Pakt Brianda-Kellogga : stanowisko państw europejskich wobec zagadnienia rezygnacji z wojny napastniczej w stosunkach międzynarodowych

Abstract

The Establishment of the League of Nations strengthened very much the idea, very popular in the pacifist movement of the time, of the renouncing of war of aggression in international relations, and seemed to indicate that permanent peace was the aim nations were striving for. The Covenant of the League of Nations, however, did not condemn war completely, did not "outlaw a war". The only thing that was changed was that war ceased to be an attribute of sovereignty of a nation. Leaving a few loopholes making possible a legal war gave rise to the dissatisfaction of radical pacifists who were soon to become the adversaries of the League o f Nations and the system of collective security connected with it. Because of the sanctions provided by the system, some objections were raised that the system proliferated wars while pretending to eliminate them. Such arguments were also listened to by the political opponents of the said League. There were suggestions of treating a war of aggression as an international crime and of banning and outlawing it completely. They appeared also in the additions to the Covenant which were put foward in the Reformation Hall in Geneva. The popularity of those pacifist ideas and the attempts /real or apparent/ at creating full guarantees of peace were the source of the project of a bilateral eternal peace treaty between France and the United States. They were the basis of the suggested International non-aggression pact, put forward by Poland, and of the multilateral non- aggression pact, suggested by the American Secretary of State, F.B.Kellogg, in the last days of December 1927. The analysis of the negotiations about the treaty, known later as Briand-Kellogg Pact, seems to make evident how far the American proposal was the means of combatlng the system of collective security, and to what extent it was the attempt at organizing world powers in to one group led by the United States. The negotiations also show the real attitude of European states to the League of Nations and point out political advantages which the said states hoped to obtain by signing the Pact. At a certain moment the acceptance of the project of the Anti-war Pact by European states created a feeling of anxiety on the other side of the Atlantic, a fear of the United States being drawn into European affairs, a fear of making the States "a guardian of peace established by the Treaty of Versailles and the pacts following it". It was difficult to arrive at an unambiguous interpretation of the Pact, finally signed in Paris on 27th August 1928. Hopes for attaining such interpretation in the future appeared to be vain. But there was one main point, stressed by Aristide Briand during the signing ceremony in Quai d'Orsay: "the war was deprived of what was its greatest danger - of its legality".