155 Borah, William, 25, 26, 27-28, 29, 30, 32, 40, 45, 48, 91, 135, 152; opposed Four Power Treaty , 70; and Washington Conference, 44 Borah Resolution, 25-26. 29 Borg, Dorothy. 100, 106 Bortón, Hugh, 37-38, 158 Brazil, 10 Briand, Aristide, 62, 63, 71, 136-37 British Institute of Naval Architects, 34 Brodie. Bernard, 17 Bunsten, Maurice De, 10 Burma Road, 188 Burns, Richard Dean, 100, 101 Bushido. 94 Butler, Thomas, 90 Capital ships, 57, 66. 78. 103, 109-10; Great Britain, 8-9; ratio in, 51-52, 53, 54-55; U.S., 8, 9; as yardstick of naval strength, 54, 57-69 Capitalism, 38 Caribbean, 9 Caroline Islands, 13 Central Powers, 11 Chamberlain, Neville, 107, 157, 169, 185 Chang Tso-lin, 95 Chatfield, Adm. A. Emle, 172-73 Chiang Kai-shek, 94, 95 China, 15, 59, 76, 93. 127; and Japanese aggression/expansionism, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 50, 92, 99-100, 106, 148, 149, 158,

Index 159, 161-62, 188; Japan's policy toward, 39, 126, 193, 196; and political détente in Far East, 46-47; political developments in, 69, 94-%, 143; special interests in, 67-69; territorial integrity of, 2, 13, 49, 66-67, 68, 115; U.S. role in World War II, 187-89; U.S. stakes in, 107; World War II, 189 Chinese Communists, 94 Chinese Nationalists, 190 Churchill, Winston, 140, 158, 180, 185 Civilian priorities, 155, 156; in London Naval Conference of 1930, 123-24, 129 130, 136, 141, 144; in Washington Conference, 48; in Washington Naval Treaty, 69-70, 71 Claude (carrier fighter), 161 Closed societies, 4-5, 36, 102, 180, 19798; and compliance/verification, 104-5 Commerce raiding, 16, 17, 21, 65, 175, 178 Committee on Imperial Defense (Great Britain), 58 Compliance, 4, 56-57, 199, 201; good faith assumption, 65-66, 138; in Washington Naval Treaties, 96-108 Congressional Record, 105, 199 Conservatives (Great Britain), 81, 174 Conversions, 64, 76, 84, 98-99 Coolidge, Calvin, 75, 80, 97-98, 99, 114, 115-16, 124, 197, 199; and Geneva Naval Conference, 108; views on naval limitation, 88-89, 90-91 Coolidge administration, 109, 111, 151 Coontz, Adm. Robert, 53, 54, 56 Cotton, Joseph, 135 Covenant of the League, 137 Craigie, Robert, 168 Crowl, Philip, 100 Cruiser issue, 196; in Anglo-American naval talks, 118, 121-23; at Geneva Conference, 108-10; at London Naval Conference of 1930, 129-32, 133, 135-36, 139-41, 142; at London Naval Conference of 1935-1936, 166, 167, 169, 179 Cruisers, 19, 74, 79, 86, 90, 125, 148; agreements on, at Washington Conference, 64, 65; in British naval planning, 78; Japanese, 76-77, 99; ratios, 2, 52, 55; six-inch/eight-inch gun issue, 127,

129-30, 131, 132, 140, 144, 166, 167, 1% Curzon, Lord George, 35 Daniels, Josephus, 26 Davis, Norman, 105, 165, 168, 170, 171, 174, 177, 179-80, 182 Dawes, Charles, 119, 121 Decisive encounter, 19, 21 Defense spending, 4, 32, 36; Great Britain, 185; hostility to in U.S., 71, 79; Japan, 39. 159, 160 Democracies: arms control negotiations in, 4-5, 32, 36, 197-98; reaction to treaty violations, 101-02 Democracy, 3, 11, 32-33, 149-50; in/and Anglo-American relations, 49, 1%; in Japan, 39, 81, 93 Denby, Edward. 48, 52-53, 54, 57, % Deployment, 3, 78-92; naval treaties' effect on U.S., 87-88 Depression, 126, 143; see also Great Depression Destroyers, 19, 125, 126; as issue in London Naval Conference of 1930, 129, 135, 140; as issue in London Naval Conference of 1935-1936, 166; Japanese, 76-77; ratios, 2, 52, 55 Deterrence, 201 Diplomacy, 31, 39, 80; and force, 49, 66, 67, 68, 82, 115 Disarmament, 31; domestic politics of, 23, 24-25, 26-32 Displacement tonnage, 2, 205; allowed in naval treaties, 203-4; capital ships, 132; carriers, 64, 84-86, 98-99; proposed, London Naval Conference of 19351936, 166, 170, 179; proposed, Washington Conference, 51-52, 53, 54-55 Domestic politics: Great Britain, 32-36; Japan, 36-41; U.S., 23-32, 83; and treaty violations, 101-02, 105-06 Domestic poliiics/naval limitation relationship, 3, 23-41, 56, 147, 1%, 199-200; in Great Britain, 157-58; in Japan, 12627, 134, 143, 144, 159-60, 188, 189-90, 195; in U.S., 79-80, 88-90, 115-17, 176, 180, 182-83, 197-98, 199-200, 201 Dooman, Eugene, 168 Dutch East Indies, 188

280

Index East Asia, Japan's desire for e m p i r e in, 13,

F r e e d o m of the seas, 9 F r i e d m a n , N o r m a n , 86

161-63 East Asian Co-Prosperity S p h e r e , 158

F u l l a m , A d m . W i l l i a m . 18, 26

E c o n o m i c s and arms limitation: in G r e a t

F u s h i m i , Hirovasu, 163

Britain, 33, 81, 156, 177, 185; in Japan, 4 0 , 76; in U . S . . 31. 115-16. 139, 149-

G e d d e s , Sir A u k l a n d , 9 6 - 9 7

50

G e n e r a l Board of t h e U . S . Navy, 11, 19.

E d e n . A n t h o n y , 175-76

35, 77, 81, 109, 167; and aircraft car-

Enterprise

riers, 18; and battleship m o d e r n i z a t i o n ,

(carrier), 85

Essex class carriers, 85, 183-84

96, 97, 9 8 , 99; a n d defense of Philip-

E t h i o p i a , 177. 178

pines. 16-17; a n d effects of naval treaties, 84, 85; and L o n d o n Naval C o n f e r -

Far East: British interests in, 35-36; British

e n c e of 1930, 124, 125, 129. 130. 132-

strategic position in, 77-78, 155-56, 157-

33, 135-36. 139; and L o n d o n Naval

58, 185; forcc/diplomacy gap in, 115,

Treaty of 1930, 144, 147-48; miscalcula-

144; issue in W a s h i n g t o n C o n f e r e n c e ,

tions of, 195-96; and naval b u i l d i n g pro-

58-59, 62; naval limitation/political set-

g r a m , 8, 27, 30, 153, 183-84; a n d

t l e m e n t relationship in, 43, 46-48, 49,

W a s h i n g t o n C o n f e r e n c e , 48-57, 59-61,

67, 70; political d e v e l o p m e n t s in, 1, 93-

63, 68-69, 70; a n d yardstick idea, 119-

96; U . S . interests in. 7. 14, 150, 182, 187, 197 Fascism, 1 58 Ferrell, Robert. 80, 142 Fiske, A d m . Bradley, 18 Five Power Treaty, 6 9 - 7 0

21, 122-23 G e n e v a D i s a r m a m e n t C o n f e r e n c e of 1 9 3 2 - 1 9 3 3 , 104 G e n e v a Naval C o n f e r e n c e of 1927, 73, 79, 89, 91. 124, 125, 143-44, 197, 198, 199; failure of, 108-11, 112, 116

Fleet E x p a n s i o n Program (Japan), 22

G e n r o , 38, 39

Fleet P r o b l e m IX ( U . S . ) , 75

G e n t l e m e n ' s A g r e e m e n t (1908), 14

Force: a n d d i p l o m a c v , 49, 66, 67, 68, 82,

George, Lloyd, 12, 33, 34, 35, 36. 4 8

115 Foreign policy, 4, 44; Japan, 39, 93, 95, 158; naval limitation a n d , 196-97; U . S . , 15, 31, 114, 117

G e r m a n islands in Pacific, 13, 14; Japan's mandatory authority over, 55, 56; see also M a n d a t e d islands G e r m a n y , 7, 9, 12, 94. 148, 194; fear of,

F o r m o s a , 12. 61

in F r e n c h naval p l a n n i n g , 59-60, 63,

F o u r Power Treaty, 2, 65, 66, 70, 137

128, 137; policy of a p p e a s e m e n t toward,

F o u r t e e n Points (Wilson), 24

156, 157; treaty violations, 175, 177;

F r a n c e , 12, 28, 50, 59, 108, 148; c o m p r o -

U-boat warfare, 17; in W o r l d W a r II,

mise with G r e a t Britain on naval a r m a -

185, 186, 188-89, 190

m e n t s , 90-91; fall of. 185, 188; global

G i b s o n , H u g h , 109, 118, 119, 139

responsibilities of, 128; a n d Japan's treaty

G o o d faith, 9 6 , 103. 115, 138; a s s u m p t i o n

violations, 106; and L o n d o n Naval C o n -

of, in W a s h i n g t o n C o n f e r e n c e , 65-66;

f e r e n c e of 1930, 127-28. 129. 133. 136-

a n d c o m p l i a n c e , 103, 104, 107; dangers

38; a n d L o n d o n Naval C o n f e r e n c e of 1 9 3 5 - 1 9 3 6 , 178-80; and L o n d o n Naval

in relying o n , 144; in verification, 56-57 G r e a t Britain: Asian Strategy, 156; c o m p r o -

Treaty of 1930, 141; relative naval

mise with F r a n c e on naval a r m a m e n t s ,

strength, 54, 55; security c o n c e r n s of,

90-91; d e p l o y m e n t following W a s h i n g -

108, 128, 136-37, 141; t o n n a g e ratios,

ton C o n f e r e n c e , 78-92; defense responsi-

1, 2, 52; a n d W a s h i n g t o n C o n f e r e n c e .

bilities of, 35, 58-59, 77, 172; d o m e s t i c

59-60, 62-65, 71-72 Frazicr, L y n n , 152

politics of naval limitation in, 32-36; Foreign Office, 35-36; and G e n e v a N a -

Index val Conference, 108-11; interests in China, 68; and Japan's breakout from treaties, 185-91; and Japan's treaty violations, 106, 107-8; likelihood of war with U.S., 36, 49, 89, 1+4; and London Naval Conference of 1930, 112-13, 118-28, 129-38; and London Naval Conference of 1935-1936. 165-91; and London Naval Treaty of 1930, 140-44, 155-58; naval planning and doctrine, 77-78, 91; naval supremacy, 27, 33-34, 91, 120; one-power standard, 11; relative naval strength, 54, 55; seapower, 8-12; strategic situation, 168, 177; and success/ failure of naval treaties, 193-201; toniiiige ratios, 1, 2; two-power standard, 9, 11, 59. 77, 136, 155; and Washington Conference, 47-48, 58-69, 70-72; see also Hong Kong; Singapore Great Depression, 149-50, 162 Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, 188, 189 Great Lakes, 23 Great Pacific War, 5, 158 Grew, Joseph, 103, 173 Guam, 15, 16, 17, 30, 77, 190; fortification of, 47, 52; in projected Pacific War, 21

Hague Peace Conference, 23, 45 liaguro (cruiser), 99 Hainaguchi Osachi, 96, 134, 135, 136, 137, 141 Hainaguchi Cabinet, 126, 127 Hara Kei, 39-40, 41, 47, 48, 59; assassination of, 60 Harding, Warren, 28-30, 32, 41, 114; and Washington Conference, 43, 55, 71 Harding administration, 26, 34-35, 67; and Washington Conference, 47 Hawaii, 16, 17, 52, 61 Hay, John, 67 Hearst Press, 10, 70 Hensley resolution, 23, 24 Hirota, Koki, 163, 170, 179 Hitler, Adolf, 156, 157, 175, 178, 186, 189 Hoare, Sir Samuel, 157, 176 Hone, Thomas, 86

Hong Kong, 58, 59, 61, 190 Hoods (capital ships), 33, 34, 78, 129 Hoover, Herbert. 75. 80, 88, 106, 107, 1 19, 153, 197; and London Naval Conference of 1930, 113-18, 120, 122-28, 133, 134-35. 136, 139, 144; and naval building program, 147-50, 151 Hornbeck, Stanley. 168, 182 Hornet (carrier), 85 Howard, Sir Esme, 118 Hughes, Charles Evans, 35, 88, 93, 96-97, 99, 110, 114, 115, 117, 138, 199; and parity formula. 118; views on international relations and arms limitation, 4457; and Washington Conference, 32, 43-44, 57-69, 71 Hull, Cordell, 68, 103, 165, 167, 173-74, 182, 187 Idealism, 15, 114, 177 Ikle, Fred, 101 Immigration Act of 1924 (U.S.), 93 Imperial Conference (July 1921), 11, 36 Imperial Defense Policy (Japan), 180-81 Imperial Diet (Japan), 22, 38, 39, 40 Imperial Navy, see Japanese Navy Indo-China, 187-88, 189-90 Information exchange, 57, 104, 138, 170, 183 Ingenoll, David, 125 Inner Mongolia, 13, 67 Inoue, Adm. Shiyeyoshi, 160 Intelligence, 107, 201; U.S., 103, 183 International law, 44 Inukai Tsuyuyoshi, 159 Iowa class battleships, 87 Irreconcilables, 31, 114-15 Irish independence, 10 Ishiwahara Kanji, 76 Isolationism: Great Britain, 156; U.S., 31, 32, 79, 83, 114-15 Isolationists (U.S.), 25, 31, 106, 154, 182, 191 Italy. 28. 50, 108, 148, 186, 194; and French security concerns, 60, 128, 129; invasion of Ethiopia, 177; and London Naval Conference of 1930, 136, 137; and London Naval Conference of 19351936, 178-80; and London Naval Treaty

282

Index Italy (Continued) of I9Î0, 141; ratios, 1, 2, 52; relative naval strength, 54, 55; and Washington Conference, 62-63, 65, 72; in World War II, 185, 189 Japan, 9, 32, 33, 34, 52, 1 15; abrogation of treaties, 2, 105, 147, 161-63, 170, 172-73, 174, 175, 176; aims in London Naval Conference of 1935-1936, 17080; Anglo-American efforts to keep within treaty system, 165-70; breakout from treaties, 147, 160, 162-63, 170, 175, 180-91, 194; and British strategic weakness, 155-56, 157; Cabinet, 37-38; Constitution, 37-38, 93, 94, 143; constitutional crisis, 59, 141-43, 144, 158-60; decision to attack U.S., 147, 188-91; deployment following Washington Conference, 78-92; domestic politics and naval limitation, 36-41; emergence as world power, 12-13, 22; Emperor, 37, 38; expansionism, 3, 4, 8, 12, 14, 15-19, 20, 21, 35-36, 39, 47. 50, 58-69, 70, 92, 95, 143, 148, 158-59, 181. 193-94, 195, 197; General Board's view of, 49-50; and Geneva Naval Conference, 108, 110-11; government, 15-16, 37-39; interest in China, 46, 67; and League of Nations disarmament talks, 24-25; and London Naval Conference of 1930, 126-28, 129, 133, 134-36; and London Naval Treaty of 1930, 141, 142-43, 158-63; mandatory authority over former German colonies, 2, 55, 56; manifest destiny in Asia, 14-15; margin of naval superiority, 188, 190-91, 193-94; National Defense Policy, 76; naval needs of, 39-40; naval planning and doctrine, 73-78; naval strength, 54, 55, 154; naval supremacy in Western Pacific, 9, 22. 41, 59, 61, 70, 127, 142-44, 168, 193-94; PanAsian empire goal of, 95; policy of appeasement toward, 156, 157-58; political developments in, 93-96; political rivalry with U.S., 13-15; power of government in middle-level officers, 159, 160, 191; as primary enemy of U.S., 12, 15, 56, 75-76; ratios, 1, 2; repudiation of peace-

ful cooperation, 76; treaty violations, 5, 76, 96, 99-106, 108, 127, 173, 199; U.S. distrust of, 151; and Washington Conference, 47-48, 59, 70-72; in World War II. 186; see alto Pacific War Japanese Army, 20, 71, 81, 159; and abrogation of treaties, 162-63, 181; Control Faction, 159; Imperial Way School, 159; and possibility of war with U.S., 76, 77 Japanese Navy (Imperial Navy), 5, 16, 2022, 59, 81, 92; Administrative Faction, 92, 134, 159; anti-Westernism of, 92; and breakout from treaties, 180-81; Command Faction, 134, 135; First Naval Replenishment Plan, 160; Fleet Faction, 41, 75, 92, 127, 141, 143, 159, 160, 161-62; Fourth Naval Replenishment Program, 184; middle-echelon officers, 92, 93-94; moderate factions, 22; and naval aviation, 160-61; post-Washington Conference, 75-77; pro-German faction, 159, 160; Second Naval Replenishment Plan, 160; strength relative t o U.S., 148-49. 149, 154; Third Naval Replenishment Plan, 161, 181, 183; see also Moderates Java, 190 Joint Board of the U.S. Army and Navy, 154 Jones, Adm. Hilary, 110, 119-20, 130, 133, 139-40 Jutland, 34, 73 Kaga (carrier), 99 Kagi (cruiser), 76 Kato, Adm. Kanji, 20, 21, 22, 41, 75-76, 141, 160; and abrogation of treaties, 161-62; and Fleet Faction, 92; and London Naval Conference of 1930, 127, 134, 135; and Washington Conference, 59, 60, 61, 71 Kato, Takaaki, 93 Kato, Adm. Tomosaburo, 22, 39-41, 54, 75-76; death of, 76; and Washington Conference, 59, 60, 61, 71 Kellogg-Briand Pact, 112, 114, 115, 117, 119, 137, 148; efficacy of, 138; Japan's violation of, 168

Index Kellogg-Briand Treaty of 1928, 31

London Naval Treaty of 1936, 1, 2, 84,

Keynesian (economic) policy, 149-50

179-80; escalator clause, 87; escape

Kiaochow-Tsinan Railway, 95

clause, 2, 179; ratification of, 180

King, William, 27-28, 152 Konoye, Prince Fumimaro, 188 Korea, 12,

Long, Walter, 10, 34 Loochoo Islands, 61

Β

Kuomintang (National Peoples Party, K M T ) , 94-95 Kurile Islands, 62 Kwantung Army, 95, 143

MacDonald, Ramsay, 82, 112; and London Naval Conference of 1930, 119, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 128, 133, 134, 136-37, 140, 144; and London Naval Conference of 1 9 3 5 - 1 9 3 6 , 157, 165, 167-68, 169, 174

Laborites (Great Britain), 81, 158, 174

Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 7, 10, 15, 16, 20

La Follette, Robert, 27-28, 152

Mahanian doctrine, 7-8, 15-16, 63, 92;

Langley

(carrier), 74, 85

Lansing-Ishii Agreement, 14, 67 League of Nations, 10, 24-25, 100, 114;

World War II exposed fallacies of, 19596 Malaya, 190

Japan's withdrawal from, 158; U . S . and,

Manchukuo (puppet state), 158

28, 31

Manchuria, 12, 13, 15, 126, 168; Japan

League of Nations Covenant, 14, 24 League of Nations Mandates Commission, 102-3

in, 46, 66, 67, 68, 94, 95, 106, 117, 143, 148, 156, 158-59 Mandated islands, 19, 21, 154; agreement

League of Nations Preparatory Commission on Disarmament, 25, 102-3, 108, 112,

on, in Washington Conference, 61; fortification of, 55, 100-3, 106, 181 Mandates Treaty, 2, 100

118 Lee, Lord Arthur, of Fareham, 34, 35

Marco Polo Bridge incident, 183

Lejeune, Gen. John, 75

Marianas Islands, 13

Leopold, Richard, 194

Marion

Lexington

Marshall Islands, 13, 100

(carrier), 64, 74, 84, 98-99,

132, 133, 184 Liberalism, Japan, 37, 93, 9 6 Liberals (Great Britain), 158, 174

Star,

28

Matsudaira, Ambassador Tsuneo, 134, 135, 170, 171, 172, 174 Matsuoka, Yosuke, 188, 189

Liotung Peninsula, 12-13

McKinley administration, 7

Lippmann, Walter, 180

Meighen, Arthur, 36

Lodge, Henry Cabot, 11, 29, 4 8 , 55-56

Meiji Constitution, 37-38, 143

London Naval Conference of 1930, 73,

Meiji Restoration, 12, 37, 92

79, 110, 113-45, 147, 199; Hoover and Stimson and, 113-18; preliminaries to,

Merchant fleet (Great Britain), 51, 109, 132

118-28; proceedings of, 128-38; U . S .

Middle East, 10

delegation to, 123-24

Mid-Pacific islands, 181

London Naval Conference of 1 9 3 5 - 1 9 3 6 , 105, 147, 155, 163, 165-91, 199; breakdown and breakout, 180-91; preliminaries to, 165-74; proceedings of, 175-80 London Naval Treaty of 1930, 1, 2, 91,

Militarism, militarists (Japan), 3, 39, 94, 95, 126-27, 143, 159 Military, the (Japan), role of, 37-38, 39, 81, 96, 159, 191; power of, 143, 159, 160; radicalizaron of, 93

137-38, 166, 167, 170, 171; effects on

Military balance, freezing, 118

British Navy, 1 55-56; expectations for,

Miller, Steven, 3, 197

141-45, 147-63; expiration of, 180; rati-

Minseito Party, 93, 96

fication of, 138-45

Mitchell, Brig. Gen. William, 18, 30

284

Index Moderates (Japan), 22, 39, 46, 92, 9?, 134, 191, 195; losing influence, 126-27; purged, 160; and Washington Conference, 60-61, 69 Moffett, Rear Adm. William, 18, 74, 12425, 132-33, 140, 144 Monroe Doctrine, 7, 10 Monsell, Erye, 169, 172 Moral opinion, 80, 82, 115, 149 Morison, Samuel Eliot, 184 Morrow Board, 74 Munitions industry (U.S.), 152, 153 Musachi (battleship), 181 Mussolini, Benito, 128 Mu/su (battleship), 60, 61 Myokn (cruiser), 99 NacAi (cruiser), 99 Nagano, Adm. Osami, 179, 189 National Industrial Recovery Act (U.S.), 151 Nationalism: C h i n a , 126; Japan, 93-94, 158, 159 National policy, renunciation of war as instrument of, 31, 112, 138 National security (issue), 170-71, 172 N A T O , 200 Naval Act of 1916 (U.S.), 8 Naval balance, 51, 144; freezing, 45, 56, 82; stabilized, in London Naval Treaty of 1930, 138 Naval Bill (1922) (U.S.), 26 Naval Bill of 1916 (U.S.), 23-24 Naval building programs, 27-28, 169, 2067; asymmetries in, 78-82; as bargaining leverage, 199-200; effect of naval treaties on, 91-92; escape clauses regarding, 179; Great Britain, 33-34, 91, 155, 185; importance of, 5, 110-11; intergovernmental information exchange in, 57, 104, 138, 170, 183; Japan, 5, 22, 73, 75, 81, 82, 91-92, 160, 170, 171, 174, 180, 181-82, 183, 193, 195, 198-99; Japan: post-treaty, 3, 37, 91-92, 181-83, 18485; proposal to halt (Washington C o n ference), 57-69; restraint by example, 25, 27, 30-31, 88-89, 177 Naval building program (U.S.), 8, 15, 24, 26-30. 51, 54, 79, 88-89, 106-7, 111; effects of, 48-49; limitations on, in Lon-

don Naval Treaty of 1930, 139-40; 1916, 8, 19. 24, 27, 29, 30, 46, 61, 81; 1919, 10. 19, 29, 30; pace of, 83; to treaty limits, 4, 147-52, 153, 168-69, 171, 175, 176-77, 181-85, 195, 197, 199-200; unilateral restraint, 116, 177, 182, 185, 195 Naval competition, 1, 25, 26; as cause of war, 30-31; U.S./Japan, 15-22, 161-63 Naval doctrine, effects of naval treaties on U.S., 3, 83-91 Naval limitation, 1-5, 22, 169; Americans considered national imperative, 112; and arms control today, 200-1; assumptions about, 193-94, 195; breakdown of, 2, 3, 147-63, 176-77; costs of, to U.S., 19394; and decline in fighting ability, 87-88; as goal of Washington Conference, 4757, 60, 67, 69-72; and peace, 52, 150, 156-57; and political détente, 43, 46-48, 49; record of, 199-200; studies of, 3; success/failure of, 193-201; see also Domestic politics/naval limitation relationship Naval planning: effect of Root Resolution on, 65; post-Washington Conference, 73-78 Naval policy, 10, 11, 91-92 Naval race, 5, 11, 44-45, 46, 89, 144; ending, 47, 53-54, 118; France and, 60; Japan and, 40, 41, 61, 161-63; posttreaty, 180-81, 199; Washington Conference agreements ending, 69-72 Naval strength: capital ship as yardstick of, 54, 57-69; Japan, 154; proposals regarding, in Washington Conference, 57-69; ratio as index of, 51; relative, 51, 53-54, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 194; U.S., 107 Naval supremacy, 20; Great Britain, 27, 33-34, 91, 120; Japan, 9, 22, 41, 59, 61, 70, 127, 142-44, 168, 193-94 Naval treaties, 2-3, 4, 92; effects of in U.S., 182-83; Japan's repudiation of, 105; success/failure of, 3, 193-201; see also Treaty system Navalism: Japan, 20, 22, 40; revolt against, in U.S., 24 Nazis, 68, 128, 157, 158. 175, 178, 187, 191

Index Neutrality legislation (U.S.), 11, 153, 154, 157 New Zealand, 36 Nichi ra (cruiser), 99 Nine Power Treaty, 2, 4, 66-69, 70, 148, 197; Japanese violations of, 100, 106, 107, 108, 160, 168; security clause, 67; U.S. insistence on Japan's adherence to, 187 Nonaggression pacts, 31, 172 Nonfortification Treaty, 103, 163, 170, 172 Norris, George, 152 North Carolina (battleship), 87 Notification requirement, 173, 174, 179; in Four Power Treaty, 66 Nuclear age. arms control in, 200-1 Nuclear weapons, 2 Nye, Cerald, 152-53, 173-74, 176

Obsolescence argument, 81, 125 Oclis, Adolph, 34-35 Offensive weapons, 56, 170, 171, 172 Oil, politics of, 10 Okada, Keisuke, 163 On-site inspection, 57, 66, 103; opposition to, 103-04 Open Door, 2, 7, 15, 46; capability to enforce. 67-68, 69, 115, 171, 197; codification of principles of, 66, 69; Japanese expansionism and, 13, 14, 168; U.S. interpretation of, 4, 49 Open societies: and arms limitation, 36, 180, 198-99; and compliance/verification, 104-5; see also Democracies Optimism, 3, 160, 195-96; in U.S. policy, 44, 46, 93, 114, 117, 150, 177, 180 Ostfriesland (battleship), 18, 30 Osumi, Mineo, 162 Oxford Union, 156 Ozaki, Uukio, 40 Pacific Conference (proposed), 36 Pacific Ocean: fortifications in, 61, 62, 69; U.S. diplomacy in, 66-69; U.S. effort to demilitarize, 104 Pacific War, 144, 186, 191, 197; projections of, 21; submarine in, 138; see also War Plan Orange

Pacifism: Great Britain, 78, 82, 156; U.S., 106, 173-74, 182 Palaus, 100 Panama Canal, 9, 74-75 Paris Peace Conference, 10, 14, 17 Paris Peace Treaty, 14 Parity, 2, 3, 43. 49; in battlefleets, 51-52; formula for, 118-23, 129; France/Italy, 128, 141; Japan's demand for, 162-63, 165, 169, 170, 171-72, 174, 179; meaning of, 74; politics and, 196; U.S./Great Britain, 10, 11, 34, 35, 49, 51, 54, 55, 74, 121-23, 126, 139, 142 Parity issue, 10. 27, 58, 201; in AngloAmerican naval talks, 33, 118; in London Naval Conference of 1930, 135; in London Naval Conference of 19351936, 178, 179; in London Naval Treaty of 1930, 140, 144; in Washington Conference, 61 Peace: arms limitation in, 52, 80, 82, 114, 118, 150, 156-57; concern for, and U.S. domestic politics, 24; preparation for war to ensure, 23, 48-49 Peace movement (U.S.), 23, 31, 80 Peace policy (U.S.), 31 Peace Preservation LJW of 1925 (Japan), 94 Pearl Harbor, 187; Japan's attack on, 85, 188-91 Pelz, Stephen, 188, 190 Pershing, Gen. John "Blackjack," 25-26 Pescadores, 12, 61 Philippines, 7, 9, 15. 76, 168, 190; defense of, 13, 16-17, 75, 104, 139, 149, 154, 185, 197; fortification of, 19, 47, 52; in Japanese war scenario, 77; in projected Pacific War, 16, 21 Pittman, Key, 103 Plan Dog (U.S.), 186 Political detente, 4, 136-37; naval limitation and, 43, 46-48, 49, 147, 196 Political parties, Japan, 38, 39, 94 Political theory: Japanese, 37 Politics, 3, 17; of breakdown/breakout, 3, 4; European, 63; in Far East, 93-96; international, 44, 82, 114; Japanese-American, 13-15; primacy of, in arms control, 4; see also Domestic politics/naval limitation relationship

Index Ponape, 100 Port Arthur, 12, 13 Power, in international politics, 44, 114 Pratt, Adm. William, 52, 53, 54, 70, 71, 75, 98-99, 140, 144, 148, 198; at London Naval Conference of 1930, 124, 130, 131-32, 136; and naval building program, 150-51 Preparedness, 23, 48-49, 152, 177, 201 Prince of Wales (battleship), 185 Progressive Isolationists (U.S.), 152-53, 176 Public opinion, 31, 141; Hoover's manipulation of, 116-17; Japan's efforts to manipulate, 163, 170; moral force of, 80, 115 Public works projects (U.S.), 150, 151

Racial equality, 14-15 Racialism, 15; Japan. 76, 92 Ranger (carrier). 85 Rapidan Conference, 123, 124, 126 Ratio(s), 1. 2, 3, 77, 124, 126; auxiliary craft, 110; Japan's needs regarding, 21, 59, 127; Japan's objections to, 162-63; under London Naval Treaty of 1930, 143; necessary for superiority, 19, 21; U.S./Great Britain/Japan, 50-51; under Washington Naval Treaty, 140 Ratio issue, 201; in London Naval Conference of 1930, 129, 134-35; in London Naval Conference of 1935-1936, 16768, 169, 170-71, 172, 173, 177, 178; post-Washington Conference, 74; in Washington Conference, 51-52, 54-55, 60-61, 62-64, 65, 70, 71, 75-76 Reconstruction Finance Corporation (U.S.), 150 Reed, David, 27-28, 124, 135, 139 Reed-Matsudaira Compromise, 135-36, 141 Reijiro, Wakasuki, 134, 135 Reischauer, Robert, 37 Replacement(s), 58, 166; U.S. Navy, 51, 184 Republican Party (U.S.), 27-28, 31 Repulse (battleship), 185 Reynolds, Clark, 20

Robinson, Joseph T . , 124, 139 Roosevelt, Franklin D , 68, 88, 197, 199; and Japanese treaty violations, 104, 106; and London Naval Conference of 19351936, 165, 167, 168-69, 173, 174, 175, 176, 180·, 181-84; and naval buildup, 151-52, 153-54; and World War II, 18687, 191 Roosevelt (F.D.) administration, 161; and Japanese treaty violations, 103, 104, 105, 107 Roosevelt, Theodore, 11, 13, 34, 48, 99; naval program of, 7-8; and Washington Conference, 43, 54, 56, 60, 61, 64, 7071 Root, Elihu, 48, 68 Root Resolution, 65 Roskill, Stephen, 33 Royal Navy (Great Britain), 8-12, 27, 33, 58-59, 81, 82, 91; aircraft earners, 63; battleship gun elevations, 96-97; cruiser needs of, 109; defense responsibilities of, 77-78, 166; and Washington Naval Treaty, 71; in World War I, 34 Rush-Bagot Treaty, 23 Russia, 15, 76; and Japan, 12, 13, 20; see also Soviet Union Russo-Japanese Neutrality Pact (1941), 189 Russo-Japanese war, 12-13, 20, 191

Saipan, 100 San Francisco School Board, 14 Sanson, Sir George, 191 Saonji, Prince Kimmochi, 170 Saratoga (carrier), 64 . 74, 84, 132, 133, 184 Sato Tetsutaro, 20 Scalapino. Robert, 38 Schuirmann, Capt. B. E , 182 Sea denial (strategy), 20, 163 Seapower, 15, 20; Great Britain, 8-12; rise of American, 7-8, 9, !2 Self-defense: in theory of Hoover, 114-15; war in, 44 Self-restraint and reciprocity, 152 Shanghai, 158 Shantung, 13, 14, 46, 6Í Shearer, William, 116-1"

Index Shearer affair, 116-17 Shidehara, Kejiro, 67, 68, 95, 96, 126, 134, 135 Shidehara Diplomacy, 39 Shokaku (carrier), 181 Siberia, 14; Japanese in, 13, 39, 46, 68 Simon, Sir John, 157, 167-68, 172, 174 Sims, Adm. William, 18 Singapore, 58-59, 61, 78, 155, 185, 190 Sino-Japanese War, 183 South Burma, 190 South Dakota (battleship), 87 Southern Sakhelin, 12 Soviet-American arms control negotiations, 2, 3, 200-1 Soviet Union, 94, 159, 180; in World War II, 188, 189, 190 Spanish-American War, 7, 9 Standley, Adm. William, 171-73, 174, 182 Stark, Adm. Harold, 186 Stark Plan, 184 Stimson, Henry, 104, 106, 148, 156; and London Naval Conference of 1930, 11318, 119, 120, 121-22, 123-28, 129, 133, 134-35, 136-37, 138-39, 142, 144 "Stop Now" plan, 53-55, 57-64, 70, 1 ΙΟΙ 1, 199 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), 1, 201 Strategic defense, 201 Strategic imperatives: in U.S.-Japan relations, 20-21 Strategic position: Great Britain, 155-58 Strategic setting: naval limitation, 7-22 Strategic stability, 200-01 Strategy/tactics: lessons of World War I for, 34 Submarine warfare: outlawing, 65, 137-38, 175, 178; see also U-boat warfare Submarines, 1, 17, 18-19, 55, 90, 124, 125; agreements regarding, in Washington Conference, 63, 64, 65; in British naval planning, 78; Japanese, 77; in London Naval Conference of 1930, 129, 135, 137-38, 140; proposed abolition of, 58, 124, 126, 134, 136, 166, 172, 175; ratios, 2, 52; role of, 21; in U.S. Navy, 25, 27, 75

Suetsugu, Nobumasa, 134 Sumatra, 190 Surface vessels, 1, 2 Taft, William Howard, 14 Taft administration, 8 Takao (cruiser), 99 Tanaka Giichi, Gen., 95-96 Tangki truce, 158 Technology(ies) (naval), 16, 17, 75, 170-71 Tentative Plan (27 Jan. 1930), 130, 13132, 133 10-Year Rule (Great Britain), 33, 82, 155 Thailand, 190 Third Reich, 157 Thome, Christopher, 100 Tokyo War Crimes Trial, 100 Torpedoes, 76-77, 160 Trade, 20; and Anglo-American relations, 10, 11

Transoceanic strategy (U.S.), 19, 84, 114; attrition in, 53; operational requirements of, 167; in U.S. naval planning, 184, 186-87 Treaty of Locarno, 137 Treaty of Portsmouth, 12, 13 Treaty of Versailles, 63, 107, 128, 156; Hitler's violations of, 175, 177 Treaty system, 4, 81, 126; breakdown and breakout, 180-91, 194; political/military components of, 117-18, 196-99; see also Naval treaties Tripartite Pact, 186, 189 Truk, 100 Tsushima strait, battle of, 12, 20, 21 21 Demands (Japan), 14 U-boat warfare, 8, 9, 17, 58, 124; World War II, 186 Underwood, Oscar, 48 United States, 4, 5, 13-14, 46, 105, 171, 182; costs of naval limitation to, 193-94; defense of Western hemisphere, 27, 51, 114, 152; deployment following Washington Conference, 78-92; desire for navy second to none, 10, 11; diplomacy in Pacific, 66-69; domestic politics and naval limitation, 23-32, 56; faith in naval limitation, 79-80, 83, 91, 105; gap

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288

Index United States (Continued) between capabilities and objectives, 144, 186-87, 197; and Geneva Naval Conference, 108-11; Japanese Navy and, 20-22; and London Naval Conference of 1930, 113-45; and London Naval Conference of 1935-1936, 165-91; and London Naval Treaty of 1930, 147-54; naiveté regarding treaty violations, 103-4; naval needs of, 16, 24, 31, 53, 56, 184; naval planning and doctrine, 73-78; naval weakness and attack on Pearl Harbor, 190-91; passivity, 159, 168; as primary eneiny of japan, 12, 15, 56, 75-76; program for determining treaty evasions, 102-6; and ratification of London Naval Treaty of 1930, 138-45; relations with Japan, 15, 41, 93, 105, 160; relative naval strength, 54, 55; restraint in face of Japan's treaty abrogation, 147, 176, 177, 181-85, 195, 199-200; rise of seapower, 7-8, 9, 12; rivalry with Japan, 13-15, 20, 162; role in defense of Britain (WWII), 185-87; role in Far East, 15, 43, 46-47; strategic requirements of, 166-67; and success/failure of naval treaties, 193-201; tonnage ratios, 1, 2; and Washington Conference, 42-72 U.S. Armv, and defense of Philippines, 154 U.S. Congress, 69, 103; H.R. 7359, 8990; H.R. 11526, 90-91, 112; naval building/naval limitation relationship in, 88-90; and naval building program, 79. 80, 81, 147-48, 150-51, 153; and naval limitation, 23, 24, 26-30 U.S. Congress, House: Foreign Affairs Committee, 26; Naval Affairs Committee, 26-27, 96 U.S. Congress, Senate, 70, 117; Foreign Relations Committee, 26, 139; Naval Affairs Committee, 27-28, 29, 139 U.S. Department of State, 102-3, 104, 115, 181, 182; Asian policy, 67; Far Eastern Division, 168; and Japanese treaty violations. 106 U.S. Department of War. 185 U S Marine Corps, 75 U.S. Navy, 3-4, 7, 8, 13, 34, 53; Bureau of Construction and Repair, 98; civilian

oversight, 199; decline of, 82, 83. 87; and domestic politics of arms limitation. 80-81; fleet exercises 1933, 1935, 154; and Japan, 15-19; need for Pacific bases, 16; opposition to London Naval Treatv of 1930, 139-40; Pacific Fleet, 185-86; post-Washington Conference, 74-78; strategic position in Western Pacific, 144; strength of, relative to Japan, 14849, 149, 154; treaty violations. 96-99. 105; see also Transoceanic strategy U.S. Navy Department. 24, 27 Vansittart, Sir Robert, 117, 157 Verification, 3, 4. 43, 144, 201; issue at Washington Conference, 56-57, 65-66; in London Treaty of 1930, 138; in Washington Naval Treaties. 96-108 Vinson, Carl, 148, 150, 183 Vinson Bill (U.S.), 175, 181 Vinson-Trammel Act (U.S.), 152-53, 197 Wake, 190 Walsh, Thomas, 25, 27-28 War, 22, 30-31, 80; arms race as cause of, 30, 45, 48, 52, 79. 153, 182; commercial rivalry as cause of, 10, 11; possibility of between Great Britain and Japan, 7778; possibility of between Great Britain and U.S., 11, 36, 49, 89, 144; possibility of, between Japan and U.S., 7, 17, 22, 76, 77, 127; renounced as instrument of national policy, 31, 112, 138 War of attrition, 17, 50, 76, 127, 138; effect on U.S. Navy, 76, 77; Japan's plan for U.S. to fight, 21, 190-91 War Plan Orange (scenario), 16-17, 53, 74, 75, 76, 142, 155; abandoned, 186; carriers in, 84, 133; Japanese version of, 21; modification of, 154 Warship design, 19, 91-92; effects of Naval treaties on U.S., 83-91 Warships: agreements on, in London Naval Conference of 1930, 129-38; in London Naval Treaty of 1936, 179; relative value of, 124-25 Washington Conference (1921-1922), 1-2, 7, 11-12, 32. 41, 42-72, 76, 81, 84, 110, 113-14. 131. 138, 140, 151, 155; preliminaries to, 44-57; proceedings of,

Index 57-69; ratification of agreements of, 6972; U.S. delegates to, 48, 55-56 Washington Conference (proposed), 29 Washington Naval Treaties: verification and compliance, 96-108 Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, 65, 73, 78, 108, 124, 132, 136, 140, 141, 154, 166, 170, 171, 181; carrier tonnage in, 132-34; dissatisfaction with, 74; effects of, 82-92, 144, 194; expiration of, 180; Japan's abrogation of, 172-73, 174, 176; political assumptions in, 93; ratification of, 70-72; weapons systems unregulated in, 76-77. 78 Washington Treaties of 1922, 1-2, 76 Wasp (carrier), 85 Weapons procurement, 4 Weapons systems, unregulated, 76, 78 Welfare state (Great Britain), 33, 81, 156, 177, 185 Western hemisphere: U.S. defense role in, 51, 114, 152 Western Pacific, 18-19; fortifications in, 1, 55, 56; Japanese naval supremacy in, 9, 22, 41, 59, 61, 70, 127, 142-44, 168, 193-94; nonfortification agreement, 71, 74 Wheeler, Gerald, 100 Wilbur, Curtis, 98 Wild, Thomas, 100-1 Wilson, Woodrow, 9, 10, 11, 19, 46, 48, 59-60, 124; and domestic politics of naval limitation, 23, 24, 25, 28, 31; and

Japanese-American relations, 14; rejection of naval buildup, 8 World Court, 80 World Disarmament Conference of 19321933, 148 World War 1, 8, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 49, 82, 92, 153; Anglo-American relations in, 9; arms race as cause of, 30; effect on Great Britain, 32-33; Japan and, 13; and Japanese expansionism, 13, 14, 15; lessons of, 34; submarine warfare, 17; U.S. in, 24; war to end all wars, 31 World War II, 4, 64, 79. 92, 188-91; and battleship supremacy doctrine, 195-96; Great Britain's strategic weakness and, 185-86; U.S. in, 68; see also Pacific War Yamamoto Isoroku, 134, 160, 170-71, 172, 174; and World War II, 191 Yamamoto class, 161, 162 Yamato class battleships, 181-82, 184 Yamanashi, Katsunoshin, 134 Yap (island), 14 Yardstick idea, 48, 51, 54, 118-23, 133; capital ship tonnage as, 57-69 Yarnell, Adm. Harry, 131, 132-33, 140 Yonai, Adm. Mitsumasa, 160 Yorktown (carrier), 85 Yorktown class, 167 Zero (fighter aircraft), 161 Zuikaku (carrier), 181

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