Interwar peace assumptions eroded military readiness

After the First World War, the idea that the Great War had ended major conflict made sustained armament capacity politically difficult to defend. That optimism sat uneasily beside fighting in China, the Russian Civil War, colonial expansion, dictatorships, and mass violence. Treaty commitments reinforced the belief that governments neither needed nor were permitted to keep buying at wartime levels. The resulting peace dividend could dismantle capabilities long before a later government understood the cost of restoring them.