Kellogg-Briand Research Articles

The Problem of the Prohibition of Wars of Aggression in the History of International Law

The turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was marked by the emergence of individual international acts that established certain restrictions on one of the traditional rights of states – the right to war. The need for their comprehensive study is obvious, since it was these acts that created a kind of foundation for the development of interstate cooperation in the direction of developing such legal norms that would serve as a reliable barrier against the outbreak of wars of conquest in the future. In this context, of primary importance is the 1919 Covenant of the League of Nations, whose articles, among other things, set out procedural requirements, the fulfilment of which was a necessary condition preceding the resort to armed force.The subject of the study is also the Paris Pact of 1928, which for the first time at the universal level states recorded a provision prohibiting the unleashing of aggressive wars. At the same time, the legal and grammatical interpretation of the provisions of this treaty source allowed the author to conclude that, in reality, the established prohibition was not absolute in nature, since not all situations related to the resort of states to armed force in their international relations can be classified as war. This state of affairs, where states had a real opportunity to circumvent the treaty-established prohibition, became an important prerequisite for continuing work to agree on an international definition of aggression.Other international acts that played a certain role in establishing a general prohibition of the use of force in international relations also became the subject of analysis in this paper.

Polish projects of moral disarmament in the interwar period: J. Pilsudski and J. Beck’s tactics

The article examines cooperation between Poland and the League of Nations in the interwar period. Specific attention is given to the role of Polish diplomacy in the development of the moral disarmament project. By “moral disarmament”, as opposed to material disarmament, implied the use of psychological, ethical, and ideological instruments to reduce aggression, create a favorable environment for peace, and encourage the resolution of conflicts through negotiation and diplomacy. Warsaw regularly emphasized the priority of moral disarmament over military disarmament, arguing that disarmament alone would not automatically end military conflicts if the will to fight persisted. These ideas fell on the fertile soil of diplomacy of the time and were perceived as an effective mechanism in the struggle for peace, as they organically fitted into the system of the Briand-Kellogg Pact and the Locarno agreements, representing a logical continuation and development of these ideas. However, despite their potential effectiveness, these projects were not destined to be implemented. This was partly due to the fact that already in the early 1930s, the actual head of Polish foreign policy, J. Piłsudski, came to the conclusion that the League of Nations as such, as well as the system of collective agreements, were ineffective. In that respect he preferred to build relations with neighbors bilaterally.

Kako Međunarodno javno pravo može doprineti održavanju međunarodnog mira i sigurnosti?

The article offers a comprehensive exploration of the complexities and nuances surrounding international peace and the legal mechanisms designed to achieve it. It delves into the historical evolution of public international law concerning war, peace, and international security. The article underscores the evolution of warfare as a means to achieve political objectives through sovereign rulers and states, leading to attempts at restraining warfare by humanitarian principles. It discusses the roles of the League of Nations, the Briand-Kellogg Pact, and the United Nations Charter in their attempts to curb the war. Despite peace being crucial for human rights and international behavior, wars persist. Consequently, the article scrutinizes the primary challenges associated with upholding global peace. Ultimately, it concludes that while public international law is pivotal in the pursuit of peace and justice, realizing these ideals necessitates the united determination of the collective will of all peoples to work towards that direction.

‘The Uncertainty that Persists’: The Bank of France, the Baltic Gold and the Non-Recognition of a Forcible Seizure of Territory during the Cold War

After the USSR annexed the Baltic states in 1940, the Bank of France refused to transfer Baltic gold reserves to Moscow and preserved them until the reestablishment of Baltic independence in 1991. This decision resulted from a slow but deep change in the conduct of international relations, namely the post-WWI effort to outlaw the use of force in international relations. By refusing to recognise Soviet rights over Baltic gold, France embraced the slowly emerging principle of ex injuria jus non oritur (‘law does not arise from injustice’) that was at the heart of Stimson doctrine (1932) and the Briand-Kellogg Pact (1928). To better understand the changes taking place on the macro-level (state conduct dealing with territorial change created by force), this article zooms on the level of domestic institutional actors and their ways of dealing with the Baltic problem in their daily practice. It explains how the French position regarding the Baltic question was negotiated between various institutional actors such as the French presidency, the Treasury, Foreign Ministry and the Bank of France. I argue that the key element shaping French policy towards the Baltic gold issue was the institutional self-protection logic of the Bank of France.

Law Against Empire, or Law for Empire? – American Imagination and the International Legal Order in the Twentieth Century

ABSTRACT This paper examines the relationship between national interest, diplomacy, and international law. It argues that, instead of hindering the development of U.S. imperial structures, international law functioned largely as a tool of U.S. empire and helped to maintain the international status quo during the first half of the twentieth century. Interwar American initiatives to create international arrangements that would produce a world without war were demonstrated most notably by the creation of the League of Nations (1919) and the Pact of Paris (1928). After World War II and decolonisation, international conditions changed profoundly. The U.S. retreated from international organisations and turned increasingly to unilateral action to pursue its priorities.

Prawo czy bezprawie? O legalności wprowadzenia Niemieckiej Listy Narodowościowej na Górnym Śląsku w świetle czwartej konwencji haskiej postrzeganej przez pryzmat wykładni prawa międzynarodowego przez prawników niemieckich i polskich

In the following article, I will attempt to present the matter of the German Nationality List in Upper Silesia from three historical and legal perspectives, as well as a brief overview of how it influenced the fate of the Upper Silesians and the Polish-German relations. After a short description of the most important results of the introduction of the German Nationality List in Upper Silesia and its impact on the relations between the Polish and German people, I will present the literal wording of the Fourth Hague Convention (with particular emphasis on the third chapter including the exercise of occupation) and show an example of its use after the First World War. In the next part, I will present the Polish legal interpretation of its provisions in the context of assessing the legality of introducing the German Nationality List in Upper Silesia. In the last part, I will present the different standpoint of German lawyers to achieve my main research goal, which was to present (in a comparative way) the importance of the legal interpretation in international law – although texts of the conventions are most often formulated clearly and initially their wording does not raise any doubts in the interpreter, they create the possibility of a broad interpretation, often openly undermining the foundations of the entire international order. Although the example itself is historical, the subject of differences in the interpretation of international law is particularly important nowadays, with the advancing globalization and international integration. The article uses both the texts of legal acts (the Fourth Hague Convention and the Briand-Kellogg Pact) and their subsequent interpretations by Polish and German lawyers. In the part concerning Polish-German relations in the light of the German Nationality List in Upper Silesia, the memories of witnesses of history were also used.

Camilo Barcia Trelles on Francisco de Vitoria: At the Crossroads of Carl Schmitt’s Grossraum and James Brown Scott’s ‘Modern International Law’

Abstract Carl Schmitt’s The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (1950) undertook a re-interpretation of the modern origins of the discipline of international law, placing Vitoria at its pivot, as the Spanish international law professor Camilo Barcia Trelles (1888–1977) had done before. Barcia’s work had a strong influence on some of the seminal pieces on international law and geopolitics that Schmitt wrote in the period from 1941 to 1950. This was the case for Schmitt’s historical mythology of the opposition between sea and earth and its juridical consequence, his doctrine of the Grossraum, which had as its basis Barcia’s account of the Monroe Doctrine, and also of Schmitt’s critique of the ‘discrimination of war’ formalized in the Kellogg–Briand Pact. According to Barcia, the exclusion of European powers from the American continent by the United States as a rising hegemon was transformed – thanks to its domination of the sea – into the global reach of a world police power. Barcia did not agree with Brown Scott’s transformation of international law through American liberal internationalism into ‘modern international law’. While Brown Scott and Schmitt were competing for two opposing vernaculars of the discipline in search for a new definition and to shape it, Barcia was instrumental in the opposed efforts of these two apparently very dissimilar representatives of international law by ushering Vitoria into their service.

1928 – The Pact of Paris

This paper revisits the 1928 Pact of Paris (also known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact) with special consideration for German and Austrian scholarship during the interwar period and embed it in its historical context, from the establishment of the League of Nations to the Nuremberg Tribunals all the way to the United Nations Charter. Given that the 2016 election of Donald Trump as US president and the parallel rise of China prompts us to contemplate whether we might be witnessing the return of a quasi-Cold War or Great Power-politics, a few concluding thoughts on the waning ‘liberal world order’ and the comeback of (neo-)realist thinking are also warranted.

The Sine Qua Non of Carl Schmitt’s political thinking: The issue of interstate relations

This article demonstrates the pre-eminent place the issue of interstate relations occupies in Carl Schmitt’s political thinking between the early 1920s and early 1940s. First, I discuss how Schmitt’s understanding of interstate relations develops from 1923 until the Nazi’s taking power. By focusing on his critique of imperialism and universalism in international law during this period, I reveal that his engagement with the Monroe Doctrine, the Covenant of the League of Nations and the Kellogg–Briand Pact results in a change in his views in Roman Catholicism and Political Form in which he talks about the possibility of a world state in the form of a League of Nations with supra-state and supra-sovereignty powers. Second, I show to what extent the novel international circumstances created by the emergence of the Nazi rule leads him to elaborate the concepts of the Reich and the Groβraum in addition to his continuing engagement with the concepts of imperialism and universalism. By accentuating the development of his interest in the concepts of imperialism, universalism, the Reich and the Groβraum, I argue that the question of interstate relations is the sine qua non of Schmitt’s political thinking. I conclude by asserting that studying Schmitt’s political thinking in its connection with his interest in interstate relations provides a promising path for leftist political theorists to understand, explain and reimagine the contemporary global order.

Carl Schmitt and the Challenges of Interwar Internationalism. Against Weimar – Geneva – Versailles

ABSTRACT In the aftermath of World War I, liberal internationalist politicians and intellectuals attempted to lay the ground for a new world order, based on trade and law. Their ambitious project entailed the building of international institutions, as well as the formal outlawing of war with the Kellogg-Briand Pact in 1928. Among the fiercest critics of the liberal internationalist project of the interwar years was the near-infamous German jurist Carl Schmitt. Today, Schmitt’s thought is regularly referenced as an inspiration behind twenty-first century anti-globalism and its attempts at reinforcing national sovereignty and ‘take back control’ from international institutions. However, Schmitt did not believe that a return to the principles of statehood from before World War I was possible. Rather than an order based on nineteenth century principles regarding the nation state, he advocated the formation of a new political world order that would be able to face the forces of modernity and internationalism. In this article, I chart the challenges of interwar internationalism as Schmitt saw them, together with his alternative solution. Schmitt’s alternative entails a recognition of how international and national order has become entangled in a complex way, forcing the rethinking of traditional conceptions of statehood.

Monarchism, International Relations, and the Continuing Irish Revolution, 1926–29

ABSTRACT The article deals with how the Irish pro-Treaty elite approached the question of the monarchy, partition, and the state’s place within the British commonwealth of nations and the wider international community. Rejecting the notion that this monarchism was indicative of a counter-revolution, the article contends that it was anti-imperial in nature. In this regard, it breaks new ground in our understanding not only of the philosophy of the pro-Treaty governments, but also in the connection between their vision and that of anti-Treaty groupings. It focuses on how Irish statesmen's ideas about the place of the crown in the commonwealth influenced their behaviour on the international stage, particularly the 1926 Imperial Conference, the 1927 Geneva Naval Conference, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact, illustrating that while the youngest dominion was certainly the most obstreperous it was not wholly convincing in its ability to win over the other dominions to its point of view. Ultimately, it contends that the primary motivation behind the state’s diplomatic efforts was the achievement of political independence by non-violent means, and that this should compel historians to reconsider some of the central features of the counter-revolutionary thesis.

How Many Cheers for the Peace Pact?

The Internationalists, the much-praised study of Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro, fails badly in its estimate of the Kellogg-Briand Pact (the Peace Pact of 1928) and its larger characterization of the “Old World Order” and the “New World Order.” The authors unfairly excoriate Grotius as having “made the world safe for war,” and they mischaracterize the law of neutrality and the status of jus in bello in traditional international law. They misread the significance of the Peace Pact and its relationship to the League of Nations. They also offer a distorted view of the New World Order, mistaking the lineaments of the 70 years that followed World War II. The publicists of the law of nations, whose work made a deep imprint on America’s founders, are condemned by the authors as bearers of iniquitous principles, but they still have much to teach us.

The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World by Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro

Reviewed by: The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World by Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro Paul Schue (bio) The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World. By Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017. Pp. 581. $30.00 cloth; $20.00 paper; $14.99 e-book) Some works of history—Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States comes to mind—manage to take the well-known facts of an era and recast them in a new light that dramatically changes their meaning. The effect is something like suddenly seeing a black and white historical photograph rendered in color. Though not as [End Page 423] earthshaking as Zinn's work, The Internationalists, by Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro, creates the same feeling by giving an international history of the last several hundred years through the lens of the 1928 Paris Peace Pact, also known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact. For most students of modern history, the Kellogg-Briand Pact is a moment of well-meaning, high-minded idealism rendered tragically ironic by the horrific wars that followed it. Hathaway and Shapiro, however, argue that the pact represents a turning point in international law that has profoundly shaped the world since it was enacted. To make this case, they recount many episodes in European and world history, beginning with Grotius' formulation of what Hathaway and Shapiro call the "Old World Order," which made war a legal and necessary extension of politics, and ending with what they call the "New World Order" of today, which outlaws aggressive war, and uses economic sanctions to maintain international order. Through a series of highly readable profiles of major and minor figures like Grotius, Frank Kellogg, Robert Jackson, Hersch Lauterpacht, and Hans Kelsen, as well as skillfully sketched vignettes of Perry's opening of Japan, the writing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and the Nuremberg Tribunal, the book presents both an intellectual history of the New World Order, and a global legal/political/military overview of the twentieth century. It is here that the book offers a dramatic new perspective, for as it rehearses the familiar narratives of Japanese imperialism or the rise of the Third Reich, it makes a persuasive case that the reactions of the League of Nations, as well as the major powers such as Great Britain and the United States were in line with an assertion of the New World Order. This comes into sharpest focus in the chapter on the Nuremberg Tribunal, in which Hathaway and Shapiro make a powerful case that the entire trial was about the Old World Order versus the New, thus casting the familiar events in a new light. The Internationalists ends with a forceful defense of the New World Order against the threats that currently surround it, including Donald Trump, Brexit, ethnic nationalism, and Russia. The final [End Page 424] chapter casts ISIS as an ideological rejection of the New World Order. Beyond specific events, the authors use the Correlates of War database of territorial changes between 1812 and 2014 to make a convincing case that the number of permanent territorial conquests in the world has plummeted since the 1928 Peace Pact. Overall, the book is powerful in its argument, intriguing in its vision, and eminently enjoyable as a narrative. This is not to say that it is without shortcomings. The authors largely ignore the connections between the New World Order and classical liberalism, and so it does not do a very good job of explaining where the ideas of the New World Order came from, and why they emerged when they did. There are also a few factual errors, such as the assertion that Schleicher, not von Papen, engineered Hitler's appointment to the chancellorship of Germany. In the end, however, these are quibbles about a powerful and fascinating book. Paul Schue PAUL SCHUE teaches history at Northland College, in Ashland, Wisconsin. His work has appeared in Sexing Political Culture in the History of France, France and Its Spaces of War: Experience, Memory, Image, and various academic journals. Copyright © 2019 Kentucky Historical Society

The Rise and Fall of Euro-American Inter-State War

The Rise and Fall of Euro-American Inter-State War Nicholas Mulder (bio) Keywords internationalism, war, peace, Kellogg-Briand Treaty, history of international law, aggression, conquest, self-defense, sanctions The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017. xxii + 430 pp. If one asked a group of historians, political scientists, and lawyers what they would consider the single most important treaty or international agreement of the last two centuries, one could expect a familiar set of names to be cited: Vienna, Versailles, the Geneva Conventions, Bretton Woods, Yalta, San Francisco, the GATT, Rome, Helsinki. Few would name the 1928 General Treaty for the Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy, also known as the Paris Peace Pact and the Kellogg-Briand Pact, as the most significant. Yet this is the claim put forward by Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro in The Internationalists. The book is an original and provocative work that is grippingly written and makes an ambitious set of arguments spanning several different fields including history, international relations, political science, and international law. Hathaway and Shapiro are distinguished legal scholars at Yale Law School, where Hathaway teaches and works mainly on international law (besides her legal scholarship, she has served as Special Counsel to the General Counsel for National Security Law at the Pentagon); Shapiro holds appointments at the Law School as well as the Philosophy Department at Yale. The Internationalists contains three layers of analysis. The first recovers the Kellogg-Briand Pact and underscores its singular importance to world history. Yet the Paris Peace Pact emerges from the book not so much as a significant episode in its own right—only a dozen or so pages are devoted to the way the treaty actually came to be—but rather as a pivotal point in the history of international law since the early seventeenth century. The essential argument of the book therefore resides at a deeper level, in what Hathaway and Shapiro call the turn from the Old World Order to the New World Order. The Old World Order is the umbrella term they use to describe the ensemble of basic assumptions underlying the law of nations between the early seventeenth and early twentieth century. Its premise was that war was the basic legal procedure for righting wrongs. International law did not care about which party to a conflict possessed a rightful claim, and whose cause was therefore the most just. War was the main arbiter of inter-state disputes, with the spoils and the mantle of justice accruing [End Page 133] to the victor. Four legal rules followed from this: first, territorial conquest was legal; second, gunboat diplomacy was normal and permitted; third, economic sanctions as an alternative to war did not exist, because imposing them violated the impartiality that was essential to remaining legally neutral; and fourth, once a state of war existed, soldiers could kill, maim, and slaughter without being held individually accountable. Hathaway and Shapiro anoint Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) as the archetypal thinker of this order. Although they trace the key features of his thinking, their picture of the Old World Order does not depend on Grotius's ideas alone. Hathaway and Shapiro provide a lucid tour d'horizon of the early modern philosophy of the laws of war. They point out the importance of war manifestos as expressions of grievances, shedding light on an understudied topic among historians of international law. Another chapter illuminates how the existence of a legal state of war allowed individuals to get away with murder. The overall picture that emerges is that of a legal universe that is radically different from the one we inhabit today. For centuries, war was not only tolerated, but also had an important regulative function in the international order because there were no overarching principles of right and wrong—in short, no substantive universal understanding of justice—upon which all countries agreed. The Old World Order is a stylized depiction of a historical era, but this is the point of the analysis: to create an ideal type of how the laws of war functioned. One of...

From Versailles to the Kellogg-Briand Pact: Prohibiting and Justifying Aggression in the Interbellum

Abstract: The article is a historical re-description of international legal debates concerning the ius ad bellum in the Interwar period (1919–1936). Using a core/periphery heuristic, it is demonstrated that the normative changes created by the League Covenant and the Kellogg-Briand Pact were being drafted and interpreted by the great powers in a way that still allowed them to justify military interventions in their peripheries. Even military violence between Western states could only be partially outlawed by these instruments. Legal uncertainties produced during the drafting of the new instruments could readily be exploited by the Western dominated international legal discourse. And yet, with the principle of sovereign equality on the rise in the Interbellum, and the battle of semi-periphery governments against the ‘standard of civilisation', traditional justifications for military violence came under increasing pressure. At that very moment, international lawyers in the core introduced a broader understanding of self-defence, gradually replacing former justifications for military interventions both within the core and in the peripheries of Western powers. All of this taken together in practice arguably consumed a substantial part of the alleged ‘progress' made by international legal pacifism in the Interbellum.

A PREDECESSOR OF THE 2ND WORLD WAR DURING ATATÜRK S ERA AND A HISTORY OF CREATION OF AN AMERICAN CAMP: US CHIEF OF STAFF S TURKEY VISIT RAMIFICATIONS TO THE PRESENT

It is a social memory among many communities of the 20th century as well as a presentation within the academic circles and publications that the 2nd World War was triggered in the Balkans due to the conflicts among various ethnical groups; and political developments following the war outbreak led the creation of the American and the Soviet camps. This widespread conviction also reveals that the war created a conducive atmosphere for America to rise as a world hegemon power in world affairs superseding the roles of the imperialistic European countries such as England and France. However, this American march to political dominancy was neither peculiar to the developments of the 2nd World War nor the camping of the countries could be restricted to the events following the 1939 German occupation of Poland. Potential and significant circumstantial evidence had existed showing that Washington’s ostensible non-imperialistic discourse and methods were in fact to attract the nations trying to avoid the yoke of the imperialistic powers of Europe: And once the British, French and others’ military and political strengths were shaken and diminished, the US was ready to assume the their role and its dominancy in world affairs became inevitable. This aspiration had particular historic roots dating back to the American missionary infiltrations especially into the Ottoman lands since 1820s when Washington carefully avoided imperialistic actions and discourse but pacifically penetrated the territories with benevolent means such as schools, hospitals as well as charity. These engagements seemingly working for the goodwill of the Ottoman communities endangered the unity of the empire by creating nationalistic aspirations within the minds of the non-Muslim communities and provoked the ethnical revolts against the Porte. Thus, the US had not have to start a war against the Ottoman State, request territories unlike did the imperialistic powers of Europe in the 19th century though American methods were as destructive as the European concerning the Ottoman Empire. Similar attempts continued even during the early years of the Turkish Republic and Ataturk’s era. The US did not want the new republic fall into the Soviet protector umbrella and event invited Ankara to participate in the new peace initiatives such as the Briand-Kellogg Pact. American attempts could be regarded as the predecessor of the camping of the world countries in late 30s and in fact which was very visible after the 2nd World War. Washington wanted to give message that she would not let Turkey fall into the Soviet protective wings. A significant example of this message as well as the sign of the strategic importance given to Turkey by the US was the General Douglas MacArthur’s Turkey visit in 1932 as a part of his Europe and Middle East program.

Culture of Peace and the Fundamental Human Rights

Peace and different challenges we are currently facing in Europe, the need for a coordinated political European effort for promoting public policies and allocating appropriate resources in supporting a refreshed culture of peace inside and outside Europe represent the essence of this article. War and peace, international security, military tools and education, the priorities of the European Union are the basic references used on this purpose. From a historical perspective, the desire for peace of the humankind was supported in the 20th Century by important decisions taken by the international society, such as the signature of the Briand-Kellogg Pact (1928), the London Convention for the definition of the aggression (1933) and the UN Charter (1945). Nowadays, an appropriate and coordinated European political, economic, social and security management of the huge migration flow, generated by the conflicts in some other parts of the World, of terrorism and radicalization, the situation of different groups based on faith (for instance the Christians) should facilitate the promotion of a peaceful environment between and within the nations and discourage the tensions, conflicts and radicalization.

Hans Wehberg and the jus belli ac pacis in interwar international law

ABSTRACT This article unearths German international lawyer and pacifist Hans Wehberg's plan to outlaw war in the interwar period. It begins by identifying Wehberg's criticism of the permissibility of defensive war with reference to the Locarno Pact, the Geneva Protocol, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact. It then turns to his plan to transfer the sovereign jus belli ac pacis to the Council of the League of Nations. In the last section, the article examines Wehberg's engagement with American pacifists such as James Shotwell and Charles Morrison, as well as politicians such as Senator William Borah, to explain Wehberg's proposal for the creation of a ‘Court for the Outlawry of War.’ In so doing, this article seeks to reclaim a German voice in the interwar movement to outlaw war as well as to solidify the connection between international law and pacifism.

Punishing wars of aggression: conceptualising Nazi State criminality and the US policy behind shaping the crime against peace, 1943-1945

This paper refocuses attention on what has been seen as one of the most important limbs of the Nuremberg Charter – the crime against peace, or aggressive war. It looks at the legal and political dimensions that motivated such a characterisation by figures behind the debate, and the various, at times uncertain steps, in bringing forth the designation based on breaches of the Kellogg–Briand Pact within the milieu of other traditional offences. Particular attention is given to the philosophical underpinnings of the crime against peace regarding individual German guilt, notably members of the Nazi leadership, with an examination of influences that proved critical in creating a punishable crime at international law. This paper argues that, despite being of continuing interest to civic groups, such an offence continues to trouble legislators and lawyers, rooted as it is in the focus on war as itself criminal.

G20 at Hamburg: America Jilted, World Wilted

The post-US withdrawal of Paris Pact at Hamburg was not adequately appropriative of the world mood. Such congregations and jamborees do create artificial camaraderie sans any tangible results, and the same has been witnessed at the Hamburg-Germany. Trump Presidency would be remembered for its biggest disservice to the cause of maintaining climate ecology on the planet earth. Trump administration has emasculated the Paris Pact on Climate Change by shamelessly abandoning it. However, trade, security, and economic agenda have also met the predictable permutations. Despite the fact of an optimistic environment, there has been a sense of deja vu among the members of the grouping at the Hamburg regarding many issues, particularly about climate change. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made a statement, “I think it’s very clear that we could not reach consensus, but the differences were not papered over, they were clearly stated” as reported by the BBC News on July 08, 2017. But the consensus is the hallmark of such organizations and that was conspicuous by its absence to the cheers of US capitalist and protectionist classes. But, of late, it is being seen that these groupings have been failing in their mandate. Therefore, such a trend is not good for the world as a whole and raises highly annoying questions like; has G20 lost its relevance? What is the utility of such groupings like G8, G20, G77, or other regional alliances? Are these gatherings merely reduced to talking territories, photo-ops, and political tourism at the expense of ordinary taxpayers? What is the relevance of UNO in the contemporary world? International institutions like G20 must not be made hostage to one or few countries. In fact, it was an occasion to underline the proactive approach of G20 on its agenda implementation within the stipulated time frame. Moreover, G20 could have put its foot down on all outstanding issues excluding the US. The President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker has rightly designated the EU is in an “elevated battle mood” to resort to the countermeasures on the US sidling to the policy of protectionism to promote the US steel industry.