KELLOGG-BRIAND PACT: August 27, 1928

KELLOGG-BRIAND PACT
In this treaty, signed on August 27, 1928, the United States, France, Great Britain, Japan, Italy, Belgium, Poland, and Czechoslovakia renounced war as an instrument of national policy.

French foreign minister Aristide Briand first suggested a treaty between the United States and France renouncing war as a method of settling disputes between the two countries. Secretary of State Frank Kellogg was furious because Briand proposed the treaty in a speech made directly to the American people, rather than going through diplomatic channels. If he accepted Briand's offer, he feared it would drag the United States into alliance with France in the event of another European war—which was what Briand had in mind. But if Kellogg declined, groups favoring such a treaty would attack him in Congress and in the press. Support for the treaty came from opposite ends of the political spectrum. For example, Nicholas Murray Butler, the internationalist president of Columbia University, believed a treaty would move America closer to the League of Nations, whereas isolationist senator William E. Borah, a pacifist, simply hoped that the treaty would end war.

Kellogg turned the tables on Briand by picking up an idea of Senator Borah's for a multilateral treaty. Both Kellogg and Briand knew that such a treaty lacked force, but Briand, already a Nobel Peace Prize winner, could hardly ignore public demand for an antiwar treaty. (Kellogg, too, was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1929 for his role in formulating the pact.)

Great celebrations accompanied the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, but diplomats did not take the pledge seriously. In the United States, for example, the next order of business on the Senate floor after ratification was a bill appropriating $274 million to build warships. The treaty is considered a diplomatic failure because a mere fourteen years after it purported to outlaw war, all the signatories had become belligerents in World War II.