Discuss the conceptual dimensions of collective security. (UPSC CSE Mains 2022 - Political Science and International Relations, Paper 2)
- The concept of collective security, which grows out of liberal institutionalism, refers to the formation of a broad alliance of most major actors in an international system for the purpose of jointly opposing aggression by any actor. Kant laid out the rationale for this approach. Because past treaties ending great power wars had never lasted permanently, Kant proposed a federation (league) of the world’s states. Through such a federation, Kant proposed, the majority of states could unite to punish any one state that committed aggression, safeguarding the collective interests of all the nations while protecting the self-determination of small nations that all too easily became pawns in great power games.
- After the horrors of World War I, the League of Nations was formed to promote collective security. But it was flawed in two ways. Its membership did not include all the great powers (including the most powerful one, the United States), and its members proved unwilling to bear the costs of collective action to oppose aggression when it did occur in the 1930s, starting with Japan and Italy.
- After World War II, the United Nations was created as the League’s successor to promote collective security. Several regional IGOs also currently perform collective security functions (deterring aggression) as well as economic and cultural ones—the Organization of American States (OAS), the Arab League, and the African Union.
- The success of collective security depends on two points. First, the members must keep their alliance commitments to the group (that is, members must not free ride on the efforts of other members). When a powerful state commits aggression against a weaker one, it often is not in the immediate interest of other powerful states to go to war over the issue. Suppressing a determined aggressor can be very costly. A second requisite for collective security is that enough members must agree on what constitutes aggression. The UN Security Council is structured so that aggression is defined by what all five permanent members, in addition to at least four of the other ten members, can agree on. This collective security system does not work against aggression by a great power. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, or the United States mined the harbors of Nicaragua, or France blew up the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, the UN could do nothing—because those states can veto Security Council resolutions.
- The concept of collective security has broadened in recent years. For example, failed states have very weak control of their territory, making them potential havens for drug trafficking, money laundering, and terrorist bases. Essentially, domestic politics looks rather like international anarchy. Currently, Somalia is such a case. It has an extremely weak government that cannot control large parts of territory, and has become a home to terrorist organizations and pirates. In these cases, the international community has a duty to intervene, according to some approaches, to restore law and order.
- The phrase Collective security is sometimes used inaccurately to describe regional or bloc security arrangements such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) or the inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (1947) (the RIO Treaty), which do not fulfil the criterion of universality and are examples of alliance systems and collective defence rather than collective security in the fullest sense.
- Collective self-defence the right of a state or group of states to come to the defence of another state that is victim of an armed attack until the united commission on human rights nations security council has taken the measures necessary to restore international peace and security. The right of collective self-defence under article is most commonly accepted as the right of states to come to the rescue of a state whose situation meets the conditions of legitimate individual self-defence under the United Nations charter. There is no requirement that the states offering assistance should themselves be endangered. Collective defence is to be distinguished from the idea of collective security. The former has never been questioned by the United Nations (UN). The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a regional organization, for instance, was explicitly based on the principle of collective self-defence.
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