Arms control can redirect military competition

In this interpretation, arms limitation must constrain destabilizing competition while leaving states enough bounded room to manage insecurity. The interwar naval treaties displaced competitive pressure without making anxious powers feel safe, unlike the later SALT framework. Japan supplies the clearest example: aggression was joined by fear of weakness, loss of autonomy, and another forced opening by an American fleet. Because the leadership of the 1940s remained close in family memory to that shock, formal treaty parity could intensify strategic anxiety instead of relieving it. Limits on ships did not automatically create political stability.