Foreign responses to a 9.2-inch post-Hawkins cruiser

How would other navies respond to a planned 12,000-to-13,000-ton post-Hawkins cruiser with eight 9.2-inch guns?

Japan would likely explore even larger cruiser guns, Italy might build a competitor, France would study one despite weak finances, and the U.S. Navy could design a response that Congress might not fund.

The question specifies eight 9.2-inch guns and a turret and superstructure arrangement tested on HMS Enterprise, while the answer expects displacement to rise toward 14,500 tons. In the panel's scenario, an American response might remain a theoretical design without congressional funding. France and Italy were already considering large cruisers with large guns, but Italy's prospects of building a competitor are distinguished from France's difficulty funding its early-1920s plans. Germany would remain constrained by the Treaty of Versailles. Japan might instead test how far the cruiser category could be stretched, with 12-inch guns offered as a possible response.