British bargaining leverage at Washington

This counterfactual stays mainly within the treaty's first eight years because later agreements would compound every change. Its starting political move is a British refusal to join unless the Dominions keep some form of flagship entitlement. Divisions among the American presidency, Senate, Democrats, and Republicans might have given British negotiators room to manipulate the stakes. The British government did not choose that confrontation historically, and financial limits would still constrain what followed. A separate battlecruiser category would depend on diplomatic leverage as well as workable tonnage arithmetic.