such second-tier naval powers as France and Italy. Although the Washington treaty
system may have helped head off an impending Anglo-American naval competition, even
though that was improbable on financial grounds, it was not particularly sensible for the
world’s two great maritime democracies to devote extensive effort to their mutual naval
disarmament. As an influence upon strategic history, the Washington–London naval
disarmament regime of the 1920s and 1930s has been controversial from the time it was
signed in 1922 until the present day. Appraised overall, it conceded naval superiority to
Japan in East Asian waters. As always is the case with disarmament and arms control,
the treaties were negotiable in a politically permissive context, which is to say in 1921–2,
and just barely in 1930. But they collapsed when the political context grew threatening.
The relative significance of sea power depends critically upon the strategic importance
of leading sea powers. Maritime anxiety had a debilitating effect upon British statecraft
in the 1930s, as if ‘air panic’ were not enough, while American foreign and strategic
policy worried more about Japanese misbehaviour than it did German. By geopolitical
and geostrategic decree, the military context for American and Japanese hostility had to
be maritime. If, one day, Japan’s forward moves in East Asia, especially in China, were
to be arrested and reversed, the only plausible agent of strategic discipline would have
to be the US Navy.
Conclusion
One can claim that there was a mechanization RMA in the interwar decades. That RMA
carried the promise of a radical change in both land and air warfare. In addition, though
this was not perceived so clearly at the time, the air power version of the RMA contained
deadly threats both to surface vessels of all kinds and to the primacy of the battleship and
the ‘gun line’ in main battle fleets.
The strategic history of the 1930s was not especially revealing of military trends.
In Spain, Germany’s Condor Legion achieved international notoriety with its destruction
of Guernica, in particular, but its contribution to the Nationalist victory was modest.
Observing the war in Spain, many experts were also convinced that modern anti-tank
guns could duel successfully with tanks. Mussolini’s air force, which performed poorly
in Spain, had been rather more impressive as an aid to the ground forces that invaded
Abyssinia in 1936. But what could be learnt from that episode?
Given the high financial cost of mechanization, and the deep uncertainties about what
should be bought, for what purpose and when, it is appropriate to have some sympathy
for the defence and military planners of the period. They could not know when war would
come. With the exception of the Soviet Union after the military purge, every great power
made its investment decisions on air power and mechanized ground forces for reasons
that made sense locally. Strategic and military culture, the distinctive strategic context
for each state and, as always, resource constraints collectively ensured that one size in
doctrine and procurement would not fit all demands. So, the mechanization RMA, on
land and in the air, was effected differently from country to country.
With only two major exceptions, there was no universally correct doctrine for land
warfare with armoured fighting vehicles, or for the most effective use of air power.
The two exceptions were, first, the necessity for a combined-arms approach to combat
and, second, the universal truth that air power could not be applied effectively until air
The mechanization of war 121