The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World

Yale legal scholars Hathaway and Shapiro adopt a fundamentally revisionist perspective on the oft-dismissed Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928, positing that the agreement “marked the beginning of the end” of war between states. The pact inspired the human-rights revolution, the use of economic sanctions, and the creation of international organizations focusing on peace. In the wake of WWI, the Kellogg-Briand Pact stipulated that “military might no longer made legal right.” The notion was quickly tested, but despite the legal and academic hairsplitting that culminated in the Nuremberg trials, the authors provocatively argue that, since 1945, conquest “has nearly disappeared” as “an accepted procedure for changing borders.” The persistence of conflict is best explained by two factors outside the pact’s parameters. One is “uncertain sovereignty,” where rightful authority over territory is difficult to determine. The other is violence originating within weak states—whose survival is facilitated by the delegitimizing of “predators in the international ecosystem.” The work concludes with a discussion of sanctioning rule breakers until they comply; the authors describe “outcasting” as a step in the right direction, as a way to limit war’s physical and social destruction. Hathaway and Shapiro’s conclusion can be debated—but not easily dismissed. Agent: Elyse Cheney, Elyse Cheney Literary. (Sept.)