Right after World War I, the Japanese committed themselves to an economically suicidal course of capital warship building that would have given them an enormous fleet of battleships in the six to ten years before the program bankrupted the country.
The Washington Naval conference cooled off their ship-building ardor for a decade, but the Japanese military felt humiliated by being forced to accept a ratio of 5-5-3 compared to the US and Britain in terms of capital ships. Let's say that something derails Japanese agreement to the terms of the conference. Maybe they figure out that the US is reading their codes and react negatively to that. They go about building madly and the US and Britain are forced to follow suit.
What happens next?
The Washington Naval conference cooled off their ship-building ardor for a decade, but the Japanese military felt humiliated by being forced to accept a ratio of 5-5-3 compared to the US and Britain in terms of capital ships. Let's say that something derails Japanese agreement to the terms of the conference. Maybe they figure out that the US is reading their codes and react negatively to that. They go about building madly and the US and Britain are forced to follow suit.
What happens next?