Contingencies, Constraints, and Collective Security: Perspectives on UN Involvement in International Disputes

Abstract

Arising from desire for a new and more wholesome diplomacy, as President Woodrow Wilson phrased it,1 the concept of collective security has over the years encompassed hope, delusion, and disillusion as well. From its beginning it was seen as an alternative to the crude machinations of the balance of power system that had led to World War I; and it was designed, by means of the League of Nations, to offer legitimate international authority to manage preponderant collective deterrent and to define and resist aggression. The scheme is collective in the fullest sense; it purports to provide security for all states, by the action of all states, against all states which might challenge the existing order by the arbitrary unleashing of their power. 2 But if the concept of collective security was thought to express an international order other than the mechanical maneuvering of balance of power system, it was not, at the same time, thought to be form of world government. Even while seeking an effective deterrent arrangement, President Roosevelt said of the United Nations, We are not thinking of superstate with its own police force and other paraphernalia of coercive power, 3although national con-