Enforced Pacific Settlement or Guaranteed Mutual Defence? British and US Approaches to Collective Security in the Eclectic Covenant of the League of Nations

Abstract

It is rarely pointed out that in pioneering collective security the Covenant of the League of Nations contained two approaches to that policy: enforced pacific settlement favoured in moderate-minimum form by the British (and in particular Lord Robert Cecil); and guaranteed mutual defence, promoted by President Wilson. Though not incompatible, they had very different political resonances. Enforced pacific settlement could be introduced gently, by limiting the pacific-settlement procedures that states were required to follow. By contrast, guaranteed mutual defence looked like a commitment to fight, not for international law, but for every detail of a controversial political and territorial status quo. Thus the Covenant's central element was a British scheme for enforced delay and inquiry, and its Achilles’ heel was Article 10, insisted upon by Wilson but rejected by the Senate. In consequence, the most effective provisions of an incoherent Covenant proved to lie outside the area of collective security, particularly in preventive diplomacy and world services.