Arms-control agreements do not all receive the same judgement here. The Washington treaty appears less structurally damaging than the later London treaties, although its limits may also have been unnecessary. A different Washington-era path might have exhausted Japan's finances sooner and perhaps reduced Chinese deaths in the 1930s. That possible outcome remains explicitly speculative. The distinction sets the scope of the treaty critique and keeps the counterfactual separate from settled history.
Notable Point · 29:00-29:43
Washington and London treaties were not equivalent
The critique treats Washington-era capital-ship limits as less damaging than the prescriptive London system and adds a counterfactual about Japanese naval spending.