The illusions of collective security.

• Author: Lagon, Mark P.
• Position: Post-Cold War international security

In the wake of such general conflicts as the Napoleonic wars or World Wars I and II, two conditions prevail that are virtually essential to the fact, or the illusion, of collective security: (1) The victorious powers are momentarily in concert; this provides the basis for equating their provisional coalition to a disinterested concern for universal world order. (2) The defeated powers, are by consensus of the victors, clearly labeled the "aggressors."

Earl Ravenal's rule applies equally in the wake of the Cold War. Buoyed by the collapse of the Soviet Union, proponents of collective security have been writing up a storm, producing literature full of hope for the future. Central to this new vision of collective security are new roles for two familiar Cold War international organizations.. the United Nations, now freed from a paralyzing standoff between two superpowers with vetoes in the Security Council, and NATO, the victor over the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, now reaching to embrace new friends and missions.

Much of the hope placed on the UN in a new era is grounded in the belief that it can finally provide for collective security. The hopeful cite the corrective expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait as evidence of this. As a function of its only unique virtue, all-encompassing membership, the UN becomes the natural instrument for the wishful tinkerer in trying to implement collective security.

More surprisingly, perhaps, with war in the Balkans and evidence of instability elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe, collective security also figures increasingly in the context of developing a new role for NATO. As Josef Joffe writes:

[Collective security] has been the idee clef in the debate on post-cold War security in Europe. Only the label has been modernized. Instead of C[ollective] S[ecurity], advocates use terms such as "overarching security system," "pan-european security," "co-operative security" or expanded CSCE."(1)

While the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (now officially the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the OSCE) and West European Union (as the security organ of a post-Maastricht EU) have gotten some attention in this discussion, most hopes have fallen upon NATO as the prime agent for Europe's collective security, and the alliance's Partnership for Peace has been seen as an instrument for defining such a mission.

Before one can determine whether the UN, NATO, or the OSCE is an appropriate vessel for pursuing collective security, it is necessary to understand precisely what is meant by the term. And that involves clarifying not only what "collective security" is, but what "security" itself means. For, unfortunately, both terms are now in danger of being stretched into unrecognizable shapes and established distinctions ignored, to accommodate the agenda of some of their users. After a recent Freedom House symposium on the expansion of NATO, for example, I asked one of the participants, Michael Mandelbaum, whether his use of "collective security" to include preparation to meet threats from outside the membership of the alliance fit the traditional meaning of the term. Mandelbaum dismissed my query as a semantic quibble. A lot more than a quibble is at stake.

A Taxonomy

Richard Betts has noted the propensity of many to apply the label "collective security" to institutions and processes which do not fulfill the unique, defining criteria that were set out and championed by Woodrow Wilson, the century's leading proponent of the concept:

[I]n the generations after Wilson many felt the need to endorse collective security while defining it in ways that overlapped significantly with traditional arrangements ... If a collective institution is really to function as a security system rather than a slogan, the elements that are conceptually unique rather than those which are shared with other constructs should set the standard for assessing the idea.(2)

What are these unique elements? Perhaps the best way to define collective security is in terms of a three-part typology.

First there is "collective security" as it has been conventionally understood until recently. It reflects a security arrangement whereby a clearly delineated group of...