Washington Naval Arms Conference, The

Washington Naval Arms Conference, The (1921–1922), produced three treaties affecting the power balance in the western Pacific.The United States, seeking to ameliorate its potential post–World War I isolation as diplomacy shifted to the new League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, called the conference.

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes electrified the delegates at the opening session on 12 November 1921 by proposing a ten‐year naval building “holiday,” along with scrapping existing ships and others planned or under construction. The goal, he announced, was to prevent a naval arms race in the Pacific. Serving the cause of both peace and budgetary restraint, Hughes's plan was incorporated into the Five‐Power Naval Limitation Treaty (often called the Washington Treaty). It mandated strict limits on capital‐ship (battleships and aircraft carriers) construction and set a capital‐ship ratio among the five signatories: United States and Great Britain, 5; Japan, 3; France and Italy, 1.75. The treaty did not restrict the tonnage, weight, or gun size of capital ships or substantially limit the construction of other ships. This treaty ostensibly favored the United States and Great Britain, but since each had a two‐ocean fleet, it in fact gave Japan, a single‐ocean power, naval dominance in the western Pacific. This was accentuated when the United States agreed not to fortify its bases in the Philippines.

By augmenting Japan's naval influence, the Five‐Power Naval Limitation Treaty subtly undermined the objectives of the two other treaties. The Four‐Power Pact, which superseded the 1902 Anglo‐Japanese alliance, pledged the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and France to respect each other's “rights” in the Pacific, but lacked enforcement provisions. The Nine‐Power Pact, signed by the five naval powers plus China, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal, sanctioned the Open‐Door Policy in China. Ostensibly denying any nation the right to exclude the commerce of others by abridging China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, it, too, had no enforcement procedures. Nine years later, ignoring the Four‐Power Pact and taking advantage of U.S. naval weakness in the western Pacific, Japan occupied Manchuria.
See also Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Europe; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Asia: Harding, Warren G.; World War II: Causes.

Bibliography

Thomas A. Buckley , The Washington Conference, 1921–1922, 1970.
Roger Dingman , Power in the Pacific: The Origins of Naval Arms Limitations, 1914–1922, 1976.

Gary B. Ostrower