Kellogg-Briand Pact
27 AUGUST 1928
KELLOGG-BRIAND PACT
World War I left a scar on the psyche of the Western hemisphere. Northern France was left a moonscape of stripped forests, ghost villages, and farmland rendered permanently useless by unexploded ordnance. The 117,000 American fighting men who lost their lives paled in comparison to the 1.2 million British, 1.7 million French, 2.8 million Russian and 3.9 million German and Austrian deaths. Man’s ingenuity in killing reached new bounds with the introduction of flame throwers, poison gas, tanks, submarines, and machine guns. The mud, filth, and rats of the trenches and the carnage of mass infantry charges against fortified positions signaled a devaluation of human life. Surely if mankind were to survive, war had become too repulsive and abhorrent.
Anti-war measures followed. In the aftermath of the “war to end all wars” the map of Europe was redrawn to limit monocratic politicians. Germany was severely punished, economically and militarily. The League of Nations was formed as an alternative for resolving international disputes, and a series of disarmament movements scrapped existing weapons inventories of major nations and scaled-back arms manufacture. The World Court was instituted as a forum for redress, and in 1929 the Geneva Conventions, originally negotiated in 1864, were further strengthened.
Against this backdrop, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aristide Briand, proposed to the United States in 1927 a bilateral agreement to outlaw war between the two nations. President Calvin Coolidge and US Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg were less than enthusiastic, recognizing that bilateral alliances had contributed to the outbreak of WWI in the first place. Kellogg was sent to France rather to negotiate an agreement that would invite all nations of the world to abandon war. Their deliberations culminated in the “General Treaty for the Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy” which went into effect this day. Our US Congress ratified this “Kellogg-Briand Pact” by a vote of 85-1, but only after introducing the first “crack of the door” with a statement that the Pact did not limit our right of self-defense.
Unfortunately, the Pact lacked enforcement provisions. It outlawed only territorial aggression by force, not annexation per se, and was readily subverted with claims of self-defense. Such was the case in 1935 with Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and the 1937 conquest of Manchuria by Japan. On 1 September 1939 German soldiers dressed in Polish uniforms instigated a border incident that gave Hitler a sham under which to invade Poland, initiating a conflict that would dwarf the carnage of the first world war.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 31 AUG 25
Kissinger, Henry. Diplomacy. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1994, pp. 280-81, 374-76, 808-09.
Sweetman, Jack. American Naval History: An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3rd ed. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2002, p. 136.
US Department of State, Office of the Historian website. “The Kellogg-Briand Pact, 1928.” AT: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/kellogg, retrieved 20 July 2015.
Yale University on-line archive. “Kellogg-Briand Pact 1928” [text of], AT: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/kbpact.htm, retrieved 20 July 2015.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: Under the treaty, signatories vowed to, “solemnly declare in the names of their respective people that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.” Signed initially by 15 European and North American nations, subsequently 62 of the world’s sovereignties have joined. The treaty remains in effect today, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina being the most recent signatories in 1994. Though it failed to prevent war, it has provided the legal basis for the category of “crimes against peace” which was applied at Nuremburg and Tokyo in the post-WWII years.