The Threat of Anglo-American Naval Rivalry

Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.

THE recent Anglo-French negotiations have again focused attention on the problem of the limitation of naval armaments. Nothing is so calculated to whet the appetite of the public as an international agreement of which the existence is known and the text withheld. Now that the text of this agreement has been published the element in it which is surprising is its futility. It is hard to see by what chain of reasoning its authors persuaded themselves that it would afford a basis for a general naval understanding. It is still more difficult to see how they would justify it as a real step toward naval limitation.

The failure of the Three-Power Naval Conference at Geneva in 1927, and now the rejection by the United States and Italy (and by public opinion generally) of the Anglo-French compromise, have served to emphasize that the naval problem ranks with reparation as the most serious of pending and unsettled international problems. The naval problem, to an even greater extent than that of reparation, requires for its solution the coöperation of the American Government. It is distinctly a governmental problem. Informal commissions of inquiry or investigation are less likely to be of assistance here than they have been, and may again be, in the case of reparation.

When the Washington Conference adjourned in 1922 the impression was very generally created -- particularly in the United States -- that the naval problem had been solved. It was felt that even though certain naval elements were not included in the scope of the Treaty, naval competition of a dangerous character would be eliminated. It is no disparagement of the accomplishments of the Washington Conference to state that all that was expected from the Naval Treaty of 1922 has not been realized. This has been due not only to inability to agree on cruiser and submarine limitation, but also to advances of science over which treaty makers had no control...