Dutch rearmament as a strategic warning sign

The counterfactual introduces a possible Dutch battlecruiser and then widens into an observation about late Dutch rearmament. The Netherlands considered battleships before the First World War and battlecruisers before the Second. The joke treats large procurement programs as a late warning that danger is already close, and British governments reacted only slightly earlier. The pattern is humorous and should not be read as a causal rule. The underlying historical question is why states delay expensive force modernization until the international situation has already worsened.