Kellogg-Briand Pact

August 27, 1928

Fifteen nations signed a treaty in Paris renouncing war as an instrument of national policy, with the American and French foreign ministers as its architects. Eventually sixty-two nations signed on. It was the high-water mark of interwar idealism. It had no enforcement mechanism and was broken everywhere within a decade. Still, its language seeded later war crimes law and the United Nations Charter.