Kellogg-Briand Pact

The Kellogg-Briand Pact, also called the Pact of Paris, is a 1928 international agreement in which its signatory states renounced war as an instrument of national policy and promised not to use war to settle "disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be" that might arise among them. Sponsored jointly by France and the United States and named for its principal authors, U.S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and French foreign minister Aristide Briand, the pact was signed by Germany, France and the United States on 27 August 1928 and was soon joined by most of the world's other states. Concluded outside the framework of the League of Nations, the pact provided no mechanism for enforcement and did not prevent the aggressions that led to the Second World War, but it remains formally in effect and later provided part of the legal basis used at the Nuremberg trials to prosecute wars of aggression as international crimes.