Collective security

The premise of a collective security arrangement is that it serves as a deterrent to aggression by committing an international coalition against any aggressor.

However, usage of this phrase also frequently refers to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, the collective security provision in NATO's charter.

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.

Collective security is one of the most promising approaches for peace and a valuable device for power management on an international scale.

[10][11] The forerunner of the League of Nations, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), was formed by peace activists William Randal Cremer and Frédéric Passy in 1889.

[13][14] 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.

The causes identified included arms races, alliances, secret diplomacy, and the freedom of sovereign states to enter into war for their own benefit.

[18] In a 1945 American Political Science Review article, Frederick L. Schuman criticized notions that a new collective security organization could contribute to world peace.

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 use of hard power by states, unless legitimized by the collective security organisation, is considered illegitimate, reprehensible, and necessitating remediation of some kind.

The concept of "collective security" was pioneered by Baháʼu'lláh,[20] 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.

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.

"[22] 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.

The concept strips states of their "standing as centers of power and policy, where issues of war and peace are concerned"[23] 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.

"[23] 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.

"[24] 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.

France is Germany's close neighbor and old enemy, Hitler's anti-French propaganda and breaking the treaty to expand the army also caused the French public vigilance and fear.

After two months of negotiations, Bardo formally presented the draft of the Eastern Pact to the Soviet Union and Britain in June 1934.

Abyssinian Emperor Haile Selassie continued to support collective security, as he assessed that impotence lay not in the principle but its covenantors' commitment to honor its tenets.

One active and articulate exponent of collective security during the immediate prewar years was Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov.

Thus, collective security may not always work because of the lack of commitment and the unwillingness of states or the international community to act in concert (Mingst 1999).

States in the UN collective security system are selective to support or oppose UN action in certain conflicts, based on their self-interests.

The voices of small countries can be heard, but policies are not adopted in response to them unless they serve the great powers' interests.