ABSTRACT
The clearest manifestation of the dangers considered by many to be inherent in the breakdown of the Cold War bipolar balance of power has been the strain put on global arms control agreements by the new alignment. The balance of power has been explicitly recognized in multilateral treaties among the great military powers going back to the 1920s, but was most institutionalized into the relations of the two Cold War nuclear superpowers, despite the level of hostility that existed between them. Post-First World War Idealism spawned an attempt to outlaw the recourse to war altogether in the 1928 General Treaty for the Renunciation of War (Kellogg-Briand Pact) but this period also witnessed the birth of more Realist-minded arms control agreements between the great powers. The Washington Conference of 1922 sought to avoid the sort of tension created by the spiralling of the ‘naval race’ between Great Britain and Germany which contributed to the Great War by setting legal parameters for the legitimate build-up of naval power. Explicit recognition of the importance of the balance of power, even in an age of apparent collective security, was evident in the terms of the conference which limited the world’s main naval powers not in absolute terms but relative to each other. The five major naval powers (Germany was by now severely militarily restrained by the terms of the Versailles Treaty) agreed to limit their military naval development relative to each other according to the following numerical ratios UK (5), USA (5), France (3), Japan (1.75) and Italy (1.75).
