COLLECTIVE SECURITY

While collective security cannot be secured in an armed world by unilateral disarmament, it is built
on arms alone. Competing power alliances may for a time deter armed conflict, but, over a longer
period, they tend to create fears and antagonism which undermine security. Collective security must
be linked with a regime of law which, as a minimum, requires states to settle their disputes by
peaceful means and not resort to the use of force without first invoking processes provided by a
regime of law to assist in the peaceful settlement of disputes.
If the problem of world peace cannot find its lasting solution in the system of balance of power, as
discussed in the preceding chapter, another, and rather a more effective, way it collective security. It
is for this reason that the leading statesmen of world not only, looked whit anxiety at the failure of
the ‘balance of power system in the first world war, they also look into account the effectiveness of
an alternative mechanism in the form of collective security and incorporated it first in the covenant
of the league nations framed in 1919 and then in charter of the united nations draft in 1945. Apart
from this, the practical statesmen of the major powers not only examined the weakness of this
arrangement in the covenant of this league, they made improvement upon it so as to convert it into a
really ‘supporting pillar of the edifice of peace. The American secretary of state, in his report to the
president on the result of the san Francisco conference of 1945, confidently asserted that the revised
arrangement of collective security “provides the teeth of the united nations.”
In very simple terms, the term ‘collective security’ has been defined as “a machinery for joint action
in order to prevent or counter any attack against an established international order.” That is, it
implies a collective action of many peace-loving states to check an act of aggression that might
become a source of menace to all. Thus, it suggests the “concern of all nations which will take care
collectively of the security of each of them as though their own collective security were at stake.”In
order words, a collective action of the peace-loving states for the prevention of war amounting to
the maintenance of international peace is known by the name of ‘collective security’. “In essence,
collective security is an arrangement among states in which all promise, in the event any member of
the system engages in certain prohibited acts against another member, to come to the latter’s
assistance. It may, in addition, aim to prevent or punish attacks by non- members on one another,
members on non-members, and non-members on one of its own members.”