The Washington Conference, 1921-22: Naval Rivalry, East Asian Stability and the Road to Pearl Harbor (Diplomacy & Statecraft (Paperback)) 1st Edition

Book is out of print

“The Washington Conference, 1921-22: Naval Rivalry, East Asian Stability and the Road to Pearl Harbor” edited by Erik Goldstein and John Maurer, is an uneven collection of ten essays related to the titular naval arms limitation conference and the treaties that grew out of it. The book is not a unified text and the individual essays parallel each other imperfectly, presenting a jumble of information. For a reader unfamiliar with the Washington Conference this volume is likely to be confusing, unenlightening and esoteric. For an informed reader it will add perspective, but in a rather unorganized fashion..The first article, by Erik Goldstein, concerns British diplomatic strategy for the conference, and the second, by B.J.C. McKercher, is a look at the domestic political dimension for the British. The third, by Michael Graham Fry, concerns the British Dominions’ views but is written in a verbose, opaque fashion which is difficult to read and the least satisfying or informative of the series..William R. Braisted wrote the fourth article, tracing the evolution of U.S. strategic assessments over the 1920s from a rush to relieve the Philippines to a more realistic step-by-step trans-Pacific campaign. Thomas H. Buckley’s article, the fifth, attacks the concept of arms controls as embodied in the Washington Treaty and its successors..Sadao Asada contributed the sixth—and best—article, regarding the Imperial Japanese Navy’s internal political deterioration over the course of the 1920s that led from a rational acceptance of the Washington Treaty to the embittered revolt against the London Treaty, particularly as embodied in the policies of the two admirals Kato. The transition from the statesmanship of Admiral Kato Tomosaburo to the jingoistic nationalism of Admiral Kato Kanji doomed the treaties, the IJN and Imperial Japan..The often neglected view of France, a less virulent but still important crack in the treaty structure than Japan’s, is the subject of the seventh article by Joel Blatt. Brian R. Sullivan contributes a similar review of Italy’s position in the book’s eighth entry. In the ninth article, David Armstrong discusses the precarious position of China in the larger architecture of other treaties signed at Washington..John H. Maurer provides the tenth, closing, article and the best overall discussion of the conference..Again, this volume is not for a person seeking to get acquainted with the Washington Conference in a basic way. For a more serious student of this point in history it is an uneven offering, a collection of articles more than a series of parallel studies and that is ultimately what leaves this book unsatisfying. One can look at the British diplomatic strategy in depth, but not the Italian. One can look at the internal political dimension for Britain in depth, but not the French. One can look at the US strategic assessment process, but not the British..A better and more complete approach would have been to solicit a series of articles addressing the same issues with the same organization for each power, similar to the approach taken in Vincent P. O’Hara’s “To Crown the Waves” discussing the naval doctrine of World War I navies..I can only recommend this volume for serious history readers already acquainted with the topic, and only with the proviso that what is found here is a grab-bag.

This book is a collection of ten papers on the Washington Naval Limitation Conference in the early 1920�s. The emphasis of each paper is on the position of each of the participants of the conference. Since the book is rather short � 319 pages � the papers are not very detailed. These papers primarily stress the political and strategic aspects as they affected each participant. There is little on the technical effects although these were rather important (see A. D. Baker III�s �Battlefleets and Diplomacy� at [...] The coverage of the U. S. and British positions offers little that is new, but the material on those of France and Italy is not so well known. There is a tendency to interpret the arms control negotiations from the viewpoint of Cold War arms control negotiations which leads to rather anachronistic interpretations.