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This chapter analyzes the institutional setting of the United Nations. The underlying assumption is that the Security Council can best be described as a Janus-faced structure of both an open system and a closed shop. This notion reflects the Council’s sensitivity towards external change, while the restrictive provisions of the Charter constrain the possibilities of formal adaptation. The chapter examines: (1) the role of great powers in international organizations, (2) the role and function of the Security Council according to the Charter of the United Nations, and (3) the ‘constitutional practice’ of the Council, elaborating on certain variants of the collective security scheme as envisioned in the Charter.

Sir Harold Nicolson’s approach to the questions of inter-war European security represented an evolution from an idealist outlook at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 to a more measured degree of idealism during the late 1920s. As the 1930s advanced, and the League of Nations and action based on the principles of collective security proved unable to quell the Japanese, Italian, and German aggression, Nicolson sought to devise new methods of resolving the major questions of peace and war. His solution was liberal realism, a fusion of idealism and realism. It was an amalgam of Aristotelian and Thucydidean principles of statecraft and diplomacy. By the late 1930s, with Germany rejecting reasonable revisions of the Treaty of Versailles, he began to believe that war could only be avoided if the democracies and the USSR initiated a cohesive strategy of alliance diplomacy while pursuing dialogue with the dictators. The Munich Agreement of 1938 and the steady unravelling of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement finally convinced Nicolson that war was inevitable.

This chapter traces Angell's development into a largely orthodox liberal internationalist, as he belatedly realized that his ‘illusion’ thesis had assumed that aggressors could be reasoned into self-restraint, whereas he now understood that at least in the short term they had either to be appeased or to be deterred. Rejecting the former option, he opted decisively for the latter, campaigning vigorously for collective security and becoming both a leader alongside Viscount Cecil and Gilbert Murray of the League of Nations Union and a member of Winston Churchill's private support group. Admittedly, during 1932–5 Angell somewhat pulled his punches, implying that economic sanctions alone could prevent or punish aggression. After 1936, when Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, Mussolini conquered Abyssinia, and Franco rebelled in Spain, he accepted that collective security required rearmament and military alliances, though idiosyncratically he claimed to support such measures only because the public would not accept his first-choice policy of pacifism. The strain caused by this unresolved contradiction in his thinking caused his health, never good, to deteriorate as war approached.

This is the exceptional case in that the proposal to include a racial equality clause in the League Covenant was rejected. On the other hand, this is another case where the norm was supported by a leading state (Japan), in conjunction with a wider world society movement. The drafting history casts doubts on Japanese motives for pressing the proposal, but the failure reflects the relative weakness of Japan as a normative sponsor. While opposition to the clause certainly came from Britain, in response to pressure from parts of the empire, President Wilson's own position was ambiguous, and he certainly was not prepared to risk the Treaty of Versailles (and the League Covenant) to include it. There was a widespread pressure to hold a Pan-African Congress at Paris to coincide with the settlement. However, the Japanese delegate Baron Makino expressed a number of interesting normative arguments in support of the clause, appealing to the blurring of the distinction between international and world society brought about by the principle of collective security.

Sir Harold Nicolson’s conception of international order, with its roots in ancient Greek and Roman political theory, was central to his ideas about international society. It encompassed the principal elements of foreign policy, the operation of the balance of power, and the role of international law in world affairs. More particularly, he focused on the effectiveness of collective security and the League of Nations during the inter-war period when Great Britain was moving from a period of imperium over her former colonies to one of dominion over emergent Commonwealth nation-states. He was by turns optimistic and pessimistic about the UN as an instrument for securing and maintaining international order. Nicolson’s experience as a diplomat also led him to attach great importance to national character and prestige as factors in foreign relations and diplomatic negotiation; they are rarely absent from his analyses of international affairs.

The validity and feasibility of the concept of collective security has for a long time been subjected to a debate and challenges on various grounds. The principal objections related to the alleged incompatibility of collective security with selfish national interests of states, and to the lack of its feasibility in an international society that has no central government. After examining and evaluating these objections, Chapter 1 locates collective security as a superstructure to the existing international legal and political system, not as an alternative thereto. After this, the relationship of the concept of collective security with related notions such as conflict prevention, crisis management, early warning, and conflict resolution is examined. Last but not least, this chapter focuses on the relationship between legal and political factors as to how the notion of ‘international peace and security’ under the UN Charter should be understood.

How did the small state fare in the 20^th century? As it turns out, small states did remarkably well. Surprisingly enough, during the height of the Cold War small state proliferation doubled their total number. The 20^th century’s international-political environment became highly permissive of small state survival and in fact strongly supportive of small state proliferation. As a result, the 20^th century witnessed the reversal of the centuries-old downward trend in small state numbers. The early 20^th century saw the introduction of collective action and security and the beginnings of global governance. After the Second World War, the system evolved further towards global governance but was challenged by the end of the Cold War and rise of global terrorism. The chapter demonstrates how these changes were critical factors in shaping a corresponding story of small state survival. The highly permissive environment of the Cold War and its era of decolonization are given particular attention.

The origins of collective humanitarian intervention long pre-date the end of the Cold War. There are continuing arguments about not just what constitutes humanitarianism, but also the nature of ‘intervention’. The United Nations is empowered by its charter to apply economic and diplomatic pressures as a form of humanitarian intervention. The diplomatic isolation of errant states and the application of economic sanctions against them have long been weapons in the UN's non-military armoury. This chapter examines the beginnings of human intervention in Europe, from Westphalia to the new imperialism. It discusses the rise of the League of Nations, the beginnings of the UN, the role of the UN in the development of humanitarian law and practice as well as human rights, the failure of collective security and the rise of peacekeeping, and UN military intervention from the 1950s to the 1980s. It also explores the beginnings of humanitarian intervention in the Congo as well as the UN's alleged ‘anti-humanitarian intervention’ in West New Guinea.

This chapter examines the inherent right of states to self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter as part of the collective security process and one of its valid causes of action. After examining the parameters of individual state self-defence, such as the ‘armed attack’ requirement under Article 51, Chapter 6 proceeds to examine the parameters of the Security Council's interference with a defensive action and limits thereon. After this the parameters of collective self-defence are examined, both under the UN Charter and as part of regional security systems, focusing on constituent instruments and practice of the Arab League, OAS, ECOWAS, SADC, EU, and NATO.

The attainment of peace between nations is a long-cherished ideal. The Baha'i Scriptures contain much guidance on the principles that humanity must implement to reach and maintain a lasting peace. Important among these is the concept of collective security. Today, this concept of collective security is an important part of international law's approach to imposing legal limitations on the use of force by sovereign states against one another. This chapter focuses on the concept of collective security. It examines what it means, provides a brief description of how it currently operates under the auspices of the United Nations, and discusses some of the proposals for reform that may be suggested by Baha'i Scripture.

Chapter 4 examines the strategic evolution and dilemmas of Russia, the region's former imperial power and continued privileged partner. The chapter analyzes Moscow's broad range of levers of influence, and traces its efforts to lock in its dominance by creating new regional organizations such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC). At the same time, Moscow's regional policies and tactics have remained unstable and reactive, subject to Russia's self-image as a great power and its prevailing relations with the United States and China. An initial period of close U.S.-Russian cooperation immediately following 9/11 soon after deteriorated into a more competitive dynamic, fueled by the Western-backed Color Revolutions and Russian perceptions that U.S. military bases were becoming permanent. Despite its numerous instruments of influence, Moscow still must confront the political challenges of the region's intraregional tensions, the desire of states to pursue multidirectional foreign policies, and a rising China.

Multilateral liberalists are another group critical of President Bush's foreign policy. They contend that liberal democratic institutions play a primary role in mitigating rivalry and fostering legitimacy, and that the unilateral use of force abroad, even for humanitarian concerns, must be kept to a minimum. Like realists, multilateral liberalists differ in their views on a number of issues but, unlike realists, they tend to overestimate the influence of soft power, the effectiveness of international institutions and the likelihood of stable, liberal democracies generating a consensus on the need to undertake strong, effective action against major threats. While the US should never ignore the views of other nations, alliances, and international organizations such as the UN and NATO, it is not in the country's interest to make unanimity among them a categorical imperative in its decision to use force and in crafting foreign policy.

This chapter investigates the regional dimension of the normative interplay between Russia, other CIS states, and major Western states. It assesses how far and with what success Russia has promoted norms for the CIS regional order related to the use of force and interventions. Initially it shows how Russia sought to assert primacy in the CIS region in the 1990s, to confirm a hierarchical structure of power and act as the regional security manager. This was reflected in Russian-style peacekeeping in regional conflicts, which struggled to establish its legitimacy through principles of CIS multilateralism. The chapter proceeds to show how Moscow regarded the 2003–5 ‘coloured revolutions’ as Western-inspired and as representing both normative and strategic challenges. Finally, the chapter analyses the Collective Security Treaty Organization since 2003. Russia has used this as a political instrument to bolster the regime security of CIS states. However, the CSTO might also be used to intervene in future intra-state crises in this region.

The United Nations Security Council has potentially far-reaching enforcement powers. These were largely underused in the stasis of the Cold War. Now, however, the Council meets almost continuously in formal or informal session. To assert the legitimacy of its actions and to pull members towards compliance with its decisions, the Council must be seen to be acting in accordance with established procedures and limitations. The ‘Greenwich foot’ by which the actions taken by the Security Council in the name of ‘collective security’ are judged is Article 2(7) of the UN Charter. Collective security is a potent new instrument of international conflict resolution, added in the twentieth century to augment the more traditional tools of war, diplomacy, and litigation. Its textual authorisation is found in Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which envisages an institutional response by the UN Security Council to a threat to or a breach of the peace.

The introduction explains why the historiography of the League needs to be rethought. Rather than an attempt to realize an abstract idea (usually characterized as ‘collective security’), it was a means by which practical British statesmen tried to deal with pressing problems. Before 1921 the idea was considered almost entirely as part of Anglo‐American relations, and thereafter largely in an Anglo‐French context. British League policy has to be regarded not as a concession to idealism but as part of the general development of British foreign policy, also taking into account the domestic political calculations of the leading British statesmen. The book will take the form of an authoritative narrative intended to be the starting point for further debate.

Despite the many misguided programs promoted by the United States, American foreign policy during the Cold War contributed to the spread of four basic ideas that, on the whole, enhanced global peace and prosperity. These ideas were collective security, free trade, solvency, and democracy. These ideas were not unique to the United States or the post-1945 years. They were empowered internationally, however, by an American government with global capabilities and commitments that knew few previous historical parallels. Presidents as diverse as Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush returned repeatedly to these ideas. Policy planners relied on them, and the “lessons” from their applications in the early Cold War. The ideas that shaped the years after 1945 acquired a staying power that they still have not lost. The Cold War was an ideological struggle with strong ideological legacies that are both positive and negative.

The collective security system of the UN Charter has, since its inception, been fraught with political and practical problems. Such problems can all be associated with conceptual contradictions and it is very difficult to imagine a truly effective collective security system. These conceptual difficulties do not necessarily mean that collective security to maintain international peace and security is not possible, but they do mean that both the architecture of the system and its application in concrete cases will suffer from tragic dilemmas, in which any solution will entail costs. This chapter contains a critical analysis of conceptual problems related to collective security, with the focus on three basic issues: 1. Protection against which acts—war, physical violence, structural violence or something else? 2. Protection against which sources—threats from states, from groups, from individuals, etc.? 3. What is the object of protection—the state, societies, groups, or individuals?