Briand-Kellogg Pact

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Briand-Kellogg Pact (1928)

The Kellogg-Briand Pact (also Kellogg Pact , Kellogg-Briand Pact or Treaty of Paris is) an international treaty to outlaw the war , in on 27 August 1928. Paris was signed by first eleven nations and, after the US - Foreign Minister Frank Billings Kellogg and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand .

The historical significance of the war prohibition treaty is that it was used after 1945 to legally condemn the war crimes of Germany and Japan .

Emergence

Aristide Briand
Frank B. Kellogg

The Briand-Kellogg Pact was based on an initiative by Briand in April 1927, which took up an idea of ​​the American peace researcher James T. Shotwell. The French Foreign Minister was initially interested in a bilateral war renunciation pact between France and the USA . In the State Department there, it was suspected that, with a view to the Franco-German relationship, he was ultimately concerned with securing a preferential relationship between France and the USA. Not least under pressure from the American peace movement, but also because a bilateral agreement threatened to restrict American freedom of action, Secretary of State Kellogg submitted a counter-proposal on December 28, 1927: France and the USA should contractually undertake to resolve all conflicts through arbitration To decide, the great powers , in a second step all states of the world, should agree to renounce war as a means of national politics and to submit to a binding international dispute settlement. This turned the original French intentions into their opposite, which is why the French government hastened to pass the arbitration agreement, which happened on February 6, 1928: So it hoped to let the idea of ​​the peace pact fall asleep. The German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann was happy to take up the American proposal for exactly the same reasons: The Foreign Office saw it as an opportunity to improve the security of the German Reich vis-à-vis the militarily superior France and its allies, because the pact made a military intervention in the event German violations of the provisions of the Versailles Treaty are less likely. In addition, the German-American relationship could be improved in this way, which seemed to be of particular importance in view of the reparations question, which has not yet been finally settled . In addition, Stresemann saw opportunities for general disarmament , which should end the armaments policy discrimination against Germany through the Versailles Treaty, and subsequently for a revision of the German eastern border.

Briand still pursued his initiative. On the one hand, he needed a demonstrable domestic political success, which is why he tried to make the multilateral pact appear as an essentially French-American initiative. When that failed, he insisted on Germany's participation so that it would not have a free hand to attack Poland , while France would be prevented by the War Pact from assisting its ally. Briand increasingly saw the pact as an opportunity to anchor the principle of collective security , which had fallen behind in the League of Nations after the failure of the Geneva Protocol in 1924 . This protocol was supposed to oblige the League of Nations members to implement sanctions against states that refused to have disputes settled or that the League of Nations accused of aggression, but it had failed because of the conservative British cabinet Baldwin with his new Foreign Minister Austen Chamberlain , which had been in office since the elections of October 1924 ruled the United Kingdom .

Instead of the Franco-American pact that Briand had hoped for, which promised to prevent the Germans from attacking again, a multilateral agreement was reached after lengthy negotiations. On August 27, 1928, the Treaty of Outlawing War was signed with great pomp in Paris . Germany, which had become a member of the League of Nations in 1926, provided the opportunity to demonstrate its readiness for peace and to make the French warnings against German expansionism appear anachronistic.

content

The undersigned states decided not to use war as a tool in their politics. They declared that they would resolve disputes peacefully in the future. In particular, the war of aggression waged out of national interests was declared to be contrary to international law . The right of every state to self-defense remained recognized as an inalienable right, participation in the sanctions of the League of Nations remained permitted. In this respect, the pact relied on the medieval distinction between a bellum iustum and a bellum iniustum . However, there were no criminal provisions in the event of a violation of the pact, so he did not seriously oblige anyone. Since the war prohibition treaty was negotiated and concluded outside the institutionalized League of Nations, it retained its validity beyond its end. The contract does not contain a termination clause and is therefore valid for an unlimited period.

Signatory States

The signatory states of the treaty 1928 and 1929
(dark green: first signatory states ,
light green: further signatory states ,
light blue: colonies of the signatory states ,
dark blue: League of Nations mandate areas of the signatory states )

The eleven first signatories were the United States of America , Australia , Canada , Czechoslovakia , the German Empire , Great Britain , India , the Free State of Ireland , Italy , New Zealand and the South African Union . Four other states signed the treaty before the proclamation: Poland , Belgium and France in March 1929 and the Japanese Empire in April. It came into force on July 24, 1929. By 1939, 63 states had ratified it, that is, all members of the League of Nations except for four Latin American states that signed the very similar Saavedra Lamas Treaty in Rio de Janeiro in 1935.

The Soviet Union also joined the pact shortly after it was signed. An initiative of their Foreign Minister Litvinov led to the early entry into force of the treaty in Eastern Europe through the so-called Litvinov Protocol of February 9, 1929.

  • BriandKellogg1928a.jpg
  • BriandKellogg1928b.jpg
  • KingAntiWar.jpg

consequences

In the foreign policy of the United States , the pact, together with the Dawes Plan, marked an end to the policy of isolation that the country had embarked on in 1920 with its refusal to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and join the League of Nations. In 1932 this policy was continued by the Hoover-Stimson Doctrine on the occasion of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in northeast China .

Law historic significance of the Kellogg-Briand Pact is for the development of international humanitarian law , which later because he established fundamental rules of international law material in the Charter of the United Nations were received. It is true that other resolutions, treaties and draft treaties from the interwar period also show that even then a war of aggression was seen internationally as a breach of international law, and sometimes also referred to as a crime . In the specialist literature on international law, it is therefore almost unanimous that the prevailing opinion was that the ban on waging war had already become part of general international law before 1939. The German attack on Poland on September 1, 1939, with which the Second World War began, was thus a clear violation of the Briand-Kellogg Pact. The United Kingdom justified its declaration of war on the German Reich in two notes to the League of Nations in September 1939 including the Briand-Kellogg Pact.

In the Nuremberg trial of the major war criminals in 1946, the criminality of crimes against peace was derived from the Briand-Kellogg Pact. But because he had established that wars of aggression were illegal under international law, but not explicitly also that they were criminal, the legal basis of the Nuremberg judgments in these cases is questioned by some legal scholars. In favor of criminal liability on the legal basis of the pact, however, is that serious violations have always been considered punishable under international martial law, even if they were not explicitly penalized . According to the German legal scholar Otto Kimminich , the Briand-Kellogg Pact was based on a penalization of the war itself, which is shown in the permission for individual and collective self-defense: Self-defense and emergency aid can only exist against criminal acts.

The UN Charter signed after the end of the World War in 1945 goes well beyond the mere war prohibition of the Briand-Kellogg Pact by establishing a general prohibition of violence in Art. 2 No. 4 of the Charter . This means that not only is war illegal today, but also every use of force in international relations. A concrete example is for example violent reprisals below the threshold of war, which were still permissible after the Briand-Kellogg Pact, but which now violate Art. 2 No. 4 of the Charter. The main exception to the general prohibition of force in the UN Charter is the right to self-defense under Article 51 of the Charter, which states can invoke in the event of an armed attack until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security Has. The Briand-Kellogg Pact had not outlawed the right to wage war based on self-defense.

rating

The Briand-Kellogg Pact has often been dismissed as an inadequate means of preventing war . In the absence of sanctions, he was unable to prevent the Manchuria crisis of 1931 or the Abyssinian War of 1935/1936. He also left open the loophole that military actions that were actually in breach of the Pact were no longer referred to as war. It was therefore scorned that the breakfast cereals that bear the name of the American Secretary of State contributed more to world peace than he did. On the other hand, as Klaus Hildebrand emphasizes, the pact meant “a moral leap in quality sui generis ” in international relations . In addition, it formed the legal basis for the war crimes trials after 1945. The American legal scholars Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro also emphasize that in the long term he had effectively reduced one of the most common causes of war until then: conquests . As their empirical study shows, this almost completely ceased after 1945, and the outlawing of war in 1928 was a major cause for this.

literature

  • Oona A. Hathaway, Scott J. Shapiro: The Internationalists. How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World. Simon & Schuster, New York 2017, ISBN 978-1-5011-0986-7 .
  • Helmuth KG Rönnefahrt, Heinrich Euler: Conferences and contracts. Contract Ploetz. Handbook of Historically Significant Meetings and Agreements. Part II, Volume 4: Latest Times, 1914–1959 . 2nd expanded and changed edition, AG Ploetz Verlag, Würzburg 1959, p. 103 f.
  • Bernhard Roscher: The Briand-Kellogg Pact of 1928: The "renunciation of war as a means of national politics" in international law thinking in the interwar period. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2004.

Web links

Wikisource: Kellogg-Briand Treaty  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter Krüger : The foreign policy of the republic of Weimar . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1985, p. 409 f .; Ralph Blessing: The possible peace. The modernization of foreign policy and Franco-German relations 1923–1929 (=  Paris Historical Studies , Vol. 76). Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, ISBN 3-486-58027-2 , pp. 314-317 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  2. ^ Raymond Poidevin and Jacques Bariéty: France and Germany. The history of their relationships 1815–1975. CH Beck, Munich 1982, p. 360.
  3. ↑ Gordon A. Craig , Alexander L. George: Between War and Peace. Conflict resolution past and present . CH Beck, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-406-09858-4 , pp. 70 f .; Jean-Jacques Becker and Serge Berstein: Victoires et frustrations 1914-1929 (=  Nouvelle histoire de la France contemporaine , vol. 12). Editions du Seuil, Paris 1990, pp. 253 and 284; Ralph Blessing: The possible peace. The modernization of foreign policy and Franco-German relations 1923–1929 (=  Paris Historical Studies , Vol. 76). Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, pp. 207-210 and 317-324 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  4. ^ Wilfried Loth : History of France in the 20th century . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-596-10860-8 , p. 72.
  5. ↑ Erhart Klöss: Briand-Kellogg Pact . In: Carola Stern , Thilo Vogelsang et al. (Ed.): Dtv lexicon on history and politics in the 20th century . dtv, Munich 1974, vol. 1, p. 109; Eva Buchheit: The Briand-Kellogg Pact of 1928 - Power Politics or Striving for Peace? (=  Studies on Peace Research , Vol. 10), Lit Verlag, Münster 1998, p. 358 .; Georg Dahm , Jost Delbrück , Rüdiger Wolfrum : Völkerrecht , Vol. I / 3: The forms of action under international law. The content of the international community. De Gruyter Recht, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-89949-024-X , p. 1034 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  6. ↑ a b c Otto Kimminich : Introduction to international law. 2nd edition, KG Saur, Munich / New York / London / Paris 1983, ISBN 3-598-02673-0 , p. 90 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  7. ↑ Ralph Blessing: The possible peace. The modernization of foreign policy and Franco-German relations 1923–1929 (=  Paris Historical Studies , Vol. 76). Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, p. 312 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  8. ↑ Horst Möller : Europe between the world wars (=  Oldenbourg floor plan of history , vol. 21). Oldenbourg, Munich 1998, ISBN 978-3-486-70135-7 , p. 54 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  9. ^ Michael Bothe : Peacekeeping and Martial Law. In: Wolfgang Graf Vitzthum and Alexander Proelß (eds.): Völkerrecht. 7th edition, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-044130-7 , p. 598, Rn. 6 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  10. ↑ Andreas Toppe: Military and international law. Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-58206-2 , p. 5 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
  11. ↑ Andreas Toppe: Military and international law. Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-58206-2 , p. 53 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
  12. ^ Gerhard Werle : International Criminal Law. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2012, pp. 11-14, Rn. 22-26.
  13. ↑ Ralph Blessing: The possible peace. The modernization of foreign policy and Franco-German relations 1923–1929 (=  Paris Historical Studies , Vol. 76). Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, p. 324; Michael Bothe: Peacekeeping and Martial Law. In: Wolfgang Graf Vitzthum and Alexander Proelß (eds.): Völkerrecht. 7th edition, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2016, p. 598, Rn. 6 (both accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  14. ↑ Klaus Hildebrand: The past realm. German foreign policy from Bismarck to Hitler. Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-58605-3 , p. 496 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  15. ^ Oona A. Hathaway, Scott J. Shapiro: Outlawing War? It actually worked . In: nytimes.com , September 2, 2017, accessed October 27, 2018.