As the guns fell silent at the end of the First World War, the remaining global powers sat together to resolve issues through negotiation rather than suspicion and war. New organizations like the League of Nations sprung up, hoping to bring some order to the perpetual chaos of global affairs. In this new zeitgeist of compromise, the leaders of the remaining world naval powers sat down and discussed their ships. Although spared from the horrors of the trenches and having played a small role in the war, massive fleets were still required by global powers to maintain their colonies, secure trade, and fight one another should the need arise. In order to prevent a new naval arms race that most of the world couldn’t, or didn’t want to, pay for, representatives from the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan sat down in Washington at the end of 1921 to discuss mutual limitations on their navies. With the Imperial German High Seas Fleet scuttled at the bottom of Scapa Flow, and the Russians locked in a Civil War, these five powers represented the largest seagoing nations in the world. Also in attendance were Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, and China. (see: Big Ten West)

Immediately the debate over how to limit a naval arms race began, with each nation focused on their individual goals. Ironically, the United States had bugged the other delegations (especially the Japanese) and gained valuable insight on their negotiating positions and minimum acceptable outcomes.

The conference agreed to limit both the size and number of capital ships (battleships and aircraft carriers) and limited the tonnage and armament size of individual cruisers and destroyers. An agreement designed to avoid war had been reached by the politicians, and now it fell to the Naval Staffs of the world to ensure compliance with the treaty.

After a few years of nominally following the agreement, each nation almost uniformly began to skirt the new rules. Old ships were indeed taken apart under the conditions of the treaty (including BB27- USS Michigan), but this was a cost and personnel savings ploy to focus on newer ships. Navies still maintained the pretense of compliance, but creatively found ways to skirt the rules. Either through lying about a ship’s total displacement, or creating gun turrets in which smaller treaty compliant guns could easily be swapped with larger non compliant guns, the initial violations were minor, but slowly grew with each failure of enforcement. The enforcement failed because there was no real mechanism to enforce the rules. Nations could protest, but there was no legal recourse or agreements in place to arbitrate those disputes. Ultimately the French, Italian, and Japanese began openly defying the treaty, before Japan withdrew entirely in 1934.

RIP USS Michigan

 

The treaty however wasn’t without major impacts on the course of the war to follow. Navies were allowed to turn over-limit battleships into aircraft carriers, and the Japanese took full advantage of this outside the box thinking, converting a battle cruiser and a battleship then under construction into the aircraft carriers Akagi and Kaga. Both would lead the famed Kido Butai as it terrorized both the Pacific and Indian Oceans in a campaign of terror from Pearl Harbor to the shores of India before both were sunk at Midway.  

Kaga being converted

Somewhat ironically, despite their underhanded negotiations, the one nation that obeyed the treaty the longest was the United States. Obeying the terms of the treaty meant not reinforcing bases in the Western Pacific, which made them easy prey for the modernized and expanded Imperial Japanese Navy. Strategic jewels of the Pacific collapsed like dominoes, with the American presence in the theater no match for the Japanese. Only as the bombs and torpedoes were being loaded onto the Akagi and Kaga for their voyage to Pearl Harbor did the United States begin to try to catch up to their new enemy.

Because we are all nerds and love charts

Usually this space is dedicated to what happens during the game. Individual tactical or strategic decisions, or individual feats on heroics or learning (see my being the first to stan Kalel Mullings). This week is different. This week we reflect on the ways wars are impacted far from the battlefields and the young men who decide them. How narratives are driven and created, and a sense of “fair play” is really just a thin veneer covering up a relentless desire to win at all costs.

Like the individual negotiations and espionage of the Washington Naval Conference, much is unknown about the cloak and dagger intricacies of both Michigan's "vast network of spies", the role Ohio State may or may not have played in investigating Michigan, and what sign stealing and in person scouting (and collusion) look like as a whole in college football. What is known, and can not be argued is that the mechanisms of enforcement are woefully inadequate to their primary responsibility: regulating the sport and ensuring adherence to the agreed upon rules.

Violation after violation (including FBI investigations) flowed through the NCAA’s door, yet no real action was taken and those that would bend the rules were pushed towards those who would break them outright. That this is the case throughout most of the government (cough, SEC, the stock one not the football one) is a story for another article in another forum, however our pitiful lack of enforcement of rules is only matched by our abhorrent ability to ensure only necessary rules are in place.

The past 48 hours in college football has done nothing if not reveal the hypocrisy inherent in the system. Coaches screaming about “competitive advantage” were found to have hand delivered advanced scouting to another team, and likely more, in order to damage their conference mates. It is a perfect analogy one century later to the Italians complaining about the French Navy’s new Richelieu-class while they were secretly lying about the displacement of their own Littorio-class battleships.

 

In the end, no one will remember this “scandal” much like no one seriously talks about “deflate gate” or “spygate”, the “immaculate reception” or “the hand of god” because on field results matter. Like on the battlefield, what happens on the football field is really all that will matter outside the current drama of the day. A generation from now only the nerdiest of football nerds will even remember the great “in person scouting panic” of 2023, much like only nerds (and maybe Craig Ross who was probably there) remember the Washington Naval Conference’s ratification in 1923.

Beat Penn State, Beat Maryland, Beat Ohio State, and schedule Rutgers again and beat them again. That is all that matters.

Not the IJN Yamato, that's the OSS (Ohio State Ship) Ryan Day