Why interwar navies hesitated over submarine mines

The omission of minelaying from many interwar submarines is striking after the weapon's First World War success. One proposed explanation is that arms-control thinking favored weapons whose targets could be selected at the moment of attack, unlike mines that remained dangerous after deployment. The interpretation connects weapon choice to the period's wider effort to keep escalation under political control. A counterfactual about Dutch capital ships then considers how another treaty power could have disrupted the Washington system's delicate status hierarchy.