The National Council for the Reduction of Armaments was the headquarters for the civic organizations that marshaled American public opinion to support the naval arms reductions at the Washington Naval Arms Reduction Treaty of 1922.
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The National Council for the Reduction of Armaments was the headquarters for the civic organizations that marshaled American public opinion to support the naval arms reductions at the Washington Naval Arms Reduction Treaty of 1922.
The National Council for the Reduction of Armaments was the primary coordinating body for the pro-treaty social forces supporting the Washington Naval Arms Limitation treaty negotiations. This Conference was a result of a call made by the United States' government in July 1921. The conference met in Washington, DC for the purpose of negotiating limits to warship building and to settle diplomatic concerns in the Pacific and in China.
The National Council was composed of civic and religious organizations that were untied to build public support for the goals of the Washington Conference.
The Council worked in collaboration with other collectives to further the goals of the Conference, namely to reduce naval arms expenditures and bring stability to the Pacific.
The 5-power treaty was one of the treaties that were signed at the conference. The delegations at the Conference were from the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France and Italy. The treaty stipulated the ratio of capital warships between the nations represented at the Conference and a ten-year 'holiday' in which building capital ships ws prohibited.
After World War I there was a great deal of revulsion and fear throughout the United States regarding war. The experience of the waste and death from the war created a revulsion against war and the related spending on the military.
Newly elected president, Waren Harding had run as a Republican in 1920. His slogan was 'Return to normalcy.' Among the pressures that motivated Harding was tp reduce spending on the army and navy. At the end of World War I there was an incipient naval arms race between the United States and Great Britain. Senator William Borah (Republican-Idaho), from the floor of the Senate successfully had a resolution asking the President to call for a conference to discuss naval arms reductions. [1] The administration then issued invitations to Great Britain, Japan, France and Italy to negotiate naval arms reductions. Invitations were sent in July 1921. The delegates convened in Washington in November 1921. The discussions persisted through February and resulted in the Four power treaty and the five-power treaties. The former determined the construction of new battleships and battle cruisers.
The National Council for the Reduction of Armaments was formed to support the negotiations in Washington for naval arms reductions. Furthermore, the Council was motivated to reduce the possibility for another war. They advocated for the reduction in government spending on armaments and war preparations. The inspiration fo the formation of the Council was after the publication of a monography from the Council on Foregin Relation entitled: The League of Nations: What is it Good For? This argued that the League of Nations was deficient in regards to disarmament. The National Council for the Limitation of Armaments was founded after a meeting held on 8 September 1921, called by the Council on Foreign Relations to redress this failure of the League of Nations. Seventeen organizations attended this meeting, these included farmers' organizations, women's groups, Protestant, Catholic and Hebrew organizations, and the Quakers. In addition The National Education Association and the Union Against Militarism. The only labor organization represented was the Women's Trade Union League. [2] The focus was on how to support the upcoming conference in Washington. It was determined that a coalition would act as the headquarters of groups that would support the effort to reduce naval spending. [3]
In October 1921, Frederick Libby was appointed as the Executive Secretary of the National COuncil for the Reduction of Armaments. Libby was born in Richmond, Maine on 24 November 1876 and died in Washington, DC on 30 June 1974. After graduating from Bowdin College he taught locally and at the Philip Exter Academy. In 1919 he was a member of the American Friends Service Committee and the American Red Cross. He went to Europe to provide relief after World War I. He was horrified by the devastation. He was motivated to work for peace for the rest of his life. [4]
The National Council for the Reduction of Armaments coordinated activities among the constituent organizations to support the negotiations in Washington. It also coordinated a speaker's bureau that provided speakers throughout the country to address mass meetings and exhort audiences to support the treaty negotiations. It also acted as a clearing house of literature supporting disarmament and arms production reduction. An important book that the Council promoted was Will Irwin's The Next War(1921). This book argued that if there is another war fought, given the new military technologies that developed in the war (submarines, airplanes and gas), a next war would result in the collapse of civilization. [5]
The National Council organized surveys and petitions to support the naval arms reduction talks in Washington. The Council worked in coordination with allies in the Senate. In addition to Senator Borah they also corresponded with the Senatorial Advisory Committee. This committee was established to gauge public sentiment for the treaty negotiations. By 15 December 1921 this committee had received resolutions and correspondence from12,000,000 people. Overwhelmingly these supported naval arms reductions. [6]
The National Council for the Reduction of Armaments was able to arouse and chanel American public opinion to support the Washington Naval Arms Limitation Treaty. This treaty, known as the 5-power treaty passed the Senate without opposition on 6 February 1922.
Nuclear disarmament is the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons. Its end state can also be a nuclear-weapons-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated. The term denuclearization is also used to describe the process leading to complete nuclear disarmament.
Arms control is a term for international restrictions upon the development, production, stockpiling, proliferation and usage of small arms, conventional weapons, and weapons of mass destruction. Historically, arms control may apply to melee weapons before the invention of firearm. Arms control is typically exercised through the use of diplomacy which seeks to impose such limitations upon consenting participants through international treaties and agreements, although it may also comprise efforts by a nation or group of nations to enforce limitations upon a non-consenting country.
Disarmament is the act of reducing, limiting, or abolishing weapons. Disarmament generally refers to a country's military or specific type of weaponry. Disarmament is often taken to mean total elimination of weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear arms. General and Complete Disarmament was defined by the United Nations General Assembly as the elimination of all WMD, coupled with the “balanced reduction of armed forces and conventional armaments, based on the principle of undiminished security of the parties with a view to promoting or enhancing stability at a lower military level, taking into account the need of all States to protect their security.”
The Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the Five-Power Treaty, was a treaty signed during 1922 among the major Allies of World War I, which agreed to prevent an arms race by limiting naval construction. It was negotiated at the Washington Naval Conference in Washington, D.C. from November 1921 to February 1922 and signed by the governments of the British Empire, United States, France, Italy, and Japan. It limited the construction of battleships, battlecruisers and aircraft carriers by the signatories. The numbers of other categories of warships, including cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, were not limited by the treaty, but those ships were limited to 10,000 tons displacement each.
The London Naval Treaty, officially the Treaty for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armament, was an agreement between the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Italy, and the United States that was signed on 22 April 1930. Seeking to address issues not covered in the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, which had created tonnage limits for each nation's surface warships, the new agreement regulated submarine warfare, further controlled cruisers and destroyers, and limited naval shipbuilding.
START I was a bilateral treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union on the reduction and the limitation of strategic offensive arms. The treaty was signed on 31 July 1991 and entered into force on 5 December 1994. The treaty barred its signatories from deploying more than 6,000 nuclear warheads and a total of 1,600 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and bombers.
The Conference on Disarmament (CD) is a multilateral disarmament forum established by the international community to negotiate arms control and disarmament agreements based at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. The Conference meets annually in three separate sessions in Geneva.
Demilitarisation or demilitarization may mean the reduction of state armed forces; it is the opposite of militarisation in many respects. For instance, the demilitarisation of Northern Ireland entailed the reduction of British security and military apparatuses. Demilitarisation in this sense is usually the result of a peace treaty ending a war or a major conflict. The principle is distinguished from demobilisation, which refers to the drastic voluntary reduction in the size of a victorious army.
The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) is a national nonprofit, nonpartisan Quaker organization. As a 501(c)(4) advocacy organization, FCNL and its network lobby Congress and the administration to promote peace, justice, and environmental stewardship. It was founded in 1943 by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
The Washington Naval Conference was a disarmament conference called by the United States and held in Washington, D.C., from November 12, 1921, to February 6, 1922. It was conducted outside the auspices of the League of Nations. It was attended by nine nations regarding interests in the Pacific Ocean and East Asia. 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.
The Treaties for the Limitation of Naval Armament were numerous accords in the 1920s signed variously by the United States, Great Britain, Japan, Italy and France. The treaties were an outgrowth of the Washington Naval Conference, held by the US in 1921–22.
The Fleet Faction was an informal political faction within the Imperial Japanese Navy active in the 1920s and 1930s. The kantai-ha sought to drastically increase the size of the Imperial Japanese Navy in order to reach force parity with the fleets of the United States Navy and Royal Navy in the Western Pacific Ocean. The group advocated for the kantai kessen, a doctrine specifying a need for larger warships and larger-caliber guns.
The Treaty Faction was an unofficial and informal political faction within the Imperial Japanese Navy in the 1920s–1930s of officers supporting the Washington Naval Treaty.
The Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments, generally known as the Geneva Conference or World Disarmament Conference, was an international conference of states held in Geneva, Switzerland, between February 1932 and November 1934 to accomplish disarmament in accordance with the Covenant of the League of Nations. It was attended by 61 states, most of which were members of the League of Nations, but the USSR and the United States also attended.
A treaty battleship was a battleship built in the 1920s or 1930s under the terms of one of a number of international treaties governing warship construction. Many of these ships played an active role in the Second World War, but few survived long after it.
The League of Nations was established with three main constitutional organs: the Assembly; the Council; the Permanent Secretariat. The two essential wings of the League were the Permanent Court of International Justice and the International Labour Organization.
Pacifism has manifested in the United States in a variety of forms, and in myriad contexts. In general, it exists in contrast to an acceptance of the necessity of war for national defense.
The Nuclear Freeze campaign was a mass movement in the United States during the 1980s to secure an agreement between the U.S. and Soviet governments to halt the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons.
The Helsinki Summit was a private, bilateral meeting between American President George H. W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that took place in Helsinki, Finland on September 9, 1990. Due to the vested interests of both the Soviet Union and the United States in the Gulf Crisis' resolution, August 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was the primary topic of discussion for the leaders during the Helsinki Summit. The concerted efforts at easing American-Soviet tensions in the aftermath of the Cold War was another prominent topic, among other notable current events. At the summit's conclusion, Presidents Bush and Gorbachev produced a document of joint statements that illuminated the areas in which the leaders had committed to aligning their foreign policy goals. The summit was followed by a press conference wherein members of the media questioned Presidents Bush and Gorbachev about the content of their meeting and the justifications for their joint statements.
The history of U.S. foreign policy from 1913–1933 covers the foreign policy of the United States during World War I and much of the Interwar period. The administrations of Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover successively handled U.S. foreign policy during this period.
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