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Secret treaty


A secret treaty is "an international agreement in which the contracting parties have agreed, either in the treaty instrument or separately, to conceal its existence or at least its substance from other states and the public."

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 a central instrument of balance-of-power diplomacy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries," but are rare today.

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 the German Empire and the Russian Empire (negotiated by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in order 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 should the other become 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 this era include the secretly concluded treaty of Ottoman–German alliance, concluded at 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" the two 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; under this treaty, 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 that "The present arrangement shall be held secret."


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