On April 6, 1927, on the tenth anniversary of the US entry into WWI, French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand proposes in an open letter a bilateral treaty between France and the US renouncing war between the two countries. US Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg, fearing a bilateral pact might be read as a defensive alliance obligating US intervention, transforms the proposal into a multilateral treaty open to all nations. Signed in Paris on August 27, 1928 by fifteen nations — including Germany, Italy, and Japan — and eventually ratified by up to 68 states, it contains two articles: renouncing war as an instrument of national policy, and requiring peaceful resolution of disputes. It is the first international agreement declaring the use of force to acquire territory illegal — a categorical break from earlier milestones regulating how war is waged, not whether aggressive war itself is legal. Per Hathaway and Shapiro's (2017) rigorous historical analysis, between 1816 and 1928 there was on average a military conquest every ten months worldwide; they argue the pact reshaped the world map, catalyzed the human rights revolution, and enabled economic sanctions as an international law enforcement tool. Lacking an enforcement mechanism (it did not prevent the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria or WWII), it nonetheless laid the direct legal foundation for the "crimes against peace" charge applied at the Nuremberg Trials.