Collective Security

Security for Whom?

The traditional conception of collective security was intended to strengthen the rights of states to independence and to reinforce an international legal order built around the concepts of sovereignty and nonintervention. On the Wilsonian view, one of its chief attractions was that, in contrast to the balance of power, it guaranteed the independence of all states, including small and [Page 300]weak states. Yet the stress on reinforcing the rights of states and on maintaining the sanctity of established borders against forcible change has given rise to one of the most enduring dilemmas: how to accommodate change and how to prevent a collective security organization from becoming an instrument for maintaining the status quo. The liberal assumption of a shared interest in the peaceful maintenance of the status quo has been repeatedly challenged.

What Kind of Security?

Second, what kind of security is embodied in the phrase collective security? As it developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, collective security was conceived as a response to the dangers of formal interstate violence and, in particular, to the problem of the aggressive use of force by states. Faced with the united opposition of the international community, states would come to accept that aggression simply could not pay. Although not as novel as sometimes claimed, the post–Cold War period has seen an enormous literature on the changing character of security and the changing dynamics of the global security landscape: the easing of major power rivalry and the emergence of a wide range of new security challenges connected with civil wars, domestic social conflicts, ethnic strife, refugee crises, humanitarian disasters, and transnational terrorist threats. In addition, many have argued that much greater priority should be given to human security, rather than the security of states or of regimes. Such moves illustrate the politically contested character of the concept of security, emphasized, in particular, by critical security theory. Collective security is sometimes understood analytically as a problem of capturing a well-understood and broadly shared interest (perhaps by viewing security as a global public good) in the face of the twin problems of defection and free riding. Clearly, these problems are formidable in a world in which states and government leaders are faced with powerful incentives to protect their immediate short-term interests. But such rationalist logic underplays the challenge of the essentially contested nature of security. Very different historical circumstances and divergent values mean that there is rarely an easy answer to the question of whose security is to be upheld or against which threats that security is to be promoted. Together with the deeper intervention required to deal with many new security challenges, this in turn increases the problems of legitimacy as well as the difficulties of securing the willingness of states to commit armed forces to conflicts that are often seen as marginal to core foreign policy interests.

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