Nations Outlaw War: Kellogg-Briand Pact Signed

Fifteen nations signed a document in Paris on August 27, 1928, formally renouncing war as an instrument of national policy. The Kellogg-Briand Pact, named for U.S. Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, was hailed as a breakthrough for international peace. Within eleven years, nearly every signatory would be engulfed in the most destructive war in human history. The pact originated as a French diplomatic maneuver. Briand proposed a bilateral treaty with the United States in 1927, primarily to lock America into a commitment that would prevent it from going to war against France. Kellogg, initially lukewarm, recognized the political appeal of a grander gesture and countered by proposing that all nations be invited to join. Briand could hardly refuse without appearing to oppose peace. The resulting multilateral agreement was simple: signatory nations agreed to settle all disputes by peaceful means and renounced war as a tool of policy. Ultimately, 61 nations signed. The pact contained no enforcement mechanism, no definition of what constituted defensive versus offensive war, and no penalty for violation. Critics noted these shortcomings immediately. Senator Carter Glass of Virginia remarked that it was "worth no more than the paper it was written on." Kellogg and Briand both received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts, but the pact did nothing to prevent Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Italy's conquest of Ethiopia in 1935, or Germany's serial aggressions leading to World War II. Yet dismissing the pact as naive idealism misses its lasting legal significance. The Kellogg-Briand Pact provided the legal foundation for the Nuremberg Trials, where Nazi leaders were convicted of crimes against peace, specifically the planning and waging of aggressive war. The United Nations Charter's prohibition on the use of force between states draws directly from the pact's principles. The idea that aggressive war is illegal under international law, now so embedded in global governance that it seems obvious, was a radical innovation in 1928. The pact failed to prevent war, but it created the legal framework that made aggressive war a crime.