Blog #33: Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact

After the Great War, many nations desired peace and came up with multiple methods in order to obtain international peace. Aristide Briand, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, proposed a peace pact that would serve as an agreement between the U.S. and France stating that war would be outlawed between them. As good as Briand's intentions were, President Coolidge and Secretary of State Franklin B. Kellogg did not agree with this. They believed that this would obligate the U.S. to protect France in the future. Instead, they suggested an extension of the pact in which all other nations would be invited to join in outlawing wars of aggression (not including self-defense).
This proposal gained a large amount of support, and the final version of the pact stated that war was outlawed as a national policy and that disputes must be settled by peaceful means. The U.S. Senate ratified the pact in a vote of 85-1 after it established that its participation did not limit its right to defend itself or require it to fight any country that might violate the agreement.
However, it soon became clear that the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact (aka the Pact of Paris) could never be a success. This is because it was too difficult to prevent countries from going to war. For example, in the Mukden Incident, the Japanese invaded Manchuria, but since the U.S. and the League of Nations did not want to go to war, they did not even take action to enforce the pact. Additionally, there was some confusion surrounding the definition of "self-defense." Ultimately, such an agreement was too idealistic to prevent WWII and other conflicts that followed.

-Total # of countries to sign the pact: 62

-What would need to happen to enforce Pact: The involved countries would have to agree never to cause conflict with each other again. They would need to ignore their disagreements and refrain from defending themselves, because that would likely cause a greater conflict or even war.

The Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact is depicted in this cartoon as exactly what it turned out to be. The pact was originally perceived to be the answer to achieving peace in the world, but it blew up right in the world's face when it failed to prevent WWII and other conflicts that followed.

The Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact can be compared to Wilson's 14 Points, because both were extremely idealistic attempts at peace. They were both created with good intentions (Wilson and Coolidge both wanted peace rather than war), yet both failed to prevent future conflict (especially because the 14 Points weren't even passed).