Carrier categories spill into battlecruiser limits

Carrier categories could reshape the rest of the treaty system. If navies receive separate quotas for large and light fleet carriers, negotiators may be tempted to create a five-ship battlecruiser category alongside a larger battleship allowance. Hood could set a ceiling near 45,000 tons, while the United States would need room to finish Lexington-class ships because it had no completed battlecruisers. That solution would alter capital-ship construction rather than merely grandfather British carriers. This chain of consequences also demonstrates the method of counterfactual analysis, where one procurement change raises new institutional and diplomatic questions.