page_title: International relations (1919–1939)
section_title: Outlawing war
hierarchical_section_title: International relations (1919–1939) / Peace and disarmament / Outlawing war
caption_attribution_description: English: Briand-Kellogg Treaty, with signatures of Gustav Stresemann, Paul Kellogg, Paul Hymans, Aristide Briand, Lord Cushendun, William Lyon Mackenzie King, John McLachlan, Sir Christopher James Parr, Jacobus Stephanus Smit, William Thomas Cosgrave, Count Gaetano Manzoni, Count Uchida, A. Zaleski, Eduard Benes. Nederlands: Pacten. De met verzegelde handtekeningen pact van Kellogg. 1928. Plaats: Parijs. Serie van 3 foto's.
context_page_description: International relations (1919–1939) covers the main interactions shaping world history in this era, with emphasis on diplomacy and economic relations. The coverage here follows Diplomatic history of World War I and precedes Diplomatic history of World War II. The important stages of interwar diplomacy and international relations included resolutions of wartime issues, such as reparations owed by Germany and boundaries; American involvement in European finances and disarmament projects; the expectations and failures of the League of Nations; the relationships of the new countries to the old; the distrustful relations of the Soviet Union to the capitalist world; peace and disarmament efforts; responses to the Great Depression starting in 1929; the collapse of world trade; the collapse of democratic regimes one by one; the growth of economic autarky; Japanese aggressiveness toward China; Fascist diplomacy, including the aggressive moves by Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany; the Spanish Civil War; the appeasement of Germany's expansionist moves toward the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, and the last, desperate stages of rearmament as another world war increasingly loomed.
context_section_description: The Kellogg–Briand Pact of 1928 was a proposal drafted by the United States and France that, in effect, outlawed war to resolve "disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them". Most nations readily signed up and used the occasion to promote the goal of peaceful foreign policies. The only issue was the actual formula of the renunciation of all wars – the French wanted the definition restricted to wars of aggression, while the Americans insisted it should include all kinds of warfare. Historian Harold Josephson notes that the Pact has been ridiculed for its moralism and legalism and lack of influence on foreign policy. He argues that it instead led to a more activist American foreign policy. Its central provisions renouncing the use of war, and promoting peaceful settlement of disputes and the use of collective force to prevent aggression, were incorporated into the UN Charter and other treaties. Although civil wars continued, wars between established states have been rare since 1945, with a few exceptions in the Middle East.
  In the United States, much energetic grass-roots support came from women's organizations and Protestant churches.
caption: Fourteen major nations were the first to sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact in Paris in 1928
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