In the years immediately following the end of the Great War, the United States, Britain, and Japan all launched huge naval construction programs. All three countries decided that a new naval arms race would be ill-advised, and so convened the Washington Naval Conference to discuss arms limitations, which produced the Washington Naval Treaty, signed in February 1922. Under the terms of Article II of the treaty, "Michigan" and her sister "South Carolina" were to be scrapped. "Michigan" put to sea for the last time on 31 August, bound for the breaker's yard in Philadelphia. She arrived there on 1 September and was decommissioned on 11 February 1923. She was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 10 November and broken up for scrap the following year.