Why did Britain keep pressing to downsize battleships in the naval treaties?
Short answerCanal and cost constraints mattered, while battleship negotiations also diverted attention from the cruisers Britain considered more useful.
NotesA viewer suggests that naval treaties constrained an otherwise larger arms race but criticizes Britain's repeated pressure to downsize battleships. The response jokes that Britain did not want to enlarge the Suez Canal, contrasting that constraint with American experience at Panama. It then adds the strategic point that repeated battleship negotiations drew attention away from what Britain was doing with cruisers. In this account, cruisers were often more useful to the Royal Navy's global tasks, so the treaty debate served practical fleet priorities as well as economy.