The scenario retains the economic shock but substitutes governments more willing to combine defence procurement with a Keynesian response. Stanley Baldwin's Conservatives are presented as somewhat more receptive to County-class cruisers and naval expenditure, while Al Smith replaces Herbert Hoover in the United States. These are bounded political changes intended to support the proposed treaty without removing the period's economic constraints. A marginally greater willingness to spend could sustain a different naval settlement without transforming policy wholesale.
Notable Point · 13:30-15:07
Political premises for a more expansive 1930 settlement
The counterfactual changes election outcomes just enough to make greater British and American naval spending plausible after the Wall Street Crash.