What counts as cheating under a naval treaty?

The discussion separates direct treaty violations from designs that obeyed the wording while defeating the agreement's purpose. The working definitions cover deception or fraud, dishonest rule-breaking, and positioning oneself for an advantage before the expected contest. A false displacement declaration can satisfy several of those definitions at once by concealing extra speed, armor, or firepower and shifting the naval balance. This framework distinguishes falsified tonnage from the legally engineered loopholes that appear elsewhere in the treaty system.