Washington Naval Conference

The Washington Naval Conference also called the Washington Arms Conference or Washington Disarmament Conference, was a military conference called by President Warren G. Harding and held in Washington from 12 November 1921 to 6 February 1922. Conducted outside the auspices of the League of Nations, it was attended by nine nations, the United States, Japan, China, France, Britain, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, and Portugal, having interests in the Pacific Ocean and East Asia. Soviet Russia was not invited to the conference. It was the first international conference held in the United States and the first disarmament conference in history, and as Kaufman, 1990 shows, it is studied by political scientists as a model for a successful disarmament movement.

Held at Memorial Continental Hall in downtown Washington, 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 peace during the 1920s but are also credited with enabling the rise of the Japanese Empire as a naval power leading up to World War II.