COLLECTIVE SECURITY

Abstract

This chapter explains the concept of collective security. The collective security institutionalizes the legal use of force and to reduce reliance on self-help as a rather crude instrument of law enforcement. The origins of the idea of collective security in State practice may be found in the efforts of the European powers to maintain peace and security within the 19th century international system which came to be known as the Concert of Europe. For the proper functioning of a collective security system a number of military, political and legal requirements have to be met. First essential condition is that there exists a sufficiently strong peacekeeping force, which ideally would always have to be stronger than the strongest single military force mobilized by an aggressor, or even by a group of aggressors. Second prerequisite for the proper functioning of collective security is a high standard of political solidarity or consensus among the member States.