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Collective Security: The Validity of an Ideal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Howard C. Johnson  and
Gerhart Niemeyer
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Extract

Collective security is a term that has been applied to a variety of different arrangements. Originally and traditionally, it denoted the League of Nations type of security system. Lately, it has been used to describe the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with its inter-governmental machinery, as well as other regional or non-regional defense pacts

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , February 1954 , pp. 19 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1954

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References

1 Letter to Senator Hitchcock, March 8, 1920 as quoted in Padover, Saul K., Wilson's Ideals, American Council on Public Affairs, Washingaton, D.C., 1942, p. 106Google Scholar.

2 Postwar Foreign Policy Preparation, 1939–1945, Department of State, Washington, D.C., 1949, p. 472–483Google Scholar.

3 Address of Dr. Leo Pasvolsky, University Illinois, May 2, 1950.

4 Revision of the United Nations Charter, Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, February 1950, p. 4.

5 Ibid., p. 26.

6 The Uniting for Peace Resolution introduced into the United States subsequent to the United Nations' resistance in Korea has sometimes been thought of as a reversal of the state Department position on collective security referred to above. While this is not the place to analyse the Uniting for Peace program, the fact should be noted that, whereas the Thomas Douglas resolution would establish a legal commitment to assist the victim of an armed attack with armed forces in every case and anywhere in the world, the Uniting for Peace resolution contains no such commitment, however strong may be its presumption that nations would honor a recommendation for collective action.

7 Webster, , The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh, 1931, p. 157Google Scholar.

8 Security, Can We Retrieve It (1939), p. 155.

9 11 30, 1950, quoted in Vital Speeches, Vol. 17, p. 215Google Scholar.

10 The fact must not be overlooked that after World War I, the United States, Great Britain and France, which represented both the cradle and the flowering of the Western liberal tradintion, had a virtual monopoly of the world's military force, and yet, without being menacec by a powerful aggressor, did not proceed either to pool these forces as a basis for world security or put a stop to their own rivalry for power.