How the verdict on the naval treaties changed

Naval arms control cannot be judged solely through Britain's later decline. Accounts written soon after the Second World War often presented Britain as the treaty system's principal beneficiary, while interpretations from the Suez era through the late twentieth century more often cast the United States as the winner. More recent analysis again emphasizes the advantages Britain secured at the negotiating table. Britain's smaller boom after the First World War is also offered as an explanation for its comparatively smaller Depression downturn. The longer-term outcome was transformed by the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the abrupt end of wartime financial arrangements, so negotiating success did not guarantee strategic or economic success decades later.