The Currents of War: A New History of American-Japanese Relations, 1899-1941

2: The Rise and Fall of the Washington Conference System

Chapter 2 The Rise and Fall of the Washington Conference System If there is a genuine feeling of good-fellowship and mutual trust [such as that created by the Washington Conference], nothing very serious can go wrong. —Sir Miles Lampson (May 1922) I really fear the Japanese have got themselves inextricably entangled in a situation that will in the end suffocate and ruin them. —John Van Antwerp MacMurray (June 1933) Warren G. Harding is not remembered as a particularly brave or daring man. But, at the outset of his presidency, the United States embarked on a bold plan to contain Japanese expansion and protect the Open Door. The 1921– 1922 Washington Conference brought representatives of the major powers to the nation’s capital for four months of talks designed to end the ongoing Anglo-American-Japanese naval building program and resolve differences over the future of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the Open Door, and Shantung Province. The Washington Conference inaugurated the most successful period in America’s long containment of Japan, and, in its aftermath, Japanese expansion on the Asian mainland receded, most notably in Siberia, northern Sakhalin, and Shantung. The success of American containment, however, did not bring about a fundamental change in Japanese-American relations. Instead, Americans’ deep affection for and sense of mission in China, which had developed during the Progressive Era, increased. Tokyo’s pro-Western policies and cooperative diplomacy could not arrest the precipitous decline in relations, soften American attitudes, or change US policy. In Japan, meanwhile, the Washington Conference undermined the very moderates who, since 1905, had ensured containment’s success and by doing so acted as a catalyst to militarists and ultranationalists. Within a decade of Hughes’s invitation, extremists assassinated three prime ministers, while the 50 The Currents of War military’s penchant for unilateral action increased exponentially, most notably in Manchuria. At the start of the Washington Conference, civilian moderates firmly controlled the Japanese government. A decade later, the military held sway at home and in their puppet state of Manchukuo. Disenchantment with the conference fueled extremism, but so too did events in China, where long-simmering nationalism undermined both the Open Door and the multinational cooperation on which it rested. Antiforeignism in China, which often manifested itself in strikes, boycotts, and sometimes violence, further undermined Japanese moderates and emboldened ultranationalists, who called for resolute, unilateral action. The Washington Conference and the New Far Eastern Order In the aftermath of World War I, the Far Eastern balance of power lay shattered . The Chinese Revolution, which had begun with such promise in 1911, had devolved, first into a dictatorship, then into warlordism and chaos. Yuan Shikai, the general turned provisional president, betrayed the revolution when, following his drubbing in nationwide elections, he outlawed the Kuomintang, muzzled the parliament, and provoked a revolt in the south that his army quickly crushed. In 1915, at the urging of his American constitutional adviser, Yuan prepared to name himself emperor but abandoned the idea the very next year following nationwide opposition. With his death in June 1916, central authority in China collapsed, and the nation sank into more than a decade of warlord rule.1 Neither Britain nor France, exhausted and traumatized by war, could offer China much protection, and Russia, the traditional counterweight to Japanese expansion in Asia, still suffered from the ravages of defeat, revolution , and civil war. Only the United States could fill the void created by war and revolution, and in November 1921, with the opening of the Washington Conference, Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes acted to protect both China and the Open Door. While Hughes undeniably determined the course of the conference, the impetus for the talks came not from the State Department but rather from the US Senate and Idaho’s William Borah. Borah, who supported disarmament and opposed American membership in the League of Nations, proposed an Anglo-American-Japanese naval disarmament conference in order to weaken support for the Versailles Treaty. The senator believed that, when London and Tokyo balked at holding talks, which he fully expected them to do, resistance to American membership in the league The Rise and Fall of the Washington Conference System 51 would grow. In May 1921, the Senate overwhelmingly approved Borah’s resolution , and the Harding administration, which initially refused to support this legislative foray into the executive domain, bowed to overwhelming congressional and public support for disarmament and...