WASHINGTON, LONDON AND GENEVA Disarmament Conferences

The Washington Conference ( ) Often referred to as the Washington Naval Conference or Washington Arms Conference. military conference called by President Warren G. Harding and held in Washington, D.C. from 12 November 1921 to 6 February attended by nine nations having interests in the Pacific Ocean and East Asia. Soviet Russia was not invited to the conference. It was the first international conference held in the United States and the first disarmament conference in history.

After WW1, the British had the largest naval fleet in the world. As a result, the USA and Japan had begun to expand its naval fleet in the early 1920s. The conference was called in an attempt to put an end to the Naval Arms Race that had begun post WW1. It was at this conference where the Washington Naval Treaty (five-power treaty) was signed on February 6, 1922.

Treaty Stipulations Signed by: British Empire, Japan, France, USA and Italy. (10 year treaty) After specifying some exceptions for ships in current use and under construction, the treaty limited the total capital ship tonnage of each of the signatories to the values tabulated at right. no single ship could exceed 35,000 tons (35,560 t), and no ship could carry a gun in excess of 16 inches (406 mm). European Powers would also stop fortifying their east naval bases.

Geneva Conferences The Geneva Naval Conference was a conference held to discuss naval arms limitation, held in Geneva, Switzerland, in Badly needed restraints were applied to the naval arms race by the treaties stemming from the Washington Naval Conference ( ), but those agreements were largely confined to limitations on battleships and aircraft carriers

In February 1927, President Coolidge issued a call to the Big Five Powers to meet in Geneva to confront the issue of naval rivalries. Britain and Japan accepted the invitation, but France and Italy declined, citing their current involvement in League of Nations disarmament efforts. The conference opened in the Swiss city in the spring of 1927, but may well have been doomed from the outset. The participants demonstrated a certain detachment by sending second-rank diplomats.

The London Conference The London Naval Treaty was an agreement between the United Kingdom, the Empire of Japan, France, Italy and the United States, signed on April 22, 1930, which regulated submarine warfare and limited naval shipbuilding.

The terms of the treaty were seen as an extension of the conditions agreed in the Washington Naval Treaty. The agreement is officially termed the Treaty for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armament. Under the Treaty, the standard displacements and gun calibres of submarines were restricted for the first time, thereby putting an end to the 'big-gun' submarine concept.

The British, American and Japanese navies all sought to circumvent the treaty. For example, the "light cruisers" built by all three navies in the 1930s were such in name only. As the London Treaty defined a "light cruiser" as one having a main armament no greater than 6.1 inches (155 mm) calibre, the three major naval powers embarked on building "light cruisers" that were equal in size and effective power to heavy cruisers. These ships made up for their smaller calibre guns by carrying a larger number of them. As these cruisers fell just under the 10,000 ton standard displacement limit set by the treaty, they were theoretically compliant with the restrictions, but only barely

The Old Conference did not work out Geneva Disarmament conference. Apart from naval disarmaments, a reduction in land forces and limits on weapons were also discussed at the conference. Sixty-one nations, including USA, USSR and Germany, came to the conference wanting a reduction in general arms. Some progress was made, but when Hitler came into power in 1933 he took Germany out of the Geneva Conference and the League of Nations, which was questionable but nothing was done about it