Disarmament at Fault?

British, French, and US leaders were indeed ill prepared and unwilling to confront fascist aggression in the 1930s, but their pusillanimity was not the result of any weakness in naval armament. Britain and the United States remained well ahead of Germany in naval capability before and during World War II. A general disarmament agreement as envisioned in 1933 might have constrained the German military build-up. While it is unlikely that Hitler would have accepted restraints on his military ambitions, the reluctance of the Western powers made it easier for him to walk out and begin the process of militarization. The decisions to accommodate fascist aggression and delay rearmament were made by government leaders, not by peace activists. Pacifist groups certainly had their faults, as noted in the previous chapter. They held on too long to the hope that the League of Nations could be relied upon to protect the peace, and that Hitler could be placated. The limitations of peace advocacy during the interwar era were many, but working for disarmament was not one of them. It is a distortion of history to blame the outbreak of World War II on the movement for disarmament.

A more legitimate criticism is that peace advocates placed too much faith in disarmament as a means of preventing war. The theory that blamed World War I primarily on the “merchants of death” was incomplete. Excessive military expenditure and an overabundance of arms were indeed factors in making armed conflict more likely and deadly, but they were not the only or the principal causes of war. The lesson of the interwar disarmament process is not that disarmament brings weakness, but that disarmament by itself is insufficient to guarantee peace. An exclusive emphasis on levels of weaponry is not a sufficient strategy for preventing war.

As Hans Morgenthau famously observed, “[people] do not fight because they have arms. They have arms because they deem it necessary to fight.” The prevention of war requires more than merely lowering armament levels. The competition for arms is a function of the competition for power, wrote Morgenthau, and “a mutually satisfactory settlement of the power contest is a precondition for disarmament.” Australian political scientist Hedley Bull wrote that arms races are both a cause and a consequence of international tension. “The fact that the arms race contributes to political tension does not diminish the difficulty that it cannot be brought to an end without the ending of this tension.” The arms race is a symptom of a deeper malady, and it can be cured only by treating the underlying disease.

Yet disarmament efforts can help to address those underlying causes of war by providing a framework for political bargaining and tension reduction. The naval disarmament treaties established patterns of mutual agreement and communication among the great powers that for more than a decade restrained excessive arms spending and improved mutual understanding on military security issues. The problem with the disarmament process, peace advocates argued, was not that it went too far but that it did not go far enough. Disarmament efforts in the interwar era showed that mutual arms limitation can reduce the levels of weaponry that might serve as a temptation for political leaders to wage war. The naval disarmament agreements temporarily tamed military rivalries and opened the door to improved interstate cooperation. This result was also evident during the nuclear era. Periods of significant arms limitation were associated with détente in the 1970s and the end of the cold war in the late 1980s. The advantages of disarmament can be ephemeral, however, and are easily subverted when major states seek unilateral advantage. Disarmament can make a meaningful contribution to peace but only if it is sustained and accompanied by other peacemaking efforts.

The Collapse of Disarmament