KCA UNIVERSITY

UNIT: INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

BED ARTS
SAMSON ISABOKE 19/04711
SUBMISSION TO: ALBERT OCHIENG
TASK:
Describe the challenges posed by collective security to world peace and
security. Illustrate your answer with examples of International Organizations.
DEFINITIONS
Roberts and Kingsbury define collective security as “an arrangement where each state in the
system accepts that security of one of them is a concern of all, and agrees to join in a
collective response to aggression.
Kupchan et al define collective security as “an agreement between states to abide by certain
norms and rules to maintain stability and when necessary, band together to stop aggression.
This definition gives rise to another definition based on its key words as “an institutionalized
universal or regional system in which states have agreed by treaty jointly to meet any act of
aggression or other illegal use of force resorted by a member state of the system.
DISCUSSION
Collective security a means of deterring any aggressive course of action on another nation is
based on assumptions, thus, this makes it hard for International Organizations to implement
it. As a result of these difficulties, one needs to understand the underlying logic of collective
security hence it is wise to distinguish collective security from two closely related terms that
are, the balance of power and global government.
The balance of power between states rests on the idea of decentralization. States act as
separate units without subordinating their autonomy or sovereignty to any central agency
established for the management of power relations. Based on interests, states seek to
influence the pattern of power distribution and to determine their places within that pattern.
Hence under such conceptions states may form defensive alliances such as under the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization against actual or perceived external threats. Such sorts of
flexible alliances allow for recurrent shifts of alignment to take place. The promise of order
lies in the expectation that competing claims to power will somehow balance and thereby
cancel each other out to produce deterrence through equilibration.
On the other hand, the global government posits the creation of a centralized institutional
system superior to individual states with a monopoly on power and the use of force similar to
that of a well-ordered national state. This conception is based on depriving states of their
“standing as centers of power and policy, were issues of war and peace are concerned”, and
superimposing 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”.
After assessing the two concepts you realize that collective security is a hybrid of the two
hence functioning as a dialectical notion of “order without government” to manage the
problem of power relations between states by “ superimposing a scheme of partially
centralized management upon a situation in which power remains fused among national
units”.The hybrid system involves centralization of authority over the use of force to the
extent that states are deprived of the legal right to use force requires an international
organization with authority not only to determine when a resort to force is illegitimate but
also authority to, requires states to collaborate under its direction in suppressing such use of
force.
This collective security system falls short of creating an institution with a centralized
monopoly of force in the full sense implied by the world government. Hence, the power
wielded by a hybrid collective security system can reach no further than that given by the
sovereign will of its members. The hybrid nature of collective security poses a threat to world
peace as discussed below.
THREATS POSED BY COLLECTIVE SECURITY
Collective security as a basis of the League of Nations was to actively work towards
disarmament, in that nations were supposed to disarm and reduce their forces and work
towards equilibration thus maintaining world peace. But what do the realists tell us?
International organizations cannot change human nature, they also cannot transform the
anarchical structure of the international organization. Hence disarmament had its flaws and as
result gave rise to instances of unrest, for example, the invasion of Abyssinia by Italy and the
Invasion of Manchuria by Japan. How did collective security cause this? Through
disarmament, the League couldn’t intervene since nations were asked to reduce their
militaries and hence couldn’t deal with such aggressions.
At the same in 1923, Britain objected to the resolutions of the disarmament conference. This
angered other countries, for instance, remember the terms of the Versailles Treaty provided
for the disarmament of Germany but it reached a point in 1932 where Germany said enough
is enough we also need to have the same amount of arms as other countries. It doesn't make
sense for other countries to demilitarize while others are remilitarizing. This also resulted in a
period of unrest from 1939-1945.
International Organizations are used by powerful states to implement their power politics
more effectively and to pursue their self-interests hence collective security poses threats to
world peace when the powerful states tend to take the wrong courses in the event of trying to
maintain world peace. In this case, let's look at the Peace Missions deployed by international
organizations for instance the UN. Most of these missions end up being disastrous as
compared to the real problem since these missions are majorly approved to serve power
states’ interests. The negative effects of these peace missions are a result of not having a
mechanism to protect the civilians from being caught up in the middle of the menaces caused,
in situations where these peace missions go the extra mile in using force. As a result of the
lack of civilian protection, peace missions become part of the ways of disrupting peace in
areas where they have been deployed. We can draw examples where peace missions have
gone south for example in Syria, there UN had to withdraw due to escalating violence.
Amid the power, struggle states are caught up in a situation known as the security dilemma
(Herz, 1990): the efforts of one state to enhance its security by enlarging its capabilities are
perceived by other states as threatening. As such tension builds among nations where they
become suspicious of one another hence they start arming themselves going against their
original agreement. For instance, let's look at the establishment of NATO. Its chief objective
was to maintain peace in Europe due to perceived external threats. I find it hilarious since the
UN was established to support peace yet other nations still felt external threats. Scaling it
down you will realize that after NATO had been established, the USSR wanted to join since it
was worried about Germany’s unification which could make it a superpower again. To its
blow, it was not allowed to join simply because it was a communist and the USA a capitalist.
In response to these, the soviet union ended up forming the warsaw pact as a means to
counter NATO. These military alliances are clear manifestations of two powerful nations
competing to outdo each other yet they held their positions in the security council as
permanent members of the UN.Out of these alliances, the two states were skeptical of each
other and it led to the cold war that was characterized by tension, propaganda and aiding their
enemies among others in their respective spectrum. The cold war led to real war in some
regions of the world hence disrupting the peace.
The UN keeps on preaching that violation of human rights is a crime yet some of their
decisions have led to many instances of human rights violation. Here I draw my argument
from the US and Britain's invasion of Iraq in 2003. The UN never approved the attack but
Britain and the US being major players in the UN decided to act unilaterally. The UN never
took any viable action against these two nations, up to date that invasion has never been
justified. And what were the negative effects of this invasion? First, Saddam Hussein was a
dictator and used fear as his strategy to remain in power, as such he used to threaten the
western powers by consistently reminding them that he had weapons of mass destruction
which was never the case. Due to the US and Britain’s self-interests in Iraq, they used the
attack of September 9/11, 2001 as an opportunity to invade Iraq. The September 9/11 attack
was the doings of Al Qaeda but the US decided to turn a blind eye and accused Iraq. As a
result of the invasion Saddam was killed, going forward Iraq has never recovered. This
invasion is the reason for the state of anarchy in Iraq for quite some time now. It also led to
the emergence of ISIS. During the reign of Saddam Hussein it is reported over 250000
civilians were killed in 20 years but with the invasion and destabilization of Iraq over 1.5
million civilians have been killed in a short period. Bottom line: a solution that became part
of the problem.
Collective security also poses threat to world peace since it deprives smaller nations of the
authority to use lethal weapons in their efforts to defend themselves. Thus, smaller nations
are always barred from developing their nuclear weapons but the strong nations sign
agreements in the production of such weapons. By doing so, smaller nations are to acquire
weapons from these powerful nations yet they are the very people preaching disarmament.
Now that the arms race rests only in the hands of strong nations, in the event of aggression
the weaker nations fail to protect themselves hence resulting in the deaths of their citizens.
For instance, I can relate the argument to what is happening in Ukraine. Russia is a
permanent member of the security council of the UN. It has a veto vote hence the decisions
that the other nations have taken seem not to be effective. In addition, the UN cannot expel it
hence they are trapped in this system with Russia.
In the event of aggression, the procedures of minimizing the aggressor take place in three
stages which might take some time since the decision from the member states have to be
unanimous and this might give the aggressor time to do the damage before a unanimous
decision is made. The first step is moral disapproval which barely works, followed by
economic sanctions which also barely worked during the reign of the League of Nations
against Italy and Japan as well and lastly is military sanctions, which also does not work we
can attest to how resilient Putin has been in his invasion of Ukraine.
Regional organizations such as the EU, the AU, EAC, and ECOWAS have all incorporated
the principle of collective security due to the ever-rising conflicts between states hence have
resorted to addressing these conflicts as part of their responsibilities. This has the effect of
divided loyalty hence nations are more concerned about the security of their regions, thus, not
contributing much to the global scale of collective security under the UN. As a result of this
divided loyalty, strong nations decided not to help in cases where their help is required since
they consider not to be part of those regions, or rather when they decide to help they do so to
serve their own interests.
CONCLUSION
Collective security as an idea isn’t practical as neorealism puts it, international organizations
are the informal channels through which strong states can assert their power. When
international organizations deal with crisis situations, strong nations often take a lead role
(Stone,2011). At the same time, powerful states are also good at lobbying the permanent
secretaries of IOs because of their informal contacts and placing their own nationals in senior
positions ( Urpelanen,2012; Kleine, 2013; Dijkstra,2017; Parizek, 2017). Thus, it's through
these methods that powerful states use to serve their own interests at the expense of the
principle of collective security. Through this collective security becomes part of channels that
threaten world peace.
REFERENCES
Ebegbulem, J. C. (2011). Failure of Collective Security in the Post World Wars I and II.
Transcience. Vol 2, Issue 2.
Stone, R. W. (2011). Controlling Institutions: International Organizations and the Global
Economy. Cambridge University Press.
Kupchan, A. C. (1995). The Promise of Collective Security. International Security. Vol 20.
Mwagwabi, L. W. The Theory of Collective Security and Its Limitations in Explaining
International Organizations: A Critical Analysis [pdf].