Is Collective Security Fundamentally Different to Realism?

It can be seen from this definition of collective security that there are many points of departure from realism. Indeed, this ‘ideal’ form of the theory expresses “a distaste for balance –of-power logic and traditional alliances, as well as a desire to create a world where those realist concepts have no role to play.” Woodrow Wilson, one of the main supporters of collective security and founder of the League of Nations stated that; “the day we left behind us was a day of alliances…a day of balances of power…a day of ‘every nation takes care of itself.”

The possibility of a collective security working is dependent on states making decisions and acting in ways that is wholly incompatibility of realism. There must be a renouncement of the use of force to change the geopolitical map, a move away from thinking in the terms of self-interest and an ability to trust other states to act the same way. This clearly shows the fundamental difference to realist thinking, and so it seems perhaps that the question has been answered.

However, it is necessary to see how collective security theorists have handled the failure of the League of Nations, the organisation closest to putting this theory into practice. That failure caused collective security theorists to accept realism. This essay shall now briefly discuss the League of Nations, before showing how this shift occurred.

The ‘League of Nations’, created after WWI, has possibly come closest to putting the ‘ideal’ form into practice. As declared in Article 11 of the League’s charter;

Any war or threat of war, whether immediately affecting any of the Members of the League or not, is hereby declared a matter of concern to the whole League, and the League shall take any action that may be deemed wise and effectual to safeguard the peace of nations

However, the ‘ideal’ to which the League purported vanished soon after its inception. By 1921, the Assembly of the League passed a resolution, which stated “it is the duty of each Member of the league to decide for itself whether a breach…has been committed”. Subsequent events eventual led to the League being unable to stop many acts of aggression, such as the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in modern day China, the Italians invasion of Ethiopia and the events that led to WWII. Several explanations could be provided for the failure of the League of Nations. Most notably, how it failed to achieve the principles laid down earlier. Certainty was inscribed into the Leagues charter, yet when aggression by states occurred, the Members were unprepared to act, and Universality was never achieved, due largely to the absence of the USA, which was possibly the most militarily powerful. Thus, the criteria of collective security were never achieved and the League failed to prevent the outbreak of major war. Though collective security seems to differ fundamentally from realism, what use is this without the ability of the theory to work? Attempts have been made by some theorists to reconcile the idea of collective security with the reality that it does not seem to work. This has led to the idea of ‘concert’ collective security. However, as will be seen, this differs little from realism and accepts many of its assumptions and prescriptions.

Charles and Clifford Kupchan put up this alternative definition of collective security, in their attempt to form a version that departs from the ‘ideal’ version discussed above and that would have more practical success than the League of Nations;.

Concert collective security relies on a small group of major powers to guide the operation of…[The] security structure. This design reflects power realities…while capturing the advantages offered by collective security.

Morris too argues that a concert system can be viewed as a variation of collective security. By compromising the principles of certainty and universality, Morris argues that concert-based systems can pursue the ends of collective security, but by different means. One purported example of such a system is the ‘Concert of Europe’, which lasted from 1815-1848. This system was exclusive for the great powers of the time and did not conform to certainty or universality, yet it involved the cooperation and mutual action by these major powers when they believed it should, and only when none of the great powers was adversely affected. Thus, it may seem that the Concert of Europe acted as an “attenuated form of collective security.”

That the Concert of Europe, for a short time, seemed to effectively maintain peace and security in Europe should not be viewed as a triumph of collective security. According to Hinsley, the Concert of Europe had two main principles; that the ‘great powers’ had the duty for maintaining the status quo; and that should the status quo require change, the ‘great powers’ would reach common agreement that maintained peace. This emphasis on reaching agreement does surpass traditional realist thinking, yet fails to identify a solution when agreement is not found. This is the crucial point, as agreements between states are not denied by realism in any sense, just that such agreements will always be based on self-interest.

As has been said, this was a ‘concert’ form of the theory and it shall be shown that this relies implicitly on realist assumptions. States within the concert acted more in accordance with the realist notion of ‘balance of power’ than with collective security. As Castlereagh, Britain’s foreign minister at the time, pointed out, “When the territorial Balance of Europe is disturbed, [Britain] can interfere with effect.” Another example of balance-of-power logic prevailing within the Concert is found with the British response to the secession of Belgium from Holland in 1830. Britain threatened war on France should it attempt to dominate the new country. This clearly shows how, even in the midst of a so-called collective security organisation, one of the great powers of the time continued to define foreign policy in terms of national interest and of balancing power.

‘Concert’ systems fall short of the principles of collective security laid out by Claude and others. They do not attempt universality, as only ‘great powers’ are included and certainty as a principle has never been implemented successfully. The true nature of ‘concerts’ is not an attenuated form of collective security, but an “arrangement in which great powers that have no incentive to challenge each other militarily agree on a set of rules to coordinate their actions with each other” There is nothing in this situation that goes against realist thinking:

Concerts work according to different logics that collective security. In fact, concerts, like alliances, basically reflect the balance of power, and are thus consistent with a realist view of institutions.

The purpose of this essay was to establish whether there were fundamental differences between collective security and realism. It has been seen firstly that realism is based on the supremacy of mutually competitive states in an anarchical international system. Secondly, collective security was shown to be at odds with this belief. It can be seen that this theory is based on certainty, universality, and utility in an attempt to amass a preponderance of force against any aggressor. However, in analysing the failure of the League of Nations and the later re-assessment of collective security thinking, it has been seen that an ‘attenuated’ form of the ‘ideal’ has been suggested. This ‘concert’ form seeks to reconcile collective security with realism by altering the principles of the theory to a more exclusive, ‘great power’ collaboration. This has been seen historically in the Concert of Europe in the nineteenth century. However, this essay has shown that this system reflected the balance of power in Europe at the time and did little to alter what could (and some say would) have been achieved given a realist approach to international relations.

The ‘ideal’ of collective security is fundamentally opposed to realism, but this has never worked in practice and has little support from academia or from policy makers. The ‘concert’ alternative, professed to put collective principles in a more pragmatic and workable system, in reality differs little from the balance of power mechanism supported by realists

There is little in contemporary collective security thinking that undermines realism. In contrast to the ‘idealistic’ approaches of original collective security theorists such as Wilson, the more workable versions of collective security implicitly rely on realist thinking. While they may have made such theories more tenable, supporters of such alternatives leave the ideals of their predecessors behind and embrace the realism they sought to remove.

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