Separate Dominion battleships would upset Washington treaty parity

What if Canada, Australia, and India demanded separate capital-ship allowances at Washington?

They might have argued for small independent quotas, but the United States would resist because their ships could raise total Commonwealth strength far above nominal British-American parity.

The United States could threaten to reject ships counted inside Britain's quota, but that position weakened if Canada, Australia, or India asserted genuinely separate security requirements and treaty identities. A compromise might have granted each Dominion a small allowance below the French and Italian level. The strategic difficulty was arithmetic: Britain at parity with the United States plus three-capital-ship Dominion fleets would give the Commonwealth a much larger combined total. American negotiators therefore worried less about Canada alone than about additional ships that could reinforce Britain in a war.