The Kellogg-Briand Pact was an agreement signed in August 1928 by 63 countries, which all promised, after the horrors of the First World War (1914 to 18), to regard war as an illegal instrument of national policy. Unfortunately, this sentiment for peace and cooperation was not upheld by all future leaders, and the pact was broken several times through the 1930s by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan, to name just a few. Acts of aggression by totalitarian states once more led the world down the pitiless path to war in 1939 when the Second World War broke out.

Despite the agreement's omission of just what would happen to those states that waged war and the absence of a lasting peace, the Kellogg-Briand Pact at least established a legal framework that has helped international bodies deal with the consequences of war, such as apportioning blame and imposing punishments, such as reparations.

The Kellogg-Briand Pact was named after Frank B. Kellogg (1856 to 1937), then the United States' secretary of state, who was also famous as the millionaire owner of the Kellogg brand, and Aristide Briand (1862 to 1932), the French statesman who had been prime minister during WWI and who was now foreign minister. It is Briand who is credited with being the original instigator of the pact based on his beautifully simple idea that conducting war should be unlawful. It was Kellogg who led the negotiations to make this happen, his legal training no doubt coming in useful to get everyone on board with the precise wording of the peace pact.

The pact was signed in Paris on 27 August 1928 by 15 powers, who were eventually joined by others over the next few years, so that by 1929, the total signee states reached 63, which was, at that time, almost all the recognised countries in the world (considering many of today's independent states were then part of empires). All of the major powers, such as the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, Japan, and Germany, signed the pact, which promised that henceforth warfare would be renounced as a method of foreign policy. Other states that signed included China, Ethiopia, Hungary, Turkey, Spain, and Panama. The seven states that did not sign the pact were: Argentina, Bolivia, El Salvador, Nepal, San Marino, Uruguay, and Yemen.

The pact was, of course, hugely ambitious considering that sustained periods of peace between different nations have been few and far between in humanity's history. The destruction of lives and property during World War I inspired a number of diplomatic initiatives to prevent such a catastrophe ever happening again, such as the 1925 Locarno Pact, which guaranteed the new European borders after WWI, and the international conference on naval disarmament held in Geneva in 1927. The Kellogg-Briand Pact, however, was by far the most ambitious project for peace yet made.

The essential point of the Kellogg-Briand Pact was that it rejected "war as an instrument of national policy" and stated that any future international disputes between the signees should be settled by "pacific means." It was agreed by the signees that agreeing to the pact did not mean they abandoned the right to legitimate national self-defence against an aggressor. The signed document was made public. The precise wording of the preamble to the agreement was as follows.

Deeply sensible of their solemn duty to promote the welfare of mankind;

Persuaded that the time has come when a frank renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy should be made to the end that the peaceful and friendly relations now existing between their peoples may be perpetuated;

Convinced that all changes in their relations with one another should be sought only by pacific means and be the result of a peaceful and orderly process, and that any signatory Power which shall hereafter seek to promote its national interests by resort to war should be denied the benefits furnished by this Treaty;

Hopeful that, encouraged by their example, all the other nations of the world will join in this humane endeavor and by adhering to the present Treaty as soon as it comes into force bring their peoples within the scope of its beneficent provisions, thus uniting the civilized nations of the world in a common renunciation of war as an instrument of their national policy.

The pact itself contained three articles:

ARTICLE I
The High Contracting Parties solemnly declare in the names of their respective peoples 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.

ARTICLE II
The High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.

ARTICLE III
The present Treaty shall be ratified by the High Contracting Parties named in the Preamble in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements, and shall take effect as between them as soon as all their several instruments of ratification shall have been deposited at Washington.

This Treaty shall, when it has come into effect as prescribed in the preceding paragraph, remain open as long as may be necessary for adherence by all the other Powers of the world. Every instrument evidencing the adherence of a Power shall be deposited at Washington and the Treaty shall immediately upon such deposit become effective, as between the Power thus adhering and the other Powers parties hereto.
(www.avalon.law.yale.edu)

In 1929, Kellogg received the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in getting the pact signed (Briand had already received the prize back in 1926 for his work with the Locarno Pact). Alas, the optimism would soon be shattered. The pact itself contained certain get-out clauses for would-be aggressors, such as leaving the definition of legitimate defence rather open to interpretation and even, in theory, permitting the idea that war could be waged to protect national interests.

'War' itself was not expressly defined (for example, was it when a state formally declared war or merely acted as if it were at war with another state?). This meant that some states, by their own interpretation of events, could state they were not actually conducting war (when they clearly were for everyone else). This was most frequently done by declaring aggressive military acts as necessary actions of self-defence (hence the frequent use of 'false flag' operations or the excuse that a minority group was somewhere being persecuted). Neither was the threat of aggression (as opposed to actual aggressive acts) considered in the pact. Another striking omission of the whole agreement was just what would happen to any state that broke the pact and who would enforce any such punishment. Questions never answered.

With hindsight, the desire to oblige states not to indulge in war simply by signing a document seems naive, and the reality was that new authoritarian leaders through the 1930s, who considered (rightly or wrongly) their countries disadvantaged in regard to others, began to push more aggressively for control of territory and resources, often to reclaim what they had lost after the Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles which had formally concluded WWI. There was, too, disagreement amongst the more peacefully inclined democratic states over disarmament measures. The World Disarmament Conference, held in 1932 and attended by 66 nations, again promised much, but few states could agree on the precise limitations and which weapons should be included in such restrictions.

The United States pursued a policy of isolationism after WWI, and so international institutions that were designed to promote peace, such as the League of Nations, were seriously weakened in how they could respond to international acts of aggression. The Kellogg-Briand Pact, it had been hoped, might have encouraged the United States to intervene in any action that breached the pact, but this did not happen.

Neither were other powers, such as Britain and France, always ready to sacrifice their own immediate national interests to ensure lasting peace, even against each other as possessors of rival empires. As the historian A. J. P. Taylor noted: "American policy would have mattered less if the European Great Powers had been of one mind" (57). The once-clear postwar mood of 'never again' had faded by the 1930s as states began to consider how best to protect themselves in an increasingly hostile world.

Aggressive leaders like Benito Mussolini (1883 to 1945) in Fascist Italy and Adolf Hitler (1889 to 1945) in Nazi Germany, and the militarist government in Japan were all determined to take by force the territory and resources they desired. In 1931, Japan occupied Manchuria, in 1935, Mussolini invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia), and in 1936, Hitler occupied the demilitarised Rhineland, the first of a sequence of invasions of other European states. After a period of appeasement, which sought to avoid war at almost any cost, Britain and France finally decided to stop the aggressors. Neither Kellogg nor Briand lived to see the world once more descend into chaos when the Second World War began following the invasion of Poland in 1939 by Nazi Germany.

Despite the horrific interruption to world peace that was WWII, and the many wars around the world which have blighted humanity ever since, the Kellogg-Briand Pact remains, at least in theory, in force for all those states that signed it. The pact had, at least, established that war was illegal, and the consequence of that position has allowed prosecutors following any conflict to apportion blame to one or more states for starting the war and so make them liable to, for example, compensation payable to a victim state or states. In short, the Kellogg-Briand Pact did not stop wars, but it did, along with several other international treaties and agreements, establish a legal framework by which international relations could, in some way, be governed by such international bodies as the League of Nations, the United Nations, and various international courts.