[9] The main text is very short:[2] Article IThe High Contracting Parties solemnly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies and renounce it as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.

Article IIThe High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.

[10] Borah and U.S. diplomat William Richards Castle Jr., Assistant Secretary of State, played key roles after Kellogg and Briand agreed on a two party treaty between the U.S. and France.

[11] It was originally intended as a bilateral treaty, but Castle worked to expand it to a multinational agreement that included practically the entire world.

After the Second World War, Barbados declared its accession to the treaty in 1971,[13] followed by Fiji (1973), Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica (both 1988), the Czech Republic and Slovakia (after Czechoslovakia dissolved in 1993), and, as a result of the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Slovenia (1992), Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia (both in 1994).

[14] The Free City of Danzig, which had joined the Pact in 1929, ceased to exist in 1939 and became a regular part of Poland after World War II.

In the United States, the Senate approved the treaty 85–1, with only Wisconsin Republican John J. Blaine voting against over concerns with British imperialism.

[19][20] The pact's central provisions renouncing the use of war, and promoting peaceful settlement of disputes and the use of collective force to prevent aggression, were incorporated into the United Nations Charter and other treaties.

[9] Legal scholars Scott J. Shapiro and Oona A. Hathaway have argued that the Pact inaugurated "a new era of human history" characterized by the decline of inter-state war as a structuring dynamic of the international system.

[24] They wrote in 2017: As its effects reverberated across the globe, it reshaped the world map, catalyzed the human rights revolution, enabled the use of economic sanctions as a tool of law enforcement, and ignited the explosion in the number of international organizations that regulate so many aspects of our daily lives.

[7] Political scientists Julie Bunck and Michael Fowler in 2018 argued that the Pact was: an important early venture in multilateralism.