Naval Arms Control: The Backdrop of History
Abstract
The West's reluctance to place general purpose naval forces on the arms control table is based on many considerations-some of them strategic, but one of them historical. In a commonly held view, the United States and Britain fared badly in the naval agreements of the 1920s and 1930s. The Axis powers built up their navies in the 1930s, the democracies languished behind, and Germany and Japan were harder to defeat at sea during World War II precisely because of this unhappy record. It is not only memories of the interwar period's naval agreements that trouble many in the West today. The entire subject seems to leave a bad after taste. This note retraces the larger steps along a path nearly two hundred years long, with emphasis on the twentieth century. Although the subject is naval arms control, the discussion is also about navies, naval power, and the strategy and politics that have woven together aspirations to unfetter sea power on the one hand, and inclinations to constrain that power on the other.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 1990
- Accession Number
- ADA235185
Entities
People
- James L. Lacy
Organizations
- RAND Corporation