US must honor spirit as well as letter of Kellogg-Briand Pact

Back in 1928, US Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand came up with a revolutionary idea to promote world peace. They negotiated a treaty to make war illegal. While that sounds obvious, war was considered the proper, indeed the primary way nations could resolve disputes throughout history. In addition, the victors were allowed to keep the spoils of war, a gross extension of ‘might makes right’. Initially conceived as a bi-lateral treaty between the US and France, Kellogg and Briand pitched their concept to the world community, and quickly signed up 63 nations, most of the world’s countries at the time.

Critics of the Pact derided it as a failure, considering the 14 year cataclysm of world conquest beginning just 3 years later when signatory Japan invaded China. But the Pact was the foundation for the Nuremberg War Crime Trials. Aggressive war would be punished if not prevented, all territorial conquests would be returned to the defeated party, and individual leaders brought to justice, possibly even the hangman. All this emanates from Kellogg-Briand, which since WWII as drastically reduced aggressive wars of conquest.

Sadly, tho still on the books at the State Department, the US has been the most egregious violator of Kellogg-Briand. After WWII the US specialized in avoiding outright war by using covert ops to knock off foreign governments it opposed. This was especially true in Latin America. It often worked as in Guatemala, Guyana, Chile, Nicaragua; but failed miserably in Cuba. The worst example occurred i Iran, over 5,500 from Washington, when TR’s grandson Teddy III orchestrated a coup against the democratically elected ruler Mosaddegh. This kicked off 67 years of damaged relations with the US that periodically still threatens war.

When the US did invade directly as in Vietnam, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, we did so to overthrow hated rulers or insurgents, not to grab territory as forbidden by Kellogg-Briand. In another cruel ‘work around’ Kellogg-Briand, we essentially go to war using crippling economic sanctions to so degrade life for civilians they'll overthrow their rulers on our behalf. It never works but sanctions do sentence tens of millions into poor health, famine, even death.

A third violation of Kellogg-Briand involves selling deadly US military hardware to friendly countries for their wars against neighbors or to subjugate stateless people under their control. Billions in weaponry to Saudi Arabia for their vicious war against Yemen is an example of the former. Enabling Israel’s Apartheid rule over four million Palestinians represents the latter. Neither of these two humanitarian catastrophes could continue without US assistance.

The Kellogg-Briand Pact was the first and still best international agreement to outlaw and prevent war. It would work even better if one of its two founding member states would honor it in the spirit as well as in the letter of its prohibition against war.