Some idiotic things came out in the Post World War One days. One of those was the The Washington Naval Treaty. The US and Britten stopped construction of major ships. Gemany was unaffected. The military back in Japan was certainly insulted by their deminished status. After a few years they decideed to build a bigger navy, anyway. The U.S. Navy spent years bickering Battleship vs. Aircraft Carrier and building none but a couple of smaller carriers.The Washington Naval Treaty actually was absolutely brilliant.
The post WWI American public had little appetite for expanding the Navy to compete with the Japanese and thanks to espionage we found out just how little of a fleet the Japanese would accept without walking out
The result was fighting the Pacific War in the 40's instead of the 20's with the huge advantage of swamping the Japanese with more capable aircraft.
You have to consider American ingenuity on that one. At the time of Pearl Harbor, we were four years behind the Japanese. Within a year we were four years ahead of the Japanese.
I don't think anyone standing on Ford Island on Dec 7, 1941 would have believed that, but the USA was given plenty of incentive and invective to make that happen.