Collective security
Collective security is arrangement between states in which the institution accepts that an attack on one state is the concern of all and merits a collective response to threats by all. Collective security was a key principle underpinning the League of Nations and the United Nations. Collective security is more ambitious than systems of alliance security or collective defense in that it seeks to encompass the totality of states within a region or indeed globally.
The premise of a collective security arrangement is that it serves as a deterrent to aggression by committing an international coalition against any aggressor. While collective security is an idea with a long history, its implementation in practice has proved problematic.
Collective security is also referred to by the phrase "an attack on one is an attack on all". However, usage of this phrase also frequently refers to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, the collective security provision in NATO's charter.
Collective Security Policy is referred to the diplomatic attempts of USSR to achieve a collective security alliance with France, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Baltic countries against Nazi Germany in interwar period.
It is an important foreign policy put forward by the Soviet Union in the 1930s to stop the aggression of fascist countries and maintain world peace and national security.
History
Early mentions
Collective security is one of the most promising approaches for peace and a valuable device for power management on an international scale. Cardinal Richelieu proposed a scheme for collective security in 1629, which was partially reflected in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. In the eighteenth century many proposals were made for collective security arrangements, especially in Europe.The concept of a peaceful community of nations was outlined in 1795 in Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch. Kant outlined the idea of a league of nations that would control conflict and promote peace between states. However, he argues for the establishment of a peaceful world community not in a sense that there be a global government but in the hope that each state would declare itself as a free state that respects its citizens and welcomes foreign visitors as fellow rational beings. His key argument is that a union of free states would promote peaceful society worldwide: therefore, in his view, there can be a perpetual peace shaped by the international community rather than by a world government.
International cooperation to promote collective security originated in the Concert of Europe that developed after the Napoleonic Wars in the nineteenth century in an attempt to maintain the status quo between European states and so avoid war. This period also saw the development of international law with the first Geneva Conventions establishing laws about humanitarian relief during war and the international Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 governing rules of war and the peaceful settlement of international disputes.
The forerunner of the League of Nations, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, was formed by peace activists William Randal Cremer and Frédéric Passy in 1889. The organization was international in scope with a third of the members of parliament, in the 24 countries with parliaments, serving as members of the IPU by 1914. Its aims were to encourage governments to solve international disputes by peaceful means and arbitration and annual conferences were held to help governments refine the process of international arbitration. The IPU's structure consisted of a Council headed by a President which would later be reflected in the structure of the League.
At the start of the twentieth century two power blocs emerged through alliances between the European Great Powers. It was these alliances that came into effect at the start of the First World War in 1914, drawing all the major European powers into the war. This was the first major war in Europe between industrialized countries and the first time in Western Europe the results of industrialization had been dedicated to war. The result of this industrial warfare was an unprecedented casualty level with eight and a half million members of armed services dead, an estimated 21 million wounded, and approximately 10 million civilian deaths.
By the time the fighting ended in November 1918, the war had had a profound impact, affecting the social, political and economic systems of Europe and inflicting psychological and physical damage on the continent. Anti-war sentiment rose across the world; the First World War was described as "the war to end all wars", and its possible causes were vigorously investigated. The causes identified included arms races, alliances, secret diplomacy, and the freedom of sovereign states to enter into war for their own benefit. The perceived remedies to these were seen as the creation of an international organization whose aim was to prevent future war through disarmament, open diplomacy, international co-operation, restrictions on the right to wage wars, and penalties that made war unattractive to nations.
In a 1945 American Political Science Review article, Frederick L. Schuman criticized notions that a new collective security organization could contribute to world peace. Schuman pointed to examples from history of collective security organizations that failed to facilitate world peace. He argued that the organization that would become the United Nations could only facilitate world peace if the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom worked in unison, but that the organization would fail if there were divisions between the three powers.
Theory
Collective security can be understood as a security arrangement in which all states cooperate collectively to provide security for all by the actions of all against any states within the groups which might challenge the existing order by using force. That contrasts with self-help strategies of engaging in war for purely-immediate national interest. While collective security is possible, several prerequisites must be met for it to work.Collective security also contrasts with alliances by different ways. Collective security is based on the perspective of all together in a group against any of them, rather than on unilateral idea of some against specific others. Alliances have the form of two groups against each other, such as states A+B+C against states Y+Z; however, collective security takes the form of conducting one agreement between A+B+C+Y+Z against any of them. It is different from an alliance since collective security is made to focus on internal regulation required universal membership, but alliance is made to deter or reduce an outside threat as an exclusive institution. In an alliance, a state would see its allies as an absolute gain and its enemies as a relative gains without legal obligation. In contrast, collective security follows the case of neutrality, as the whole group is required to punish the aggressor in the hope for it not to violate general norms, which are beyond the states' control, rather than by their self-interest. The opposite of short-term interest where allies fight against a common threat, collective security tends to use universal interests for global peace.
Sovereign nations eager to maintain the status quo willingly co-operate and accept a degree of vulnerability and, in some cases for minor nations, also accede to the interests of the chief contributing nations organizing the collective security. It is achieved by setting up an international co-operative organisation under the auspices of international law, which gives rise to a form of international collective governance, despite being limited in scope and effectiveness. The collective security organisation then becomes an arena for diplomacy, the balance of power, and the exercise of soft power. The use of hard power by states, unless legitimized by the collective security organisation, is considered illegitimate, reprehensible, and necessitating remediation of some kind. The collective security organisation not only gives cheaper security but also may be the only practicable means of security for smaller nations against more powerful threatening neighbours without needing to join the camp of the nations that balance their neighbours.
The concept of "collective security" was pioneered by Baháʼu'lláh, Michael Joseph Savage, Martin Wight, Immanuel Kant, and Woodrow Wilson and was deemed to apply interests in security in a broad manner to "avoid grouping powers into opposing camps, and refusing to draw dividing lines that would leave anyone out." The term "collective security" has also been cited as a principle of the United Nations and earlier the League of Nations. By employing a system of collective security, the United Nations hopes to dissuade any member state from acting in a manner likely to threaten peace and thus avoid a conflict.
Collective security selectively incorporates the concept of both balance of power and global government. However, collective security is not the same as the balance of power, which is important in realism. According to Adreatta, the balance of power focuses on a state's unilateral interests in stopping aggression. Since states look at the world as having a security dilemma because of the fear of relative gain, a state does not want any state to become predominant and so causes a mutually-restraining equilibrium. In other words, the balance of power between states supports the decentralization of power. States are separate actors and do not subordinate their autonomy or sovereignty to a central government. "Singly or in combinations reflecting the coincidence of interests, States seek to influence the pattern of power distribution and to determine their own places within that pattern." The expectations of order and peace come from the belief that competing powers will somehow balance and thereby neutralize one another to produce "deterrence through equilibration." In contrast, under collective security, states share the long term goal of global peace, reversing relationship between individual and community goals mentioned in the balance of power theory, which fails to maintain stability. For example, it led to break down of war during the case of Napoleonic Wars and the World Wars, when states unilaterally decided to be unwilling or unable to fight.
At the same time, the concept of global government is about centralization. Global government is a centralized institutional system that possesses the power use of force like a well-established sovereign nation-state. The concept strips states of their "standing as centers of power and policy, where issues of war and peace are concerned" and superimposes on them "an institution possessed of the authority and capability to maintain, by unchallengeable force so far as may be necessary, the order and stability of a global community." Despite different characteristics of balance of power theory, collective security selectively incorporates both concepts, centralization and decentralization, which can boil down to the phrase "order without government." Thus, collective security seems to be more reliable alternative since it gathers power as a team to punish the aggressor, and it is an attempt to improve international relations and to provide solid rules under anarchy.