As with many variations of the attractive concept, the League of Nations, proved to be fundamentally flawed. Ultimately the League of Nations had been a backward looking invention- designed to prevent the war that had just been fought from being repeated, rather than to prevent conflicts based on different circumstances from occurring. In a similar way the United Nations, designed in 1943-45 was designed to prevent World War II, it had not developed institutional mechanisms for dealing with the Cold War World that it would face. The United Nations gave the five permanent members of the Security Council a veto power over action- therefore the USSR and the USA both had veto power in the Security Council. The U.N. had been born during that period of un- natural alliance between the USA and USSR- it had not considered the consequences of how the U.N. could function in a world where the only common goal of this alliance, the defeat of Nazism had already been achieved. Forty nine states met in San Francisco in 1945 to sign a charter that included innovations to repair the deficiencies of the League. The threat or use of force was outlawed, except for self defence or when it involved collective security. Unlike the balance of power system of the nineteenth century, the offensive use of force was now illegal for any state that signed the U.N. charter. Any use of force had to be either for self defence, for collective self defence, or for collective security.
In 1950, the procedure described in the Charter was put into effect to deal with the invasion of South Korea by North Korea. This was only feasible because the USSR was at the time boycotting the Security Council for its refusal to seat a representative from China in place of the sitting member representing Chiang Kai Shek. When the Russians resumed their place they effectively prevented any further action through their use of their veto powers. The veto was eventually circumvented in November 1950 when the Western Powers secured passed for the 'Uniting for Peace' resolution in which General Assembly created a new role for itself, in which they commanded and believed that they would continue to command a majority supporting their views. All members were asked to hold armed forces ready for action, making them available even if they were not explicitly requested by the Security Council.
This expedient was never accepted as legitimate by the USSR, and it implicitly acknowledge that the original concept expressed in the Charter, of international security being maintained by a consensus among the great powers as being unworkable- as indeed it had proven after 1815, and was replaced by the use of a majority of votes. However, the next time it was used overrule a dissident minority- the occasion of its most spectacular success, it was used against two of its original sponsors- Britain and France over the Suez Crisis.
The Korean War earned the United Nations respect by its ability to take prompt and direct action, a failing that bedevils many variants of collective security systems. It also succeeded in using a combined force to stop aggression, as a coalition of fifteen states were active in Korea, although the Americans provided both the command and a majority of the troops. However, this American preponderance within the UN action, led the UN to be perceived as an American puppet, who undermined the premises of its own charter, (namely the notion of security under the auspices of the Permanent Members of the Security Council), in order to fulfil the doctrine of Collective security.
The Korean War was the first test of the U.N., although it provided evidence that on under less than ideal circumstances a form of collective security could work, the tensions evidenced in this conflict were to become more apparent. In the Cold War ideological cleavage their could be little agreement on what was a legitimate use of force, and great problems arose in defining aggression. Depending on your side in the Cold War, in conflicts such the Suez you took different views on who was the initial aggressor. For two decades U.N. Committees sought furtively to define aggression. A list of acts of aggression was followed but the proviso that the Security Council could determine that other acts also constituted aggression. Even when armed force had been used, they could could choose not declare there had been an act of aggression. So as far as the U.N. was concerned, aggression was committed when the Security Council said so. Everything depended on Security Council consensus, a rare occurrence during the Cold War.
Containment, is the term generally used to characterise American policy towards the Soviet Union during the post- war ear, it can be seen as series of attempts to deal with the consequence of World war II, namely the Faustian bargain made with the USSR. Containment unlike collective security was a policy reacting to the present not a doctrine rooted in the pre- 1945 world. George F. Kennan coined the term in 1947, to refer to the policy designed to prevent the USSR form using the power and position it had won as a result of its wartime victory to reshape the world in an fashion undesirable to the Western capitalist powers. It had been George F. Kennan's long telegram sent in 1946, that prompted revision of US foreign policy towards the doctrine of containment, although such policies had been considered during the war itself, Roosevelt's reluctance combined with the more pressing concerns of defeating the Nazis prevented them from reaching the fore of concerns. The policy of containment involved two large ambiguities. One was the question of ends: whether to contain Soviet power or to contain communism. The second was a question of means, whether to spend resources to prevent any expansion of Soviet power or just in certain key areas that seemed critical to the balance of power. Those two ambiguities in the ends and means of containment were hotly debated in the period before the Korean War. George Kennan dissented from the rather expansive version of containment that Truman proclaimed. Kennan's idea of containment was more akin to classical diplomacy. It involved fewer military means and was more selective. This was played out over Tito's split from Stalin in 1948, in an ideological view of containment the USA should not help Yugoslavia, because it was communist. In a balance of power view of containment, the United States should help Yugoslavia as a means of weakening Soviet power. It was this classical balance of power course of events that the USSR pursued.
The Korean War marks a turning point in the policy of containment. Kennan's selective approach to containment became overshadowed. The NSC-68 predictions of Soviet expansionism had been justified. Communism seemed monolithic after the Chinese entered the Korean War, and the rhetoric of containment emphasised the ideological goal o preventing the spread of communism. Korea had followed the shocks of 1949,- the 'loss' of China, the Soviet a- bomb, persistent inter- service debates over strategy and the dilemma of ow to meet expanding responsibilities with what appeared to limited resources- this confusion over policy prompted Truman to issue a single statement of interests- this document became known as NSC-68. The NSC- 68 was not intended to be a repudiation of Kennan. The objective rather was to systematize containment, and to find the means of making it work. The NSC-68 like Kennan appeared to rely on the balance of power as the means of ensuring American diversity, but there the similarity ended. Kennan had argued that all that was necessary to maintain the balance of power was to secure from enemy hands centres of military industrial capacity. Unfriendly regimes elsewhere, though not to be desired, posed little threat to local stability so long as they lacked the means of manifesting their hostility. NSC-68 took a different view, with the emphasis on perimeter defence, with all points along the perimeter considered of equal importance. What the NSC-68 realised was that insecurity could undermine the self confidence on which Kennan's system relied. As Western Europe's pleas for American military assistance suggested, the perception of the balance of power was becoming as important as on what that balance actually was. The NSC-68 challenged another of the assumptions that had informed Kennan's strategy, that of limited resources. President Truman had continued to insist on holding own defence expenditures in order to avoid either higher taxes or budget deficiencies, what the NSC068 did was to suggest a way to increase defence expenditures without war, without long term budget deficits or tax burdens. Only 6-7% of the GNP was being devoted to military expenditures, adding investment in war related industries brought the figure to around 20%, the comparable statistic for the Soviet Union is40%. But the Soviet economy was operating at nearly full capacity the American economy was not- the 1950 budget announced that the GNP could be raised from $255 billion to $300 billion in five years.
The Korean war, acted as a catalyst of support for the NSC-68 advocates, because of the remarkable manner in which it appeared to validate several of NC-68's most important conclusions. One of these was that the argument that all interest had become equally vital; tat nay further shift in the balance of power, no matter how small, could upset the entire structure of post war international relations. There was almost immediate agreement in Washington that Korea, hitherto regarded ass a peripheral interest, had by the nature of the attack in it become vital if American credibility elsewhere was not to be questioned. The North Korean attack also confirmed the NSC-68 assumption- shared by Kennan that the Soviet Union may resort to proxy war. finally fighting in Korea re- enforced NSC-68's argument that existing U.S. forces were inadequate; atomic weapons alone would note deter limited aggression, and that the US forces were inadequate for such limited conflicts. The Korean War's impact extended far beyond the Korean peninsular, and in this wider sphere the influence of NSC-68 was substantially. The defence budget showed the effect dramatically. Truman a remained committed to his original plans for a 1951 defence expenditure not to exceed $13.5 billion, throughout 1950 in spite of having read NSC- 68, however after the conflict in Korean had begun, defence expenditure was eventually sanctioned at $48.2 billion.
The Korean War, was a success for containment over collective security- however, this is not necessarily surprising if Kennan's notion of an inherent preference for the particularizing over the universalist is considered. Collective Security is in practice a flawed doctrine and the conditions of the Cold War, made this particularly evident, ideological conflict undermined the co- operation required amongst the security council and as the Cold War progressed, the impasse over collective security gave rise to the concept of U.N. preventative diplomacy. Rather than identifying and punishing the aggressor, as the doctrine of collective security suggests, the United Nations would assemble independent forces and interpose them between the warring powers. The model developed by Dag Hammarskjöld and Lester Pearson in 1956. Even though the Cold War prevented the United Nations from using the revised doctrine of collective security, as indicated during the Korean War, the United Nations was forced to revert to preventative diplomacy to avoid becoming as irrelevant as its predecessor, however, although the UN played a significant role it was not collective security. Korea was a partial success for the League of Nations, but evidence of the origins of the deficiencies of collective security in the post war world.
However, to deem Korea a victory for Containment is too simplistic. Containment, was an evolving doctrine- and Korea marked the victory of a particular form of containment, namely that espoused in NSC- 68 over the notions of containment, championed at the beginning of the Cold War by George Kennan. Truman's policy switch between Kennan's assymetrical containment and NSC-68's symmetrical scheme. This victory for NSC-68 was ultimately reinforced by NSC- 141, but the Korean War can be seen as a key turning point in the history of the doctrine of containment, it undermined the doctrine of collective security and provided the catalyst that saw the recommendations of NSC-68 overtake Kennan's interpretation of containment. Containment in its various forms, remained the doctrine in practice of the USA (unlike collective security which persisted only as the doctrine in theory of the UN) for the next thirty years and the origins of both these trends can be seen in America's reaction to events on the Korean Peninsula in 1950.
John Lewis Gaddis 'Strategies of Containment'
Adam Roberts & Benedict Kingsley 'United Nations, Divided World'
