Kellogg-Briand Pact

The Kellogg-Briand Pact, formally the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy, was signed in Paris on 27 August 1928. It is named after its two principal architects: US Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand. Briand had initially proposed a bilateral Franco-American non-aggression agreement in 1927; Kellogg countered with a multilateral framework, which broadened the pact's reach.

The treaty is remarkably short. Its two operative articles commit parties to (1) condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies and renounce it as an instrument of national policy, and (2) settle all disputes "of whatever nature or of whatever origin" by pacific means. It contained no enforcement mechanism, no definition of "war," and no sanctions for breach. Signatories preserved an implicit right of self-defense, acknowledged in diplomatic correspondence accompanying ratification.

Originally signed by 15 states — including France, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Japan — the pact eventually attracted adherence from most independent states of the era. It entered into force on 24 July 1929.

In practice, the pact failed to prevent the Japanese invasion of Manchuria (1931), the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935), or the Second World War. Critics from E. H. Carr onward have used it as the canonical example of toothless interwar legalism. Yet its legal legacy is substantial: it underpinned the Stimson Doctrine of non-recognition of territorial gains by force, was cited in the indictments at the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals as evidence that aggressive war was already illegal, and is a direct antecedent of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force. Scholars Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro argue in The Internationalists (2017) that the pact marked a genuine turning point in the international legal order.