Washington Naval Conference

The Washington Naval Conference (or the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armament) was a disarmament conference called by the United States and held in Washington, D.C., from November 12, 1921, to February 6, 1922.^[1][2] It was conducted outside the auspices of the League of Nations. It was attended by nine nations (the United States, Japan, China, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal)^[3][4] regarding interests in the Pacific Ocean and East Asia.^[1] Germany was not invited to the conference, as restrictions on its navy had already been set in the Versailles Treaty. Soviet Russia was also not invited to the conference. It was the first arms control conference in history, and is still studied by political scientists as a model for a successful disarmament movement.

Held at Memorial Continental Hall, in Downtown Washington,^[5] it resulted in three major treaties: Four-Power Treaty, Five-Power Treaty (more commonly known as the Washington Naval Treaty), the Nine-Power Treaty, and a number of smaller agreements. These treaties preserved the peace during the 1920s but were not renewed in the increasingly hostile world of the Great Depression.