By Bruno Hellendorff and Thierry Kellner
With an Asian naval buildup underway, perhaps history can offer some inspiration.
Following the end of World War I, Asia was a theater witnessing some worrying developments, particular the rise of Japan and associated tensions. In response, then U.S. President Warren Harding convened a peace conference in Washington, between November 12, 1921 and February 6, 1922, which would later be referred to as the “Washington Naval Conference” or the “Washington Disarmament Conference.”
Nine countries attended: the U.S., Japan, China, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Holland, Portugal and Belgium, but not the USSR. Negotiations were primarily geared towards naval disarmament in the Pacific Ocean and East Asia, and gave way to three major treaties. These treaties helped to curtail the naval buildup in the region for a period and supported a fragile peace throughout the 1920s and 30s, up to their renunciation by Japan in 1936. Although the conference’s outcomes and effectiveness remain the subject of debate, it is nonetheless considered by many a successful milestone in disarmament. Almost a century later, could a modernized version of the Washington Naval Conference be useful, or even necessary, to deal with the competing programs and patterns of naval modernizations being witnessed in the region?
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