Background
In February 1927, President Calvin Coolidge issued a call to the Big Five Powers to meet in Geneva to confront the issue of naval rivalries, as a result of discussions about naval arms limitations at League of Nations disarmament meetings. Britain and Japan accepted the invitation, but France and Italy (the other nations which had signed the Washington Treaty) declined.
The Washington Treaty had defined a ratio of 5:5:3 in the strength of capital ships (battleships and battlecruisers) between the USA, Britain and Japan. The USA sought to use the Geneva conference to extend this ratio to smaller craft, allowing both Britain and themselves cruisers with a total displacement of 300,000 tons, with the Japanese allowed 180,000 tons. At the same time, the USA wanted to avoid further restrictions on the size of individual ships.
Read more about this topic: Geneva Naval Conference
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