as a vehicle for national security goals in Asia. Naval superiority over Japan in the
western Pacific was one thing; superiority over a Japan allied with Great Britain
was quite another.
In 1915, however, Washington did object to Tokyo’s infamous ‘‘Twenty-one
Demands,’’ a Japanese effort to overturn previous international agreements and
gain dominance over Chinese economic and political matters. China leaked the
list, which included a demand that Beijing acknowledge Japanese control of Man-
churia and Shangdong Province, to the United States.^11 Washington thereupon
insisted that Tokyo withdraw the provisions that would have inserted Japanese
advisors throughout the Chinese government. Japan reluctantly agreed, and its
ambassador to the United States, Ishii Kikujiro, signed the 1917 Lansing-Ishii
Agreement with Secretary of State Robert Lansing. While this agreement met
some of Washington’s demands, that success reflected more Tokyo’s uncertainties
than it did an effective U.S. maritime strategy. By 1917, the United States
was fully enmeshed in World War I, and its navy was almost totally involved in
Atlantic and European waters. Had the Wilson administration desired to lend
weight to its demands on Tokyo, it would have had little means for doing so.
The Interwar Period: Arms Limitation and Planning
Imperialist incursions in Asia were a focus of negotiation at the 1921–22
Washington Conference, where most of the remaining Twenty-one Demands
were nominally abolished. This conference is best known for its naval arms
limitation agreements, but it also addressed wider international issues in Asia.
The conference’s most significant diplomatic result was the Nine-Power Treaty,
yet another attempt to equalize foreign depredations of China while acknowledg-
ing existing colonial possessions in the region.^12 Specifically, the signatories—
China, Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Portugal, the
Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy—agreed to make the Open Door policy
international law and to respect China’s territorial integrity.^13 This agreement
was of limited effect, however, since it did not cancel the effects of the 1919
Versailles Treaty.^14 Furthermore, the compactwas rendered moot almost
immediately by Japan’s continued depredations on the Asian mainland.
TheWashingtonConferencealsoproducedtheFive-PowerTreaty,probably
the most significant naval arms limitation agreement in history. The signatories
—the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France, and Italy—agreed not only to
limit the number of battleships in their navies, but also to scrap ships already in
service or under construction. The treaty imposed a 5:5:3 ratio for battleships
and aircraft carriers among the world’s leading sea powers, namely the United
States, Britain, and Japan, while France and Italy grudgingly accepted a ratio of
5:1.75 between their battleship and carrier forces and those of the United States
and Britain. Naval guns with bore sizes exceeding 16 inches (approximately
Clipper Ships to Carriers 53