War debt, treaty trust, and an interwar naval arms race

The counterfactual tests whether the United States could have used British war debt to force acceptance of six Lexington-class ships outside the Washington Naval Treaty settlement. Financial leverage did not operate in isolation: London remained the leading financial hub, Britain had imperial and international sources of capital, and an openly coercive call on the debt could provoke default or permanently damage American credit. Breaking the treaty bargain would also release Britain to build the G3 battlecruisers and encourage France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and imperial partners to reconsider their alignments. Gunboat coercion might work against a smaller state, but applying the same logic to another financial and naval great power risked breaking the wider system. Naval arms races, sovereign debt, alliance behavior, and trust in treaties were interdependent policy problems.