Kellogg-Briand Pact
KELLOGG-BRIAND PACT
KELLOGG-BRIAND PACT (also called the Pact of Paris), signed 27 August 1928 by 15 nations, reflected the movement to outlaw war to prevent a recurrence of the carnage of World War I. French foreign minister Aristide Briand initially proposed a bilateral treaty renouncing war as a method of settling disputes between France and the United States and drawing the United States into its defensive system against Germany. U.S. support for the pact came from both ends of the political spectrum. Interventionists thought it would lead to U.S. acceptance of the League of Nations; isolationists and peace groups hoped it would end war. Charles Lindbergh's successful solo crossing of the Atlantic and subsequent landing in Paris in May 1927 also helped boost Briand's efforts. Secretary of State Frank Kellogg, fearful that signing the treaty could drag the United States into a European war on the side of France, expanded the proposed agreement to a multilateral treaty renouncing war. Briand had no choice but to accept the pact, which was moral in tone but lacked force and did not bind America to any European treaty system. Subsequently, when Japan seized Manchuria in 1931, when Italy took over Ethiopia in 1935, and later when Germany began its expansion in the late 1930s, the Pact was exposed as the toothless treaty it had been all along.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ferrell, Robert H. Peace in Their Time: The Origins of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1952.
Charles M.Dobbs