The Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the Five-Power Treaty, was a treaty to limit naval construction and prevent an arms race among the victorious powers in the wake of World War I. The treaty was negotiated at the Washington Naval Conference, which was held in Washington, D.C. from November 1921 to February 1922, and signed by Britain, the USA, Japan, France and Italy. 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 could only be built up to 10,000 tons displacement.
The treaty was followed by a number of other naval arms limitation conferences, which sought to extend or tighten limitations on warship building. The terms of the treaty were modified by the London Naval Treaty of 1930 and the Second London Naval Treaty of 1936. However, by the mid-1930s, Japan and Italy had indicated their withdrawal from the Treaties, and naval arms limitation increasingly became a dead letter.
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In the aftermath of World War I, the British Empire had the world's largest and most powerful navy, followed by the United States and more distantly by Japan. Even though the three nations had been allied in the First World War, a naval arms race appeared to be beginning in the next few years.[1] This arms race began in the USA. The Wilson administration announced successive plans for the expansion of the U.S. Navy in 1916 and 1919 that, if completed, would result in a massive fleet of 50 modern battleships; [2] currently it was engaged in building six battleships and six battlecruisers.
In retaliation, the Japanese parliament finally authorised construction of warships which would enable the Japanese Navy to reach its target of an "eight-eight" fleet programme, with total of sixteen modern battleships and battlecruisers. To this end, the Japanese started work on four battleships and four battlecruisers, all much larger and more powerful than the preceding classes.[3]
While the British navy retained numerical superiority for the moment, most of its ships were old and tired after heavy use in the War, and very few matched the new U.S. or Japanese designs. So in the 1921 Naval Estimates the British planned four battleships and four battlecruisers, with another four battleships to follow the subsequent year.[4]
This arms race was widely unwelcome. The U.S. Congress in fact voted down Wilson's 1919 plan, and in the 1920 Presidential election U.S. politics resumed the pre-war isolationist tone, with little support for continued naval expansion.[5] Britain could ill-afford any resumption of battleship construction, with the £84 million price-tag of naval construction difficult to afford.[6]
In late 1921, the U.S. became aware that Britain was planning to call a conference to discuss the strategic situation in the Pacific and Far East. In part to forestall this British move, and in part to satisfy domestic pressure for a global disarmament conference, the Harding administration called the Washington Naval Conference in November 1921.[7]
At the first plenary session, the U.S. Secretary of State, Charles Evans Hughes, presented the U.S. proposals. This provided a dramatic opening for the conference, and received an enthusiastic public reception which likely shortened the conference and helped ensure the U.S. proposals were largely adopted. Hughes's proposals were;
The proposals regarding capital ships were largely accepted by the British delegation. The Hughes plan meant the abandonment of Britain's long dominance of the sea. In particular, it would no longer be possible for Britain to have adequate fleets in the North Sea, the Mediterranean and the Far East simultaneously. These facts provoked outrage from parts of the Royal Navy. Nevertheless, there was huge pressure on Britain to agree. The risk of war with the USA was increasingly regarded as theoretical. Domestic politics, both in Britain and its Dominions, had no appetite for naval spending. Furthermore, Britain was inflicting major cuts on its budget due to an economic crisis.[8]
The Japanese delegation was divided. Japanese naval thought required the maintenance of a fleet 70% the size of that of the USA, which was felt to be the minimum necessary to defeat the USA in any subsequent war;[9] thus accepting a 5:3 ratio, or 60%, was unacceptable. Nevertheless, the leader of the delegation, Katō Tomosaburō, favoured accepting a 60% ratio to the prospect of an arms race with the USA. Given the relative industrial output of the two nations, Japan would be bound to lose such an arms race and might suffer economic collapse as a consequence. His position faced very serious opposition from Katō Kanji, President of the Naval Staff College, who acted as his chief naval aide at the delegation, who represented the influential "big navy" school of thought. This school of thought held that in the event of war the USA would be able to build indefinitely more warships, given its huge industrial power, and thus Japan needed to prepare as thoroughly as possible for the inevitable conflict with America. Katō Tomosaburō was in the end able to persuade the Japanese high command to accept the Hughes proposals, but the outcome of the Treaty was a cause of friction in the Japanese navy for many years to come. [10]
The French delegation initially responded with anger to the idea of reducing their capital ships tonnage to 175,000 tons, and demanded 350,000, slightly above Japan. In the end, concessions on cruisers and submarines helped persuade the French to agree to the limit on capital ships.[11]
There was much discussion about the inclusion or exclusion of individual warships. In particular, the Japanese delegation was keen to retain their newest battleship, Mutsu, which had been funded with great public support, including donations from schoolchildren.[12] This resulted in provisions to allow the USA and Britain to construct equivalent ships.
Secretary Hughes proposed to limit secondary ships (cruisers and destroyers) in the same proportions as capital ships. However, this was unacceptable to both the British and the French. The British counter-proposal, in which the British would be entitled to 450,000 tons of cruisers in light of their global imperial commitments, but the USA and Japan only 300,000 and 250,000 respectively, proved equally contentious. Thus, the idea of limiting cruiser tonnage or numbers was rejected entirely.[13]
Instead, the British suggested a qualitative limit on future cruiser construction. The limit proposed, of a 10,000 ton maximum on displacement and 8-inch calibre guns, was aimed to allow the British to retain the Hawkins class then under construction. This coincided with the U.S. requirements for cruisers for Pacific operations, and also with Japanese plans for the Furutaka class. So this suggestion was adopted with little debate.[14]
A key British demand in the negotiations was the complete abolition of the submarine, the weapon which had nearly defeated Britain in World War I. However, this proved impossible, particularly in the light of French opposition; the French demanded an allowance of 90,000 tons of submarines,[15] and the conference ended with no agreement on restricting submarines.
Article XIX of the Treaty also specified that none of Britain, Japan and the USA would construct any fortifications or naval bases in the Pacific. This was a significant victory for Japan, as fortified British or American bases would pose a serious problem for the Japanese in the event of any future war. This clause of the Treaty essentially guaranteed Japan would be the dominant power in the Western Pacific.[16] and was crucial in gaining Japanese acceptance of the limits on capital ship construction.
| Tonnage limitations | ||
| Country | Capital ships | Aircraft carriers |
|---|---|---|
| British Empire | 525,000 tons (533,000 tonnes) |
135,000 tons (137,000 tonnes) |
| United States | 525,000 tons (533,000 tonnes) |
135,000 tons (137,000 tonnes) |
| Japan | 315,000 tons (320,000 tonnes) |
81,000 tons (82,000 tonnes) |
| France | 175,000 tons (178,000 tonnes) |
60,000 tons (61,000 tonnes) |
| Italy | 175,000 tons (178,000 tonnes) |
60,000 tons (61,000 tonnes) |
The Treaty put strict limits on both the tonnage and construction of capital ships and aircraft carriers, and also contained limits on the size of individual ships.
The tonnage limits defined in Articles IV and VII (tabulated) gave a strength ratio of approximately 5:5:3:2:2 between Britain, the USA, Japan, Italy and France.
The qualitative limits on each type of ship were as follows;
The Treaty also detailed in Chapter II which individual ships were to be retained by each Navy, including the allowance for the USA to complete two further ships of the West Virginia class and for Britain to complete two new ships in line with the Treaty limits. Chapter II, part 2, detailed what steps were to be taken to adequately put a ship beyond military use; in addition to sinking or scrapping, a limited number of ships could be converted as target ships or training vessels, so long as their armament, armour and other combat-essential parts were completely removed; some could also be converted into aircraft carriers.
Part 3, Section II of the Treaty laid out which ships were to be scrapped to comply with the Treaty, and when the remaining ships could be replaced. In all the USA had to scrap 28 existing or planned capital ships; Britain, 23; and Japan, 16.
The Washington Treaty marked the end of a long period of growth in battleship construction. Many ships currently under construction were scrapped or converted into aircraft carriers. The Treaty limits were respected, and then extended in the 1930 London Naval Treaty. It was not until the mid-1930s that navies began to build battleships once again, and the power and size of new battleships began to take off once again. The 1936 London Naval Treaty sought to extend the Washington Treaty limits until 1942, but in the absence of Japan or Italy was largely ineffective.
The effects on cruiser building were less fortunate. While the Treaty specified 10,000 tons and 8-inch guns as the maximum size of a cruiser, in effect this was also treated as the minimum size cruiser that any navy was willing to build. The Treaty sparked a building competition of 8-inch, 10,000 ton "treaty cruisers"[17] which gave rise to further cause for concern. Subsequent Naval Treaties sought to address this, by limiting cruiser, destroyer and submarine tonnage.
The naval treaty had a profound effect on the Japanese. With superior American and even British industrial power, a long war would very likely end in a Japanese defeat. Thus, gaining parity on the strategic level was not economically possible.
Many Japanese saw the 5:5:3 ratio of ships as another way of being snubbed by the West (though it can be argued that the Japanese, having a one-ocean navy, had a far greater concentration of force than the two-ocean United States Navy or the three-ocean Royal Navy). It also contributed to a schism in high ranks of the Imperial Japanese Navy between the Treaty Faction officers on the one hand and on the other those opposed to it, who were also allied to the ultranationalists in the Japanese army and other parts of the Japanese government. For Treaty Faction opponents, the Treaty was one of the factors which contributed to the deterioration of the relationship between the United States and the Japanese Empire. The unfairness, at least in the eyes of the Japanese, led to Japan's renunciation of the Naval Limitation Treaties in 1936. Isoroku Yamamoto, who later masterminded the Pearl Harbor attack, held that Japan should remain in the treaty and was therefore regarded by many as a member of the Treaty Faction. His view was more complex, however, in that he felt the United States could out-produce Japan by a greater factor than the 5:3 ratio because of the huge US production advantage, on which he was expert, having served in the Japanese Embassy in Washington. He felt that other methods would be needed to even the odds, which may have contributed to his advocacy of the plan to attack Pearl Harbor. However, he did not have sufficient influence at Navy headquarters or in the government.
On 29 December 1934, the Japanese government gave formal notice that it intended to terminate the treaty. Its provisions remained in force until the end of 1936, and it was not renewed, Japan effectively leaving the treaty in 1936.
What was unknown to the participants in the Conference was that the American "Black Chamber" (the Cypher Bureau, a US intelligence service), under Herbert Yardley, was spying on the delegations' communications with their home capitals. In particular, Japanese communications were thoroughly penetrated, and American negotiators were able to get the minimum possible deal the Japanese had indicated they would accept, below which they would leave the Conference. As this ratio value was unpopular with much of the Imperial Japanese Navy and with the increasingly active and important ultranationalist groups, the value the Japanese Government accepted was the cause of much suspicion and accusation among Japanese between politicians and Naval officers.
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