Kellogg-Briand Pact Outlaws War While Preserving Imperial Prerogatives

Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact (officially the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy) in Paris, eventually ratified by 62 nations. The treaty solemnly renounces war as an instrument of national policy, pledging signatories to resolve all disputes through peaceful means. The Senate ratifies the treaty 85-1, with only Senator John J. Blaine of Wisconsin voting against. Yet the treaty contains no enforcement mechanism, permits “defensive” wars, and explicitly exempts colonial enforcement actions, rendering it largely symbolic.

The treaty’s negotiations reveal how legal formalism can serve to legitimate rather than constrain power. The United States insists on reservations preserving its right to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, essentially exempting Western Hemisphere interventions from the treaty’s prohibitions. Britain reserves its right to “certain regions of the world” - meaning colonial territories. The “self-defense” exception proves infinitely elastic, as virtually all wars are characterized by their initiators as defensive. Japan will invoke self-defense when invading Manchuria in 1931; Italy will claim provocation when attacking Ethiopia in 1935; Germany will assert defensive necessity for each subsequent aggression.

The Kellogg-Briand Pact exemplifies the era’s tendency toward legalistic substitutes for substantive policy change. Rather than addressing the structural causes of war - imperial competition, economic rivalry, arms races - the treaty attempts to prohibit war through declaration while preserving all the conditions that generate it. The pact provides moral cover for American isolationism by suggesting international commitments are being honored through signature rather than enforcement. Kellogg receives the Nobel Peace Prize in 1929, even as the treaty’s ineffectuality becomes immediately apparent. The pact demonstrates how international law can serve as performance of order-maintenance rather than constraint on great power behavior.