Why maximal treaty demands risked alienating Japan

Governments at Washington pursued the best immediate deal they could obtain, with too little regard for whether it would endure. A warning attributed to John Maynard Keynes about the Treaty of Versailles supplies the comparison: maximizing a settlement can create conditions for another war. In this interpretation, Versailles threatened another European conflict, while the Washington and London naval treaties helped make a future war global. Japan's imperial expansion already made confrontation likely, but a less hostile settlement could have reduced that risk and the attraction of cooperation with Germany. Japan had cleared German possessions in East Asia, served in the Mediterranean, and offered a squadron for the Grand Fleet. Its wartime contribution began earlier than America's, yet its delegates encountered restrictions resembling those imposed on a defeated power. The American battleship deployment is assessed here chiefly as a matter of national status, since the Grand Fleet had no pressing need for the additional ships.