Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as always
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in war. Uh anyway, that's our
Speaker 1: one and only super producer, Mr Max Williams. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: it's sort of like war. What is it good for?
Speaker 1: Absolutely nothing? I mean it's good for some things, depending
Speaker 1: on which side of it you're on. Um. It has
Speaker 1: been in the past and continues to be used as
Speaker 1: a tool of international affairs, a tool of not diplomacy.
Speaker 1: It's the opposite of diplomacy. That's the thing you try
Speaker 1: before you get into war. But it has been used
Speaker 1: as a way to make moves geopolitically, sort of what
Speaker 1: we think of war as typically, right, Ben, Yeah, that's right, Noll,
Speaker 1: we know that. Unfortunately, as catchy as the war song is,
Speaker 1: it's not entirely accurate. War drives a lot of medical innovation,
Speaker 1: a lot of scientific innovation. It is a violent, ugly thing,
Speaker 1: but it has become an inherent part of geopolitics and
Speaker 1: has been since ancient days. But today, and I lo
Speaker 1: if you're bringing up diplomacy today, we decided off air
Speaker 1: to step into two with optimism and This is why
Speaker 1: we wanted to bring this story to you. War is
Speaker 1: such a dangerous, dangerous, tragic thing. It shouldn't surprise us
Speaker 1: that once upon a time a bunch of countries got
Speaker 1: together and said, okay, guys, enough, no more war. We're
Speaker 1: gonna stop all wars um by signing an agreement, by
Speaker 1: signing some paper that'll stop. It's sort of like the
Speaker 1: equivalent of let's end racism by doing a change dot
Speaker 1: org petition. Yeah, unfortunately, I mean, I hate to be
Speaker 1: a negative Nancy or Noel Brown here, I guess, but
Speaker 1: it does feel a little bit aspirational, which I think
Speaker 1: we can all applaud. But it also feels a little
Speaker 1: bit laughable because, as we know, a lot of these
Speaker 1: things are pretty non binding, and they do tend to
Speaker 1: have plenty of loopholes that folkus can just dive right
Speaker 1: through with very little precision needed. Yeah, exactly, And we
Speaker 1: also know that, you know, I think a great comparison
Speaker 1: be the idea of saying, Okay, we're going to eradicate
Speaker 1: a disease by everyone signing a piece of paper that
Speaker 1: says you're not going to get it. That's how we're
Speaker 1: going to get rid of HIV or something like that,
Speaker 1: Like it's the intentions can be good, but the intentions alone,
Speaker 1: well boiler alert tell us what you think after the episode.
Speaker 1: What we're talking about today is something called the Kellogg
Speaker 1: Brand Pack of nineteen twenty eight, the idea that we
Speaker 1: could as a species, as civilizations, just stop war by
Speaker 1: saying it's illegal. Just wish it away, guys, wish harder. Uh,
Speaker 1: you're not your vision boards not visionary enough. That's the problem.
Speaker 1: So they so we've got to start first by saying
Speaker 1: how this, how this came about. It starts with a
Speaker 1: lot of context. Basically, the argument made to outlaw war
Speaker 1: came about because before then people just accepted that war
Speaker 1: was a quote legitimate interest of national policy. And that's
Speaker 1: from a book called The Internationalist's Right by two very
Speaker 1: smart Yale Law School professor or is Una A. Hathaway
Speaker 1: and Scott J. Shapiro. There was an incident in sixteen
Speaker 1: or three when a Dutch trader attacked and ransacked a
Speaker 1: Portuguese ship outside of Singapore. And because of that point
Speaker 1: that you just made ben about the idea of war
Speaker 1: being a quote legitimate instrument of national policy, there was
Speaker 1: a dude named Grotius Um, who was a legal scholar
Speaker 1: who basically justified this encounter um, which ultimately you could
Speaker 1: really just say was an act of looting uh and
Speaker 1: ransacking with no international policy involved one way or the other.
Speaker 1: But this guy Grotius made this legal justification of essentially
Speaker 1: a Dutch pirate ship seizing you know, Portuguese goods completely
Speaker 1: unlawfully um as an act of war um in his
Speaker 1: book on the Laws of War and Peace that came
Speaker 1: out in sixteen five, and that is what Hathaway and
Speaker 1: Shapiro say became the text book of the law of
Speaker 1: war and based on completely, in their opinions, spurious kind
Speaker 1: of foundations, very shaky ground. Yeah. Yeah, not to be
Speaker 1: confused with the absolute banger The Art of War by
Speaker 1: Sun Zoo popular around the world nowadays. But yeah, Grotius
Speaker 1: is is interesting because he essentially says any kind of
Speaker 1: war of aggression is legal so long as the aggressors
Speaker 1: provide some sort of justification, and even if those justifications
Speaker 1: turn out to be b s straight malarkey, whomever wins
Speaker 1: the war has a right to keep whatever they got
Speaker 1: out of it, whether that's like land or resources. That's
Speaker 1: right they make the whole might makes right arguments saying
Speaker 1: that possession is not nine tenths of the law, but
Speaker 1: in fact ten tenths of the law. And we even
Speaker 1: know that whole the whole nine tenths thing doesn't really
Speaker 1: hold up even as much as people wish it would.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's pretty sketchy stuff. And essentially the justification
Speaker 1: could be something as simple as I just wanted to
Speaker 1: have that loot. It just seem like it should be,
Speaker 1: you know, our loot. Why shouldn't we have that loot?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure they did a better job than that,
Speaker 1: But it's not much more complex than just kind of
Speaker 1: trumping up some kind of bs reason that you attack
Speaker 1: to foreign power and then you'd be you'd be off
Speaker 1: scott free. Yeah, make it a war of defense. That's
Speaker 1: one of the best moves. That's one of the most
Speaker 1: common justifications you see, Like we had to attack these
Speaker 1: people because they were actually aggressive toward us. Your mileage
Speaker 1: may vary depending on what part of the world you
Speaker 1: live in, but that's that's a very common um, a
Speaker 1: common rationale. So this doesn't sound like much of a
Speaker 1: good idea or even much of a legal justification, but
Speaker 1: it did importantly put a couple of a couple of
Speaker 1: handcuffs on things nations could do. One, it said that,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're a nation, you can't go to
Speaker 1: war to recapture stuff you law in a previous conflict,
Speaker 1: because you lost, and now it is lawful for the
Speaker 1: person the nation that beat you to own this. Uh. Secondly,
Speaker 1: nations can't just jump in someone else's war. They cannot
Speaker 1: change the terms on which they traded with belligerents. This meant,
Speaker 1: in effect that other nations were obligated to look away.
Speaker 1: Like if the peaceful religious nation state of Max Williams
Speaker 1: is embroiled in a coastal battle with the expanding Empire
Speaker 1: of the Brownians, then me over here in ben Bulin
Speaker 1: stand cannot cannot inter see. You guys just have to
Speaker 1: work it out yourself, according to Grotius. Otherwise you said,
Speaker 1: you know, you're just you're just killing people, You're just
Speaker 1: spreading chaos. We need to have laws for war, which
Speaker 1: sounds so contradictory. It does sound completely contradict Three And
Speaker 1: there is a really wonderful New Yorker article called what
Speaker 1: Happens when war is outlawed? By Louis Menan that was
Speaker 1: published on September eleven. Seen Uh has a really great
Speaker 1: little tagline, did a largely forgotten peace pack transform the
Speaker 1: world we live in? And we're gonna unpack that today.
Speaker 1: Unpacked that today? Never mind. Anyhow, there is a point
Speaker 1: in the article where he brings up um the Mexican
Speaker 1: American War, for example, that began in eighteen forty six,
Speaker 1: which you could in the same way that you could
Speaker 1: view that Portuguese Dutch ship encounter. Um. It was just
Speaker 1: a simple land grab, you know. It was essentially just
Speaker 1: the Americans wanting to take what Mexico had and making
Speaker 1: a justification for it, saying it was a matter of
Speaker 1: unpaid debts, right, was what it was about at all.
Speaker 1: It was just kind of a reason that allowed them
Speaker 1: to fit this act of imperialism essentially to the framework
Speaker 1: of a legal conflicts. Right now, we are somehow fighting
Speaker 1: for justice, right, pay us what you owe us. And
Speaker 1: you'll see this also in other wars throughout history. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it would be aggressor will request a huge amount of
Speaker 1: money knowing that the other party can't pay it back,
Speaker 1: meaning that there will definitely be a conflict on the horizon.
Speaker 1: This this is again, like you said, According to Hathaway
Speaker 1: and Shapiro, Grotius is law of war explains why people
Speaker 1: generally thought this would be a legal behavior in the
Speaker 1: current system. And this is what they meant. This is
Speaker 1: what Hathway and Shapiro mean when they refer to the
Speaker 1: Old World Order, which set a cartoonishly low bar for
Speaker 1: going to war. This was super convenient when you were
Speaker 1: an imperial power expanding your empire. But then once you
Speaker 1: and other impure real powers turned against each other, things
Speaker 1: got a lot more tricky, like the First World War
Speaker 1: turned into went from a regional conflict almost overnight to
Speaker 1: this to pandemonia, bloody pandemonia. I love that you say
Speaker 1: cartoon initially, ben Um, I think it really really applies
Speaker 1: in this particular situation because remember in Looney Tunes there's
Speaker 1: I think he says it multiple times, but Bugs Bunny
Speaker 1: is in some way slighted by some aggressor, and then
Speaker 1: he says, I hope you know or I hope you
Speaker 1: understand that this means war. Uh. And the implication there
Speaker 1: is all it takes for someone to just like slight
Speaker 1: you or humiliate you in some small way, and that
Speaker 1: there in and of itself is a just a justification
Speaker 1: for all out scorched earth kind of behavior. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very it's very much a matter of convenience for a
Speaker 1: lot of people here. But after after the First World War,
Speaker 1: folks were able to look around policymakers various genres, They
Speaker 1: made eye contact with each other and they said, you know,
Speaker 1: this isn't really working for anybody, so maybe we should
Speaker 1: try something different. Uh. This is where the Kellogg brand
Speaker 1: packed comes in. There were all these post war peace
Speaker 1: movements in France and in the US for instance, that
Speaker 1: advocated for straight up international disarmament. This is a radical idea,
Speaker 1: and it's a very it's a very difficult idea because
Speaker 1: disarmament only works if everybody does it right and and
Speaker 1: and so the world is in a standoff, just like
Speaker 1: in a Western film where every country is telling every
Speaker 1: other country to put their gun down first. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: it's tricky, but people were making progress. There were conferences
Speaker 1: in d C and Uh. There were other things where
Speaker 1: like the U s would start cooperating more with the
Speaker 1: League of Nations in the World's Court, which was a
Speaker 1: new thing in and of itself right, And also the
Speaker 1: World Court I mean, these things did not exist, and
Speaker 1: these all came as a direct response to how absolutely
Speaker 1: devastating and horrible for just about everybody World War One was. Right. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And there's a great thought code article by Robert Longley
Speaker 1: called the Kellogg briand Packed War Outlawed, which which gives
Speaker 1: us a sense of the problem, and it gives us
Speaker 1: a sense of what what people were trying to do,
Speaker 1: even if it's utopian, even if it is as one
Speaker 1: Max Williams said, uh, what was it? Blindly optimistic? Max?
Speaker 1: I think I said blindly optimistic, which is a great
Speaker 1: way to start the new year, because you're just so
Speaker 1: optimistic before all of it just goes through utter absolute
Speaker 1: And then I pointed out that I might just be
Speaker 1: a little too nihilistic in two already. And nihilism and
Speaker 1: optimism they don't have to be actually exclusive, or maybe
Speaker 1: they do, I don't know. Well, you could be optimistically nihilistic, right,
Speaker 1: that's true. That's a very good points. I'm having a
Speaker 1: great day, having a great day. And and and also you
Speaker 1: can be optimistic about the idea that everything is ultimately
Speaker 1: a great big nothing. Yeah, so optimistic nihilism. I just
Speaker 1: had to verify. This quote views the belief that there
Speaker 1: is no underlying meaning to life from a perspective of hope.
Speaker 1: The optimistic nihilist looks at a world lack of meaning
Speaker 1: and purpose and says, hey, this is an opportunity to
Speaker 1: create my own meaning, my own purpose. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I think that might be a little bit of each
Speaker 1: of us. Yeah, alright, gotta make your own kind of music,
Speaker 1: you know, there we go. Yeah, you gotta be the change.
Speaker 1: I think that was from the Simpsons or Gandhi. So
Speaker 1: these folks back in the nineteen twenties they, Okay, the
Speaker 1: old system, the old world order, hinged on this very
Speaker 1: low bar of what makes war legal. And so the
Speaker 1: way we replaced this is not making more new rules exactly,
Speaker 1: but it is to outlaw the concept of war itself. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there's this interesting again, this from the book The Internationalists.
Speaker 1: There's this interesting comparison the authors make where they know
Speaker 1: it's something in the work of Salmon Levinson, and Levinson
Speaker 1: talks about dueling. You know, now, at least in the
Speaker 1: US love this. We can't resolve things with dueling. But
Speaker 1: back in the day, as anyone who seeing Hamilton's nos
Speaker 1: dueling was was a way for people to resolve conflicts.
Speaker 1: And he said, look, people kept trying to change dueling
Speaker 1: to make all these weird rules to make it seem
Speaker 1: cooler or more civilized, but people were still dueling, and
Speaker 1: then that means they were still killing each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but instead of like outlawing dueling as a as a thing, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna do it, you're gonna duel, but just
Speaker 1: know that whoever gets killed, uh, and that that person
Speaker 1: has now been a victim of a murderer that you
Speaker 1: have done, as opposed to it having this like this
Speaker 1: inherent amnesty. Right, if you kill someone in a duel,
Speaker 1: that's fair play and you get to walk away and
Speaker 1: you know, a wild West rules even I mean that
Speaker 1: was later, but like dueling, was that still a form
Speaker 1: of dueling and to solve a problem, the understanding was
Speaker 1: that if you killed someone in a duel, it was
Speaker 1: a fair fight and you could walk away from that.
Speaker 1: And then the undertakers would just come out and drag
Speaker 1: that poor sap away. But what they did was they
Speaker 1: removed the amnesty, right, yeah they did. They said, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: let's just call it murder as murder, you know, what
Speaker 1: I mean. We have the benefit of retrospect, So it
Speaker 1: does sound ridiculous for us to look back and say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: murder was fine for a long time if it was
Speaker 1: a duel, because a modern version of that would be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, hitting someone with your car is fine as
Speaker 1: long as it's a car fight. Otherwise it's an accident
Speaker 1: and you've got to pay insurance. They're like, oh, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: it was it was a car fight. It was on purpose.
Speaker 1: I hate that guy in the Honda Odyssey. Oh do
Speaker 1: you think they had dueling insurance back in they way
Speaker 1: to when an insurance even start to be a thing
Speaker 1: as boring a topic as that would that sounds on
Speaker 1: the surface, I think it would be actually very interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be, and it would be uh in no
Speaker 1: small part. I think it would be a two parter episode, honestly,
Speaker 1: because I had looked into this idea and it goes
Speaker 1: back to I want to say, the seventeen hundreds. I'm
Speaker 1: guessing off top of my head. Here, I have the
Speaker 1: quickest of Google searches for us given to us. Max.
Speaker 1: The first insurance company in the U. S. Dates back
Speaker 1: to the colonial days. The Philadelphia contribution ship that's not
Speaker 1: And guess who co founded it was Hamilton's Franklin, Ben Franklin.
Speaker 1: Kind of hustle, he'd be into. It's such a racket,
Speaker 1: and it's one of the kind of rackets only continues
Speaker 1: to exist because of its like legacy and it being
Speaker 1: sort of like this this need that maybe was never
Speaker 1: there before. Being creery Obviously, health insurance obviously is its
Speaker 1: own thing. But what what would you do? Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: that would just be like you would you know, dueling
Speaker 1: insurance would be just a life insurance policy, you know
Speaker 1: that would kick in in case you were killed in
Speaker 1: a duel. Let's let's do it. Let's do a history
Speaker 1: of insurance podcast because it will take us to a
Speaker 1: very interesting place in the modern day. UM and the
Speaker 1: the the idea. I think it's a wonderful idea. The
Speaker 1: idea of insurance isn't just UM doesn't just refer to
Speaker 1: the privatized industry that the US labors under today. Insurance
Speaker 1: is also a kind of safety net in general. And
Speaker 1: that's why France. France had a terrible time to World
Speaker 1: War One. They wanted the insurance of international alliances. They
Speaker 1: were like Germany is still giving off a bad vibe.
Speaker 1: And it turns out, you know, that that bad vibe
Speaker 1: would later prove to be correct. What it's sure would
Speaker 1: that bad vibe definitely paid bad dividends in the form
Speaker 1: of World War two and and the reign of Hitler
Speaker 1: and all the horrible, horrible things that he did. Um,
Speaker 1: so good on you France for clocking that vibe. Here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Let's talk about the Pact in particular. We've
Speaker 1: got this climate of isolationism. You know, let's not you know,
Speaker 1: mess with foreign wars. Let's not get embroiled. It's just
Speaker 1: too much. It could cause us too much mutually assured destruction.
Speaker 1: So let's um follow this dueling idea. We obviously can't
Speaker 1: outlaw war outright, but what we can do is remove
Speaker 1: the amnesty, remove that legal protection. You know, if you,
Speaker 1: um hijack a foreign ship and pillage it, that is
Speaker 1: no longer something that you are protected for. You will
Speaker 1: be tried, uh and treated as a criminal. Mm hmmm,
Speaker 1: because you shouldn't have killed people. That's I don't know,
Speaker 1: the stuff that was such a hot take at the time.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't kill people. Maybe let's work it out. This
Speaker 1: is where we meet the guys behind the name of
Speaker 1: the pact, the French Minister of Forid Affairs Aristide Briand,
Speaker 1: and the American Secretary of State Frank Kellogg. Funny story. Initially, Kellogg,
Speaker 1: when he got pitched this idea by Briand, he thought,
Speaker 1: I don't think this is gonna happen. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: he said, I I don't think the US is going
Speaker 1: to go to war with France, so there's no point
Speaker 1: in US promising not to, which is just side note here,
Speaker 1: that's a really shady thing to say, Like why do
Speaker 1: we need to come on, buddy? Uh? And he said,
Speaker 1: he said, what I really think is happening here is
Speaker 1: that this proposal has an ulterior motive. I believe that you, Briand,
Speaker 1: are trying to make the US commit to intervening on
Speaker 1: France's behalf in any case of an attack by Germany.
Speaker 1: And then well, I mean that's true. And there was
Speaker 1: some back and forth and the public pressure again, the
Speaker 1: pro piece movements were huge in the US and France,
Speaker 1: and eventually something happened. Kellogg thought, gave it a think,
Speaker 1: and he comes back to Briande and he says, you
Speaker 1: know what, man, that sounds great. Honestly, why why shouldn't
Speaker 1: we renounce war? But it shouldn't just be between us,
Speaker 1: He says, we should make the treaty multilateral. We should
Speaker 1: have everybody's sign it, and then everyone would just stop
Speaker 1: waging war. Yeah, and Kellogg really thought that he was
Speaker 1: pulling a fast one on his his counterpart over there
Speaker 1: um in in the land of France, because back to
Speaker 1: that New York article, Um he knew that France had
Speaker 1: a lot of mutual defense treaties with other European states
Speaker 1: and it would be really, really difficult for them to
Speaker 1: honor all of those treaties if France agreed that they
Speaker 1: would renounce war altogether. So he thought that he was
Speaker 1: kind of putting one over on the guy. But because
Speaker 1: of the way that the agreement was ultimately worded, there
Speaker 1: was enough latitude in it that made it seem like
Speaker 1: a smart political move for Brand and his um you know,
Speaker 1: contemporaries to sign um And what we got was the
Speaker 1: General Treaty for the Renunciation of War, known as the
Speaker 1: Paris Peace Pack because that's where it was signed, or
Speaker 1: the Kellogg briand Packed. And you know, everybody is still
Speaker 1: trying to recover from World War One. The public in
Speaker 1: general is kind of sick of war. Many people have
Speaker 1: now seen the horrors of conflict firsthand, so there's public
Speaker 1: support behind this. The participants, when they're creating this agreement
Speaker 1: in Paris, they start baking in some exceptions from the
Speaker 1: very job. From day one. First they said, okay, hashtag
Speaker 1: not all wars. We're gonna ban wars of aggression, but
Speaker 1: we cannot ban acts of self defense because this means,
Speaker 1: you know, people have to be able to protect their
Speaker 1: populace and their resources, their borders and so on. And
Speaker 1: so the final version of the agreement had just two
Speaker 1: clauses everybody agreed on. I think we can each do
Speaker 1: one here. All signatory nations have outlawed war as an
Speaker 1: instrument of national policy yep. And all secretary nations agreed
Speaker 1: to settle their disputes only by peaceful means some warm Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know that that'sting those get pretty violent. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta. It's about the leverage on the wrist. You know.
Speaker 1: People are messed up about that game. You know. I
Speaker 1: whenever I do a thumb war, I always turn my
Speaker 1: hat backwards. Let people know that I mean business. These
Speaker 1: sound great, eight, don't they in kind of a utopia
Speaker 1: sky blue you know, silver lining playbooks kind of way. Uh,
Speaker 1: it really sounds nice. It also sounds a little a
Speaker 1: little too optimistic if we're being nihilistic about Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is one of those things where it's great and it's
Speaker 1: it's great to say, and it feels good to tell
Speaker 1: other people this, But what do you do when the
Speaker 1: rubber hits the road? How do you enforce this? Fifteen
Speaker 1: nations originally signed the agreement, uh, and there were a
Speaker 1: lot of heavy hitters, and then eventually another forty seven
Speaker 1: nations followed. This meant that by nineteen or so, the
Speaker 1: majority of all the governments in the world had signed
Speaker 1: up for this and said, yeah, we're over warm, which
Speaker 1: makes sense from an optics standpoint. You know, it's to
Speaker 1: to use a a political term. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: politically smart. That's why all these other nations signed on,
Speaker 1: because it kind of it presented this kind of like
Speaker 1: codified optimism that the citizens of the world could get behind, because,
Speaker 1: like you said, there was total uh, fear and paranoia
Speaker 1: and war fatigue, and this is just the kind of
Speaker 1: legislation that makes you think that the powers that we
Speaker 1: really do have your best interest in mind. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's also to that point about optics. It's also very difficult.
Speaker 1: Once a majority consensus is achieved, it's incredibly difficult to
Speaker 1: be the one country that said, fuck you, guys, war
Speaker 1: is awesome and I'm not going to sign up for that,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Uh So, so people are
Speaker 1: feeling this international pressure and we don't know whether or
Speaker 1: not this is due to the Kellogg Brian's Pact, but
Speaker 1: there was a relative period of peace about four years
Speaker 1: after signing, and it first got tested the pact, that is,
Speaker 1: in one when Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. In something
Speaker 1: called the Mukden Incident, which started September. There's a lieutenant
Speaker 1: in the Quang Tung Army, part of the Imperial Japanese Army,
Speaker 1: who detonates a little bit of dynamite on a railway
Speaker 1: near Mukdun. The explosion doesn't even cause that much damage,
Speaker 1: but it does give the Japanese Army the opportunity to
Speaker 1: blame this on Chinese dissidents and justify a crackdown an invasion.
Speaker 1: Japan had signed a pact the US and the League
Speaker 1: of Nations. Still, they just didn't bother to take any
Speaker 1: action to enforce it. Okay. So the time, the US
Speaker 1: was absolutely being eaten alive by the Great Depression, so
Speaker 1: they had, me know, a lot of stuff on their minds,
Speaker 1: their collective mind um. Other nations in the League also
Speaker 1: had their own issues to deal with, um, So they
Speaker 1: did not want to spend their money, uh to help
Speaker 1: another country like China achieve independence. They're like, you know,
Speaker 1: we support you and everything, you know, uh spiritually but morally, morally,
Speaker 1: totally on the right side of history here, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't have any scratch to spare you. Um. So
Speaker 1: after Japan's kind of weird subterfuge war was sort of
Speaker 1: you know illuminated in nineteen thirty two, that's when Japan
Speaker 1: went into like full lockdown, uh international lockdown in terms
Speaker 1: of isolating themselves from the rest of the world. That
Speaker 1: ended with them pulling out of the League in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three. Yeah, and this played a role in, uh,
Speaker 1: the growing perception of people across the planet that the
Speaker 1: League of Nations was a nice idea but was not
Speaker 1: powerful enough to do the things that wanted to do,
Speaker 1: which ultimately, you know, would lead to the Unite Nations, which,
Speaker 1: as we know, a lot of these U n kind
Speaker 1: of um what do you call them? Uh? Not declarations
Speaker 1: resolutions right, Uh, they are not binding. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like this, we agree conceptually to do this stuff, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about it and write it down. But
Speaker 1: when you know, like you said earlier, the rubber hits
Speaker 1: the road or push comes to shove or any other cliches,
Speaker 1: there's nothing holding us to these. We're gonna do what
Speaker 1: we gotta do. It's the same as like outlawing war. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like it sounds like a really nice idea,
Speaker 1: but or isn't just a tool. It's a thing that
Speaker 1: happens between people when they get pushed to the extreme,
Speaker 1: and there's really no way around it. You know, you
Speaker 1: can't just remove the fight from the dog that is man.
Speaker 1: So this reminds me of something called the broken window theory,
Speaker 1: which you guys may have heard of. And the broken
Speaker 1: window theory is a sociological concept that applies in micro
Speaker 1: macro cosums. It's it's the idea that, um, there's a
Speaker 1: sort of domino effect, like people in a dirty alley
Speaker 1: will be more likely to litter than they would in
Speaker 1: a clean place, and that people in this This is
Speaker 1: where I'm going with this, Like, if one person is
Speaker 1: breaking the agreement, the treaty, the pact, then it makes
Speaker 1: it so much easier for other people or other countries
Speaker 1: rather to subsequently violate the agreement because everybody else is
Speaker 1: doing it, why can't we so? Or pretty much right
Speaker 1: after the ninety one Japanese invasion of Manchuria, we see
Speaker 1: Italy invade Ethiopia, the Spanish Civil War, Japan invades China,
Speaker 1: Germany is after Poland, the Soviet Union invades Finland, Germany
Speaker 1: invade war it yes, yes, just so. In the Sausage
Speaker 1: War episode, do check that out. It is grizzly and
Speaker 1: not as not as it's not the food fight. It
Speaker 1: sounds like it is a food fight, not fun at all. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a different like a food fight like and like
Speaker 1: you know, a high school rom com. It's a fight
Speaker 1: around food because people are starving and will slash throats
Speaker 1: to get food. But check it out. Fun, fun, fun
Speaker 1: little romp if you haven't already. And so, eventually, as
Speaker 1: Germany invades multiple European nations in Japan attacks the United
Speaker 1: States a new world war engulfs the planet World War two.
Speaker 1: This results and yes, more than sixty million people dying
Speaker 1: the deployment of atomic weaponry. Uh. Nobody was really talking
Speaker 1: about the Kellogg Briand Pact. Nobody was like, hey, hey, though,
Speaker 1: hey guys, we signed the thing. Everybody has a copy
Speaker 1: at their house. I think that's what we've been both
Speaker 1: saying this whole time. It's like, it's nice to comba
Speaker 1: ah and drum circle around the campfire with our you know,
Speaker 1: brethren of the world. But when it all comes down
Speaker 1: to it, war is just kind of part of who
Speaker 1: uh we are as human beings, and when threatened, you're
Speaker 1: going to fight back despite whatever you've agreed to on paper,
Speaker 1: especially when it's kind of toothless and there's really no
Speaker 1: way to enforce it at all. Yeah, they didn't define
Speaker 1: self defense. I think that's one of the biggest errors there.
Speaker 1: So these countries were invading other countries and they were saying, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 1: we're defending ourselves, sort of similar to the way you
Speaker 1: can hear the current government of Russia saying that their
Speaker 1: actions in Ukraine are defense measures due to the encroachment
Speaker 1: of NATO. Uh. Yeah. Now this is not to say
Speaker 1: that there weren't like positive things about this. We're we're
Speaker 1: sort of ragging on it a little bit. There were
Speaker 1: things that it defined that needed to be defined or
Speaker 1: that sort of flipped the definition. You know, we were
Speaker 1: talking about from the beginning, where the definition of war
Speaker 1: was so like vague and easy to justify. And in
Speaker 1: this if if if nothing else that was really really lasting.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of the things that were lasting. But
Speaker 1: I think the most important thing is it it kind
Speaker 1: of held people to account where it's like, if you're
Speaker 1: going to declare war and you are found to be
Speaker 1: the aggressor and did so under false pretenses or under
Speaker 1: like fully self serving pretenses, you can be tried as
Speaker 1: a war criminal. You know. For I believe that it's
Speaker 1: called crimes against peace. Isn't that right? Yeah, I believe
Speaker 1: that's correct in international law, it's planning or waging a
Speaker 1: war of aggression. Uh. Then there's also the related but
Speaker 1: distinct crimes against humanity. Yeah. This is such a noble,
Speaker 1: beautiful idea, and it's a shame that even even the
Speaker 1: people who wrote the book examining this, Hathaway and Shapiro
Speaker 1: say that the Kellogg Briand pack is today regarded often
Speaker 1: as historically insignificant because it had no enforcement mechanism, no
Speaker 1: binding consequences. It reads more of like, um, I mean,
Speaker 1: this sounds brutal, but it reads kind of like a
Speaker 1: promise to be good, like the way you would have to,
Speaker 1: you know, make the boy Scout pledge or something. Uh.
Speaker 1: There weren't any real consequences for not being brave, thrifty,
Speaker 1: clean and reverence and so on. I can make to obey,
Speaker 1: to obey the law of the pack. That's the part
Speaker 1: that I remember. Um, I was just a cub scotch.
Speaker 1: I think that's Richard Kipling. No, No, it's it's too
Speaker 1: to do and to help other people and to I
Speaker 1: to yeah, and to obey the law of the pack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you got me. That's the one who only got through
Speaker 1: cub Scouts and went to like one boy scout meeting
Speaker 1: and quit. I'm with you, buddy. He just then they
Speaker 1: fast tracked you right to eagle, didn't it, because you
Speaker 1: were just you were like year old. But here's the thing,
Speaker 1: you're right then. It was toothless. It was impossible to enforce.
Speaker 1: It did read like a sort of like gg up
Speaker 1: Golden Rule, but it actually is still around to this
Speaker 1: day and is the heart or the core of what
Speaker 1: we now know as the U N Charter. And it
Speaker 1: does you know sometimes uh these you know, making a
Speaker 1: stance if only conceptually matters. It is sort of like
Speaker 1: this ideal that we set and that we can look to,
Speaker 1: the idea of world peace. It's sort of a cliche,
Speaker 1: you know, because we know that's very, very difficult, one
Speaker 1: of those things that you use your genie wish on.
Speaker 1: But then also that could be one of those monkeys
Speaker 1: past situations couldn't because world peace could mean that just
Speaker 1: like literally it's impossible, so everyone just dies, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: Or it could be a situation like you see in
Speaker 1: Serenity the film. No spoilers, but check it out if
Speaker 1: you haven't seen it. It's worth the ride. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: there is something else you have to throw in here.
Speaker 1: And you may have heard this said on other shows.
Speaker 1: You may have read this another Works of Academia and
Speaker 1: so on, but you will often hear people describe the
Speaker 1: current age as the most peaceful time in human history.
Speaker 1: There's a matter of debate over how true that may
Speaker 1: actually be, but the fact of the matter is, since
Speaker 1: n nations have gone to war against other nations a
Speaker 1: lot less often, and when they have, most of the
Speaker 1: rest of the countries across the world have said, ah,
Speaker 1: this is not legit and we need to sanction you
Speaker 1: or punish you somehow. And it's it's strange because historians
Speaker 1: are still kind of, i would say, sussing out exactly
Speaker 1: what led to this drop in international war. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I mean, is it is it sort of the fear
Speaker 1: of mutually assured destruction? Is it sort of like playing
Speaker 1: by international kind of rules. It's hard to say, but
Speaker 1: we do know that not since the Russian seizure of
Speaker 1: Crimea and to any fourteen, has there been uh an
Speaker 1: example of a nation holding onto a territory that it
Speaker 1: just kind of land grabbed or that it like sort
Speaker 1: of went after just with imperialistic kind of goals and
Speaker 1: not you know, as self defense. So something changed, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you will. Also, this is where you'll hear
Speaker 1: phrases like packs Americana, like post World War two, US
Speaker 1: becoming the global superpower and America is kind of the
Speaker 1: world's police officer, and there, you know, keeping an American
Speaker 1: perspective of peace just because no other country really had
Speaker 1: the military or economic ability to challenge it for the
Speaker 1: driver's seat. But the rest of the world started to
Speaker 1: catch up, and more and more students of international affairs
Speaker 1: were predicting, by the nineties seven users so that we
Speaker 1: would see a surgeon armed conflicts across the world. And
Speaker 1: when that didn't happen, people started saying, well, maybe it's
Speaker 1: because nuclear weapons changed human civilization mutually should destruction Maybe
Speaker 1: exactly that I was I was saying getting out as well.
Speaker 1: And and just to backtrack ever so slightly, the Russian
Speaker 1: seizure of Crimea was one of a very few, a
Speaker 1: small handful of cases of of that sort of went
Speaker 1: against this rule that we're talking about. Are this new normal? Um,
Speaker 1: the idea that it's just not a smart move to
Speaker 1: go after other nations uh and try to grab their land. Um,
Speaker 1: it really does require a few more layers of like
Speaker 1: checking the boxes and making sure is this in fact
Speaker 1: a legitimate conflict or are we just being greedy and
Speaker 1: trying to take someone that we believe should be ours
Speaker 1: because we want it. We want it, it's our precious right.
Speaker 1: So that's uh, that's I always think of Gollum when
Speaker 1: I think of putting in crimea, is it fair? Is
Speaker 1: it funny to me? Yeah? Kind of? You know, it
Speaker 1: was a little bit of a gallam esque figure and
Speaker 1: a little more muscular, but he's got the he's got
Speaker 1: the bald thing going for him. That's a little funny.
Speaker 1: And so if we keep tracing the evolution of war
Speaker 1: and peace here, we know that historically democracies seem pretty
Speaker 1: hesitant to go to war with other democracies. There's also
Speaker 1: a strong argument that international trade has made countries much
Speaker 1: more interconnected, and it's made war less viable, less attractive.
Speaker 1: Like why am i? Am I really gonna go bomb
Speaker 1: the country where like the majority of factories that make
Speaker 1: the majority of stuff I buy are located. That's kind
Speaker 1: of an own goal, isn't it. So people have stopped
Speaker 1: doing that as much at least, well, here's the question.
Speaker 1: At least they've stopped doing it so much for now,
Speaker 1: because no one can reliably predict whether or when large
Speaker 1: scale conflict of World War three will spark up again.
Speaker 1: And you know, lest we look like we are three
Speaker 1: American residents or three US residents, uh, casting aspersions upon
Speaker 1: our global neighbors, we have to admit the US is
Speaker 1: not immune to these things at all. You you will
Speaker 1: see a lot of conflicts that the U S engages
Speaker 1: in phrased as wars of defense of some sort. And
Speaker 1: Max you had a really good point about just how
Speaker 1: important language matters when talking about this, and how what
Speaker 1: we've talked about today's episode has kind of shifted the
Speaker 1: way the US UM has sort of like titled some
Speaker 1: of these departments, right. Oh yeah, Like you know, if
Speaker 1: you listen to like historical stuff about like civil war
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, they're like the Secretary of War,
Speaker 1: Secretary of War, and it's like, wait, wait, wait, we
Speaker 1: don't have a Secretary War like nineteen forty seven. They're
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, we don't go to wars anymore. We
Speaker 1: have defense Secretary of Defense, you know, with one of
Speaker 1: thost like powerful positions in the government. Yeah, it's like,
Speaker 1: oh no, don't know. Anytime we have to use like
Speaker 1: our military, it is to defend Americans and freedom and stuff.
Speaker 1: It's like a little scary when you think about that
Speaker 1: was so I mean, whether you can trace it directly
Speaker 1: back to the Paris Peace Pack or the Kellogg Briand Pact,
Speaker 1: it definitely had an influence, especially because it it is
Speaker 1: to this day kind of the foundation of the the
Speaker 1: U n you know, charter so and again we know
Speaker 1: the UN can be pretty toothless too, but it does
Speaker 1: sort of set a standard and aspirational standard of how
Speaker 1: we would hope that we would, um you know, kind
Speaker 1: of get along with other nations, uh, in the world,
Speaker 1: at least the ones that are like member nations. And
Speaker 1: it paves the way to for large international organizations stuff
Speaker 1: like NATO, stuff like the UM Organization of American States
Speaker 1: and so on. Like these are groups of countries that
Speaker 1: have allied together with the goal being that they will
Speaker 1: provide i'm in defense and this is something really important
Speaker 1: to a lot of maybe smaller countries with smaller militaries,
Speaker 1: and that kind of interconnectedness that Kellogg Briand proposed is
Speaker 1: with US today right now. And there's a great example
Speaker 1: for mental flaws. Like as you are hearing this, if
Speaker 1: you're in the US, there are sixty seven countries that
Speaker 1: the US has promised to back up in a in
Speaker 1: a fight. Basically, yeah, we don't need to list them all,
Speaker 1: but there's certainly someones that I wouldn't have thought, uh
Speaker 1: necessarily would be in play South Korea, Pakistan, Israel obviously,
Speaker 1: but like Argentina, Barbados, the Bahamas, uh, Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Italy, Latvia.
Speaker 1: I mean some of these makes sense and like kind
Speaker 1: of track based on what we know about, like our
Speaker 1: most obvious alliances. Um, but some of them are a
Speaker 1: little unusual. Yeah, I mean, I gotta point this one
Speaker 1: out right here. If Iceland gets to the war, we're
Speaker 1: go fight with them. But Greenland, Greenland's on their own.
Speaker 1: You know what you did. Greenland also are packed with
Speaker 1: New Zealand technically ended in nineteen six. They know what
Speaker 1: they did. That's just gonna be my answer for all
Speaker 1: of these. No, it also doesn't Netherlands still on Greenland.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, Greenland is an autonomous country, but I think
Speaker 1: it's part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which really sounds
Speaker 1: like something they did from tax purposes, right, Like we're
Speaker 1: a country, but we're also Denmark. It just depends on,
Speaker 1: you know, when the light bill is due, I imagine.
Speaker 1: So this, this though, leads us to something really optimistic,
Speaker 1: even if it's optimisticalistically realistic. Yeah, this leads us to
Speaker 1: something beautiful, we can say, which is that even if
Speaker 1: this is an overly ambitious idea, even if it's what
Speaker 1: corporate America would call a big swing, it is a
Speaker 1: wonderful idea, a world without war. I don't know what
Speaker 1: it would take for us human civilization to reach that
Speaker 1: level of sophistication, but if I have to be completely
Speaker 1: honest and transparent, I think it would need to be
Speaker 1: an external threat. Like the biggest chance for global world
Speaker 1: peace is either a lack of scarcity, a post scarcity economy,
Speaker 1: or aliens are real. They're coming for us. Everybody put
Speaker 1: your own beef on the back burner. We gotta we
Speaker 1: gotta team up for this one. I don't know, what
Speaker 1: do you guys think, can world peace happen without aliens?
Speaker 1: I'm going in. I'm going in Star Streks. I'd be
Speaker 1: disappointed if you didn't. I mean, First Contact the movie,
Speaker 1: like when you know, the world obtaining world peace and
Speaker 1: became the paradise that it is in modern quote unquote
Speaker 1: Star Trek is when they met the Falcons spoilers right here, guys,
Speaker 1: after the first war flight, and you know they're like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, We're not the only like creatures in here.
Speaker 1: We have to all band together. Or we're gonna get
Speaker 1: wiped off the face of the earth. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I think war is very much like a by product
Speaker 1: you really kind of think about. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: other things that have to get fixed first before we
Speaker 1: you know, stop trying to invade each other's land and
Speaker 1: kill each other. Yeah, like you know, plagues, pandemics, Yeah exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing. But also you know population control. That's a
Speaker 1: whole another conversation there. But this is very interesting and
Speaker 1: very prescient for where we are now geo politically. And
Speaker 1: while the sort of headline for this is that it's
Speaker 1: like this pack that nobody really remembers anymore. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know if we mentioned this, but Kellogg did win
Speaker 1: the Nobel Peace Prize for his part in this agreement. Um,
Speaker 1: and I think it definitely set the tone in many ways.
Speaker 1: Even if we don't remember this one, particularly, its legacy
Speaker 1: lives on. Yeah. Absolutely and well said. And with that
Speaker 1: we want to pass the torch to you, fellow ridiculous historians.
Speaker 1: Thank you, of course, as always fortuning in do you
Speaker 1: think a world without war is possible in our time?
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear from you while you're molding that
Speaker 1: over big big shout out as always to our superproducer,
Speaker 1: Mr Max Williams. Big shout out to our own sometimes allies,
Speaker 1: sometimes nemesses Jonathan Strickland a k the quister oh Man,
Speaker 1: and shout out to Alex Williams. Speaking of passing Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: we can post our theme and also is Max Williams brother. Uh,
Speaker 1: speaking of passing the torch, I was re gifted a
Speaker 1: Max Williams gift over the holidays from Alex Williams. You
Speaker 1: got Mr Alex Williams a Suvie uh cooking machine and
Speaker 1: uh Alex is not much of a chef, he says,
Speaker 1: and he knows that I am. And he passed the
Speaker 1: torch of the Suvie cooker onto me. So for that, Max,
Speaker 1: I thank you because it's awesome. He actually had texted
Speaker 1: me about that, and I gave that to him so
Speaker 1: long ago. I forgot what a Suvie was. I had
Speaker 1: to look it up. Well, anyone that's interested in precision cooking,
Speaker 1: look up Susie. It's a wonderful way of it's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta do the reverse here, you suvie the thing
Speaker 1: in a hot water bath. This device that used to
Speaker 1: be like thousands of dollars when the technology first kind
Speaker 1: of was around. It keeps a container of water exactly
Speaker 1: the right temperature, and you seal your steak or protein
Speaker 1: or vegetables in a bag and then it cooks for
Speaker 1: like a couple of hours and it gets it to
Speaker 1: the exact right temperature. Um, why would I want meat
Speaker 1: that was cooked in water, you asked, Well, afterwards, it's
Speaker 1: cooked perfectly inside and then you see it on the
Speaker 1: outside and it is the best um cook you will
Speaker 1: ever enjoy in your or you have a sloppy steak,
Speaker 1: but uh, Tim Robinson aside. Also, big big shout out
Speaker 1: to Eve's Jeff Cope, big big shout out to Christopher Hasiotis,
Speaker 1: and big shout out to every world leader who managed
Speaker 1: to pursue diplomacy instead of bloody conflict. We know you're
Speaker 1: all listening. We'll see you next time. Books. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.