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Secret treaty
A secret treaty is a treaty (international agreement) in which the contracting state parties have agreed to conceal the treaty's existence or substance from other states and the public. Such a commitment to keep the agreement secret may be contained in the instrument itself or in a separate agreement.
According to one compilation of secret treaties published in 2004, there have been 593 secret treaties negotiated by 110 countries and independent political entities since the year 1521. Secret treaties were highly important in the balance of power diplomacy of 18th and 19th century Europe, but are rare today.
Secret treaties have been prevalent in authoritarian states where rulers use the treaties to suppress domestic opposition and unrest.
The "elaborate alliance systems" among European powers, "each secured by a network of secret treaties, financial arrangements, and 'military understandings'", are commonly cited as one of the causes of World War I. For example, the Reinsurance Treaty of June 1887 between Germany and Russia, which was negotiated by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck for Germany to avoid a two-front war, was a "highly secret treaty" in which the two powers pledged a three-year period to remain neutral if the other became involved in a war with a third country unless Germany attacked Russia's longstanding ally, France, or Russia attacked Germany's longstanding ally, Austria-Hungary.
The use of "secret agreements and undertakings between several allies or between one state and another" continued throughout World War I. Some of them were irreconcilably inconsistent, "leaving a bitter legacy of dispute" at the end of the war. Some important secret treaties of the era include the one for the German–Ottoman alliance, which was concluded in Constantinople on August 2, 1914. That treaty provided that Germany and Turkey would remain neutral in the conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, but if Russia intervened "with active military measures", both countries would become military allies. Another important secret treaty was the Treaty of London, concluded on April 26, 1915, in which Italy was promised certain territorial concessions in exchange for joining the war on the Triple Entente (Allied) side. Another secret treaty was the Treaty of Bucharest, concluded between Romania and the Triple Entente powers (Britain, France, Italy, and Russia) on August 17, 1916 in which Romania pledged to attack Austria-Hungary and not to seek a separate peace in exchange for certain territorial gains. Article 16 of that treaty provided, "The present arrangement shall be held secret."
After the outbreak of World War I, public opinion in many countries demanded more open diplomacy. After the October Revolution brought the Bolsheviks to power in Russia in November 1917, Leon Trotsky published the secret treaties that the Tsarist government had made with the Entente powers, including the Treaty of London and the Constantinople Agreement. He proposed the abolition of secret diplomacy. That move caused international embarrassment and "a strong, sustained reaction against secret diplomacy".
US President Woodrow Wilson was an opponent of secret diplomacy and viewed it as a threat to peace. He made the abolition of secret diplomacy the first point of his Fourteen Points, set forth in a speech to Congress, on January 8, 1918, after the country had entered the war. Wilson "dissociated the United States from the Allies' earlier secret commitments and sought to abolish them forever once the war had been won". The Fourteen Points were based on a draft paper prepared by Walter Lippmann and his colleagues on the Inquiry, Isaiah Bowman, Sidney Mezes, and David Hunter Miller. Lippmann's draft was a direct response to the secret treaties, which Lippman had been shown by Secretary of War Newton D. Baker. Lippman's task was "to take the secret treaties, analyze the parts which were tolerable, and separate them from those which we regarded as intolerable, and then develop a position which conceded as much to the Allies as it could, but took away the poison. ... It was all keyed upon the secret treaties. That's what decided what went into the Fourteen Points."
Wilson repeated his Fourteen Points at the Paris Peace Conference, where he proposed a commitment to "open covenants ... openly arrived at" and the elimination of "private international understandings of any kind [so that] diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view". The Wilsonian position was codified in Article 18 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which mandated that all League of Nations members states register every treaty or international agreement with the League secretariat and that no treaty was binding unless so registered. That led to the rise of the treaty registration system "although not every treaty that would have been subject to registration was duly registered".
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Secret treaty
A secret treaty is a treaty (international agreement) in which the contracting state parties have agreed to conceal the treaty's existence or substance from other states and the public. Such a commitment to keep the agreement secret may be contained in the instrument itself or in a separate agreement.
According to one compilation of secret treaties published in 2004, there have been 593 secret treaties negotiated by 110 countries and independent political entities since the year 1521. Secret treaties were highly important in the balance of power diplomacy of 18th and 19th century Europe, but are rare today.
Secret treaties have been prevalent in authoritarian states where rulers use the treaties to suppress domestic opposition and unrest.
The "elaborate alliance systems" among European powers, "each secured by a network of secret treaties, financial arrangements, and 'military understandings'", are commonly cited as one of the causes of World War I. For example, the Reinsurance Treaty of June 1887 between Germany and Russia, which was negotiated by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck for Germany to avoid a two-front war, was a "highly secret treaty" in which the two powers pledged a three-year period to remain neutral if the other became involved in a war with a third country unless Germany attacked Russia's longstanding ally, France, or Russia attacked Germany's longstanding ally, Austria-Hungary.
The use of "secret agreements and undertakings between several allies or between one state and another" continued throughout World War I. Some of them were irreconcilably inconsistent, "leaving a bitter legacy of dispute" at the end of the war. Some important secret treaties of the era include the one for the German–Ottoman alliance, which was concluded in Constantinople on August 2, 1914. That treaty provided that Germany and Turkey would remain neutral in the conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, but if Russia intervened "with active military measures", both countries would become military allies. Another important secret treaty was the Treaty of London, concluded on April 26, 1915, in which Italy was promised certain territorial concessions in exchange for joining the war on the Triple Entente (Allied) side. Another secret treaty was the Treaty of Bucharest, concluded between Romania and the Triple Entente powers (Britain, France, Italy, and Russia) on August 17, 1916 in which Romania pledged to attack Austria-Hungary and not to seek a separate peace in exchange for certain territorial gains. Article 16 of that treaty provided, "The present arrangement shall be held secret."
After the outbreak of World War I, public opinion in many countries demanded more open diplomacy. After the October Revolution brought the Bolsheviks to power in Russia in November 1917, Leon Trotsky published the secret treaties that the Tsarist government had made with the Entente powers, including the Treaty of London and the Constantinople Agreement. He proposed the abolition of secret diplomacy. That move caused international embarrassment and "a strong, sustained reaction against secret diplomacy".
US President Woodrow Wilson was an opponent of secret diplomacy and viewed it as a threat to peace. He made the abolition of secret diplomacy the first point of his Fourteen Points, set forth in a speech to Congress, on January 8, 1918, after the country had entered the war. Wilson "dissociated the United States from the Allies' earlier secret commitments and sought to abolish them forever once the war had been won". The Fourteen Points were based on a draft paper prepared by Walter Lippmann and his colleagues on the Inquiry, Isaiah Bowman, Sidney Mezes, and David Hunter Miller. Lippmann's draft was a direct response to the secret treaties, which Lippman had been shown by Secretary of War Newton D. Baker. Lippman's task was "to take the secret treaties, analyze the parts which were tolerable, and separate them from those which we regarded as intolerable, and then develop a position which conceded as much to the Allies as it could, but took away the poison. ... It was all keyed upon the secret treaties. That's what decided what went into the Fourteen Points."
Wilson repeated his Fourteen Points at the Paris Peace Conference, where he proposed a commitment to "open covenants ... openly arrived at" and the elimination of "private international understandings of any kind [so that] diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view". The Wilsonian position was codified in Article 18 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which mandated that all League of Nations members states register every treaty or international agreement with the League secretariat and that no treaty was binding unless so registered. That led to the rise of the treaty registration system "although not every treaty that would have been subject to registration was duly registered".