Non-aggression pact

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A non-aggression pact is an international treaty between two or more states, agreeing to avoid war or armed conflict between them and resolve their disputes through peaceful negotiations. Sometimes such a pact may include a pledge of avoiding armed conflict even if participants find themselves fighting third countries, including allies of one the participants.

It was a popular form of international agreement in the 1920s and 1930s, but has largely fallen out of use after the Second World War. The most famous is the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Germany, which lasted until the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. Examples of such pacts in history:

During negotiations between the United States and North Korea in 2003, North Korea offered to eventually eliminate its nuclear weapons program if both sides signed a non-aggression treaty (along with multiple other conditions). As of this date, however, a nonaggression treaty between the two has yet to be formulated. The United States government has traditionally been reluctant to sign non-aggression pacts in general, since U.S. policy is to avoid armed conflict whenever possible, and to seek peaceful relations with all countries.^{[citation needed]}