The Naval Arms Race Between the World Wars
(In light of the current focus on international arms races and disarmament efforts, it may be worthwhile to look for some historical perspective on the competing forces that drive these efforts and the often unintended consequences of well-meaning decisions.)
After World War I the United States, Great Britain and Japan were the world’s leading naval powers, and each country continued a rapid buildup of forces in order to maintain dominance over their local sea waters and protect their overseas interests. America was particularly concerned with maintaining the Open Door policy in China and in defending – as much as possible – its possessions in the Philippines while maintaining coastal defenses. In 1918, the Navy General Board set as its goal the establishment of a navy superior or equal to every other navy on Earth – a departure from its previous policy, which was content to be second to Great Britain. The Wilson Administration presented a naval building plan to Congress that would result in the United States’ possessing a fleet of 39 battleships and 12 battle cruisers, a force that would far exceed Great Britain’s. The high costs of such construction, along with the growing spirit of pacifism and isolationism in Congress and the American public, eventually led President Harding to call the 1920 Washington Naval Conference, which established a number of treaties to govern the conduct of nations in the Pacific. The Washington Treaty, probably the most significant of these agreements, established limits on the total tonnage of ships each nation could build, along with limits on particular classes of ships such as heavy cruisers and battleships. These limits were set according to a ratio of 5/5/3 among the United States, Great Britain, and Japan, respectively, a compromise which formed the basis of American naval policy for over a decade and had the seemingly-beneficial effect of pleasing no one, as no side achieved the clear advantage it sought.
After the Washington Conference, however, the Japanese navy and general public were offended at being permitted to be only 3/5 as strong as America and Britain; parity became the ultimate goal of Japanese diplomacy for the next 15 years. The latter powers justified their larger numbers by pointing to the greater distances their navies would have to travel to protect their interests and sustain any kind of action in the Pacific while Japan – whose interests were confined to the Far East – had no such burden; they claimed that therefore, the disproportionate ratios served to equalize naval strength. Of course, it was taken for granted that America and Britain would continue to exert their will both at home and within what would naturally be Japan’s sphere of influence; this apparent double standard, along with other anti-Japanese policies in the US (such as on immigration) helped to fuel the Japanese public’s paranoia and militarism.
The American navy, meanwhile, opposed the 5/5/3 ratio because it believed that a 2-to-1 advantage would be necessary for the fleet to travel from Pearl Harbor to Japanese waters and still maintain fighting strength, especially since the agreement also limited America’s ability to establish new naval bases on any of its Pacific holdings, including the Philippines. Not only did these claims fall on deaf ears within the civilian government, the anti-militarism of the mid-to-late 1920s led to a slowdown in construction such that the Navy was nowhere near the strength permitted by the treaty. Republican presidents during the era engaged in a policy of unilateral disarmament in hopes of inspiring other countries to follow suit while reaping the benefits of a peace dividend to reduce federal spending. The Navy therefore had to fight hard just to maintain the status quo, let alone achieve what they considered a bare minimum for an effective battle fleet.
In the discussion leading up to and during the Geneva disarmament conference of 1927, both Britain and Japan sought important concessions from the U.S. Britain wished to decrease the number of battleships and increase the number of cruisers permitted to each country, in order to exploit its existing advantage in the latter category; Japan sought a ratio closer to parity for those ship classes not yet covered by treaties, if not for all classes altogether. The General Board of the United States Navy considered both proposals incompatible with its needs, and the negotiators at Geneva drew heavily on the General Board in determining its position. However, the slowdown in naval construction had put the U.S. at a disadvantaged position. At the 1920 Washington Conference, the United States had a number of cruisers under construction. Other countries knew there was no way they could maintain naval supremacy against such a large force. Thus, disarmament was the only viable way to maintain a balance of power. In 1927 the United States’ unilateral disarmaments, taken in hope of inspiring other nations to follow suit (among other reasons), had exactly the opposite effect, and the United States was far behind in the combat auxiliaries arms race – it possessed only 16 cruisers fewer than twenty years old; Japan had 23 while Great Britain owned 48, with both countries far ahead in terms of new construction. The United States had no leverage entering the talks, which along with antagonism between the United States and Great Britain grounded in their growing fear of the Japanese Navy, scuttled any chance of success at the 1927 conference.
This failure was an embarrassment to American political leaders, and widened the rift between the State Department and the Navy; afterward, State Department diplomats rarely consulted with naval officers, and so coordination between the two bodies – which might have ensured that American foreign policy would be guided by an understanding of the resources needed to obtain its stated objectives – was minimal. While America was unwilling to give up its Pacific interests, it was also not willing to sacrifice much in the way of its national resources to protect those interests; nor did it hold its military advisors in particularly high regard. When it came time for the next set of negotiations in London in 1930, President Hoover made sure to entrust the diplomats with full authority. With the country in the grip of the Great Depression, Hoover was determined to reduce federal spending as much as possible, which meant that greater reductions in naval strength was a political and economic necessity as well as a military and diplomatic goal. Naval officers were simply not expected to be able or willing to look at such a broad picture.
Beyond the political and economic considerations, the London Conference also sought to address one of the major failings of the Washington Treaty, which had dealt only with battleships, heavy cruisers and carriers. The result was a minor arms race in smaller vessels such as destroyers. War games in both the United States and Japan demonstrated that such vessels would be key in Japan’s efforts to harass the American fleet on its way from its Pacific coast bases and turn an American/Japanese war into a battle of attrition with the advantage to the Japanese. Constraining the buildup in these small vessels was therefore an American priority, but the Japanese were unwilling to extend the 5/5/3 ratio; instead, they began to make demands for total parity. With American diplomats unwilling to repeat the failure at Geneva, and unwilling to stand for any opposition from naval leaders, the negotiators settled on a 10/10/7 ratio for the smaller craft; the United States also agreed to slow down its naval construction in order to give Japan an even more favorable ratio during the early years of the treaty.
The arrival of Franklin Roosevelt in the White House brought some improvement in the Navy’s fortunes; in contrast to Hoover’s mistrust, Roosevelt was partial to the Navy. While the political climate was still staunchly opposed to new military spending, Roosevelt was able to garner support for new naval construction under the auspices of the National Industrial Recovery Act. The added ships still left the navy short of the maximum levels allowed, however, while Japan continued its buildup. In fact, at a 1934 round of talks between America, Britain and Japan to prepare for the 1936 Second London Conference, Japan demanded full parity and a hands-off position from the two Anglo-Saxon powers with regard to the Far East – positions it knew the United States was unwilling to accept. Even as it attempted to keep the talks going in order to keep up appearances to other countries and paint America as the unreasonable party, Japan announced its intention to abrogate the earlier agreements.
The 1936 conference was still held, but Japan left after making a formal presentation of its demands; the remaining attendees did sign a treaty calling for further reductions, but that treaty contained exceptions that allowed signees to exceed the treaty limits if any non-signee did – and as it was already clear that Japan intended to do just that, it was obvious that by 1936 the era of disarmament was over. In retrospect, relying on treaties with a government as unstable as that of Japan seems to be a terribly misguided decision, especially as the United States was unwilling to act to enforce the treaties. America was unwilling to give up its influence, but equally unwilling to commit the resources to defend that influence. Thus, when its interests were explicitly threatened, it found itself in crisis.
As 1937 began, and the naval race began in earnest, it became clear that Britain had no chance of maintaining its naval strength in the Pacific while also preparing for the coming conflict closer to home, which left Japan and America to challenge each other for Pacific supremacy. The United States was content to let Japan maintain its head start; despite their concerns, the Navy and President Roosevelt were convinced that America would eventually win any Pacific war. The confidence was based on America’s economic supremacy; the American plan was to cut off Japan’s supplies of oil and raw materials and thus eliminate its ability to build, repair or supply its fleet; American construction would then achieve superiority over the Japanese fleet and tighten the blockade until Japan had no choice but to surrender. Despite, or because of, this optimism, America did little to update its ship and fighter designs, or prepare for the type of economic mobilization that would be required to overtake Japan. Part of the problem was Roosevelt’s inability to present a clear and compelling case to an isolationist public and Congress that Japan was a direct threat; Japan went to great lengths to keep its construction secret, so no one could say for sure how far behind the United States had fallen. Roosevelt thus lacked any symbol around which to rally support for new naval construction, especially amidst demands for an end to deficit spending after the 1936 elections.
The Japanese sinking of an American gunboat, the Panay, in December 1937 under suspicious circumstances finally provided some evidence of Japan’s intentions, which led to accelerated naval construction in 1938 and 1939 – although even this new construction did not bring the Navy up to its strength in relation to Japan that was allowed by the old treaties. The plan approved by Congress in 1938 raised the authorized strength of the navy twenty percent above treaty levels, but Roosevelt had difficulty getting approval for the funds necessary to reach said levels. Meanwhile, Japan was building bigger and more powerful ships that helped to negate the United States’ already-slim numerical edge. For example, Japanese battleships were twice as strong as American ships, so Japan’s four (built or authorized) ships were roughly the equal of the United States’ eight. The United States had a 10/8 ratio with Japan in 1936, and Japan gradually narrowed that ratio even further as the decade progressed.
The realization that Japan was decisively winning the arms race, combined with the rising tensions in America’s relationship with Europe, led the United States to jump start construction in 1940 – at which point Japan realized that the advantage it had worked so long to establish would be gone in a few years’ time. Not only did Congress approve funds to complete the 1938 plan, but in July of 1940 Roosevelt won approval for an additional 1,325,000 tons of naval construction which would provide the United States with a navy capable of operating in the Pacific and Atlantic simultaneously. Japan considered a new building program to keep pace; such a program would have doubled the amount of construction already planned, but would still have fallen well short of what would be needed to maintain the existing advantage. The Japanese economy simply could not keep up with the American production, and the Japanese navy estimated that it would begin to lose its lead by mid-1942. Conflict seemed inevitable at that point, and so Japan was determined to force that conflict while it still had the advantage. By the end of 1941, at a point where Japan had reached full parity in the Pacific with the navies of the West and the United States had begun to impede Japan’s access to raw materials and fuel, Japan made the decision to attack, and officially drew the United States into the Second World War.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.