Washington Naval Treaty
The Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the Five-Power Treaty, was a treaty signed during 1922 among the major Allies of World War I, which agreed to prevent an arms race by limiting naval construction. It was negotiated at the Washington Naval Conference in Washington, D.C. from November 1921 to February 1922 and signed by the governments of the British Empire (including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India), United States, France, Italy, and Japan. It limited the construction of battleships, battlecruisers and aircraft carriers by the signatories. The numbers of other categories of warships, including cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, were not limited by the treaty, but those ships were limited to 10,000 tons displacement each.
Limitation of Naval Armament
February 6, 1922
August 17, 1923
December 31, 1936
League of Nations
The treaty was concluded on February 6, 1922. Ratifications of that treaty were exchanged in Washington on August 17, 1923, and it was registered in the League of Nations Treaty Series on April 16, 1924.[1]
Later naval arms limitation conferences sought additional limitations of warship building. The terms of the Washington Naval Treaty were modified by the London Naval Treaty of 1930 and the Second London Naval Treaty of 1936. By the mid-1930s, Japan and Italy renounced the treaties, while Germany renounced the Treaty of Versailles which had limited its navy. Naval arms limitation became increasingly difficult for the other signatories.
Background[edit]
Immediately after World War I, Britain still had the world's largest and most powerful navy, followed by the United States and more distantly by Japan, France and Italy. The British Royal Navy had interned the defeated German High Seas Fleet. The Allies had differing opinions concerning the final disposition of the Imperial German Navy, with the French and Italians wanting the German fleet divided between the victorious powers and the Americans and British wanting the ships destroyed. The negotiations became mostly moot after the German crews had scuttled most of their ships.
News of the scuttling angered the French and the Italians, with the French particularly unimpressed with British explanations that the fleet guarding the Germans had then been away on exercises. Nevertheless, the British joined their allies in condemning the German actions, and no credible evidence emerged to suggest that the British had collaborated actively with the Germans with respect to the scuttling. The Treaty of Versailles, signed a week later, imposed strict limits on the size and the number of warships that the newly-installed German government was allowed to build and maintain.[2]
The Americans, the British, the French, the Italians, and the Japanese had been allies during World War I, but with the German threat seemingly finished, a naval arms race between the erstwhile allies seemed likely for the next few years.[3] US President Woodrow Wilson's administration had already announced successive plans for the expansion of the US Navy from 1916 to 1919 that would have resulted in a massive fleet of 50 modern battleships.[4]
In response, the Japanese Diet finally authorised construction of warships to enable the Japanese Navy to attain its goal of an "eight-eight" fleet programme, with eight modern battleships and eight battlecruisers. The Japanese started work on four battleships and four battlecruisers, all of which were much larger and more powerful than those of the classes that they were replacing.[5]
The 1921 British Naval Estimates planned four battleships and four battlecruisers, with another four battleships to follow the subsequent year.[3]
The new arms race was unwelcome to the American public. The US Congress disapproved of Wilson's 1919 naval expansion plan, and the 1920 presidential election campaign caused politics to resume the non-interventionalism of the prewar era, with little enthusiasm for continued naval expansion.[6] Britain also could ill afford any resumption of battleship construction, given the exorbitant cost.[7]
In late 1921, the US became aware that Britain was planning a conference to discuss the strategic situation in the Pacific and Far East regions. To forestall the conference and to satisfy domestic demands for a global disarmament conference, Warren Harding's administration called the Washington Naval Conference in November 1921.[8]
The Conference agreed to the Five-Power Naval Treaty as well as a Four-Power Treaty on Japan and a Nine-Power Treaty on China.[9]
The treaty strictly limited both the tonnage and construction of capital ships and aircraft carriers and included limits of the size of individual ships.
The tonnage limits defined by Articles IV and VII (tabulated) gave a strength ratio of approximately 5:5:3:1.75:1.75 for the UK, the United States, Japan, Italy, and France, respectively.[19]
The qualitative limits of each type of ship were as follows:
The treaty also detailed by Chapter II the individual ships to be retained by each navy, including the allowance for the United States to complete two further ships of the Colorado class and for the UK to complete two new ships in accordance with the treaty limits.
Chapter II, part 2, detailed what was to be done to render a ship ineffective for military use. In addition to sinking or scrapping, a limited number of ships could be converted as target ships or training vessels if their armament, armour and other combat-essential parts were removed completely. Some could also be converted into aircraft carriers.
Part 3, Section II specified the ships to be scrapped to comply with the treaty and when the remaining ships could be replaced. In all, the United States had to scrap 30 existing or planned capital ships, Britain 23 and Japan 17.
Violations[edit]
In 1935, the French Navy laid down the battleship Richelieu; combined with the two Dunkerque-class battleships also under construction, which placed the total tonnage over the 70,000-ton limit on new French battleships until the expiration of the treaty. The keel laying of Jean Bart in December 1936, albeit less than three weeks before the treaty expired, increased the magnitude of France's violation by another 35,000 tons. The French government dismissed British objections to the violations by pointing out that Britain had signed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement in 1935, which unilaterally dismantled the naval disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. German naval rearmament threatened France, and according to the French perspective, if Britain freely violated treaty obligations, France would similarly not be constrained.[23]
Italy repeatedly violated the displacement limits on individual ships and attempted to remain within the 10,000-ton limit for the Trento-class cruisers built in the mid-1920s. However, by the Zara-class cruisers in the late 1920s and early 1930s, it had abandoned all pretense and built ships that topped 11,000 long tons (11,000 t) by a wide margin. The violations continued with the Littorio-class battleships of the mid-1930s, which had a standard displacement in excess of 40,000 long tons (41,000 t). The Italian Navy nevertheless misrepresented the displacement of the vessels as being within the limits imposed by the treaty.[24]
Influences of cryptography[edit]
What was unknown to the participants of the Conference was that the American "Black Chamber" (the Cypher Bureau, a US intelligence service), commanded by Herbert Yardley, was spying on the delegations' communications with their home capitals. In particular, Japanese communications were deciphered thoroughly, and American negotiators were able to get the absolute minimum possible deal that the Japanese had indicated they would ever accept.[28]
As the treaty was unpopular with much of the Imperial Japanese Navy and with the increasingly active and important ultranationalist groups, the value that the Japanese government accepted was the cause of much suspicion and accusation among Japanese politicians and naval officers.