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Collective Security Reexamined

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Kenneth W. Thompson
Kenneth W. Thompson
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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Extract

From one standpoint it is a truism to say that collective security is something new under the sun. In past eras and especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, war was conceived of as a duel in which contestants should be isolated and restrained by the rest of international society. When nations engaged in armed conflict their neighbors sought to localize the struggle and alleviate its poisonous effects. However short-sighted their actions in not meeting the conflict directly and turning back aggression at its source, the nations pursuing these policies were sometimes successful for varying periods of time in preserving islands of peace in a warring world.

On August 8, 1932, however, Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson proclaimed the revolutionary fact that the modern state system was entering a new era in which warring powers were no longer entitled to the same equally impartial and neutral treatment by the rest of society. He announced to the New York Council of Foreign Relations that in future conflicts one or more of the combatants must be designated as wrong-doer and added: “We no longer draw a circle about them and treat them with the punctilios of the duelist's code. Instead we denounce them as lawbreakers.”

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , September 1953 , pp. 753 - 772
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1953

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References

1 Stimson, Henry L. and Bundy, McGeorge, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York, 1947), p. 259Google Scholar.

2 Editorial, “Cross Purposes,” The Times (London), 02 5, 1952, p. 5Google Scholar.

3 Clemens, Cyril, The Man from Missouri (Webster Groves, Missouri: International Mark Twain Society, 1945), p. 150Google Scholar.

4 The Private Papers of Senator Vandenberg, ed. Vandenberg, Arthur H. Jr., (Boston, 1952), p. 217Google Scholar.

5 In his speech to the Senate asking ratification of the Charter, President Truman declared: “This Charter points down the only road to enduring peace. There is no other.” Clemens, , The Man from Missouri, p. 172Google Scholar.

6 Sherwood, Robert E., Roosevelt and Hopkins, 2 vols. (New York, 1950), Vol. 1, p. 276Google Scholar.

7 As early as May 11, 1944, a Special Committee on Postwar Plans, composed of Senators Connally, Barkley, George, Gillette (Democrats), La Follette (Progressive), Vandenberg, White and Austin (Republicans), had begun to explore this and other related questions.

8 Byrnes, James F., Speaking Frankly (New York, 1947), p. 70Google Scholar.

9 Ibid., p. 71.

10 Quoted in Sherwood, , Roosevelt and Hopkins, Vol. 1, p. 436Google Scholar. Mr. Churchill asked if this would not antagonize the extreme internationalists, but Mr. Roosevelt replied that the time had come to be realistic and that this group was almost entirely lacking in realism.

11 Stimson, , On Active Service, p. 603Google Scholar.

12 Ibid., p. 604.

13 Ibid.

14 Vandenberg, , Private Papers, p. 96Google Scholar.

15 7 Department of State Bulletin (1942), p. 645.

16 It should be noted that the Russians have no monopoly on opposition to a powerful world police force. Senator Vandenberg declares in his Memoirs: “I am opposed to what is generally understood by the term ‘international police force.’ So, I believe, are the President, Secretary Hull and most realistic students of this problem. To be adequate, an international police force would have to be larger than the regular army and navy of any other power on earth. I think it is fantastic to believe that the people would long consent to the maintenance of any such enormous concentration of power in the postwar peace; and I also think that the temptation to reach for its ultimate control could become the greatest possible threat to peace in years to come.” Vandenberg, , Private Papers, pp. 120–21Google Scholar.

17 USSR Information Bulletin, Oct. 13, 1944.

18 Stimson, , On Active Service, p. 644Google Scholar.

19 It remained, however, for Premier Stalin in conversation with Harry Hopkins to furnish unwittingly the key to the success or failure of this endeavor. He declared that trust and confidence in international as in national relations is dependent upon the existence of “… a minimum moral standard between all nations and without such a minimum moral standard nations could not exist.” Premier Stalin continued that the leaders of Nazi Germany “knew no such minimum moral standard [but] … without a second's thought would sign a treaty today, break it tomorrow and sign a second one the following day. Nations must fulfill their treaty obligations, he said, or international society could not exist.” Nor, it might be added, could collective security survive. Sherwood, , Roosevelt and Hopkins, Vol. 1, pp. 399–400Google Scholar.

20 Stimson, , On Active Service, pp. 649–50Google Scholar.

21 Some years ago Monsieur Paul Henri Spaak in an address before the Foreign Press Union declared: “There must be a hierarchy in international obligations. The nations of the continent cannot be asked to consider with the same realism and sincerity of judgment affairs which directly concern them and events which are taking place thousands of kilometres away in regions where they have neither interests nor influence. Indivisible peace, mutual assistance, and even collective security are general ideas whose practical effect must be clearly explained and clearly limited.” Quoted in Survey of International Affairs, 1936 (London, 1937), pp. 354–55Google Scholar.

22 Morgenthau, Hans J., “Another ‘Great Debate’: The National Interest of the United States,” this Review, Vol. 46, pp. 961–88 (12, 1952)Google Scholar; Briggs, Herbert W., “New Dimensions in International Law,” this Review, Vol. 46, pp. 677–98 (09, 1952)Google Scholar; and Thompson, Kenneth W., “The Study of International Politics,” The Review of Politics, Vol. 14, pp. 433–67 (10, 1952)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The conflict between national and supranational objectives is illustrated in the present Korean dilemma. South Korea's interests since 1950 were identical with those of the United Nations, but with the approach of an armistice this identity of interests has disappeared.

23 Vandenberg, , Private Papers, p. 136Google Scholar. Five months later on June 14, 1945, the Michigan Senator conceded: “I agree that there must be this veto on the use of force” (p. 211).

24 Ibid., p. 35.

25 Ibid.

26 Letter to Holls, July 4, 1903, Roosevelt, Theodore, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, 8 vols. (New York, 1910), Vol. 3, p. 509Google Scholar. For Utopian critics who maintain that the national interest must be an empty concept without concrete meaning, the following attempt by Roosevelt to give it content may prove illuminating: “As long as England succeeds in keeping up the balance of power in Europe, not only on principle, but in reality, well and good; should she, however, for some reason or other fail in doing so, the United States would be obliged to step in at least temporarily in order to reestablish the balance of power in Europe, never mind against which country or group of countries our efforts may have to be directed.” Quoted in Dennett, Tyler, Roosevelt and the Russo-Japanese War (Garden City, New York, 1925), p. 1Google Scholar.

27 Letter to Senator Josiah W. Bailey, dated May 13, 1941, F.D.R.: His Personal Letters, ed. Roosevelt, Elliott, 4 vols. (New York, 1947–1950), Vol. 2, pp. 1154–55Google Scholar.

28 One of the most significant documents in the annals of recent American foreign policy was the blueprint of strategic interests in World War II called the “Joint Board Estimate of United States Over-all Production Requirements.” Dated September 11, 1941, it was signed by the Chiefs of Staff, General Marshall and Admiral Stark. Paragraph 5 provided: “Those major national objectives of the United States which are related to military policy may broadly be stated as: preservation of the territorial, economic and ideological integrity of the United States and of the remainder of the Western Hemisphere; prevention of the disruption of the British Empire; prevention of the further extension of Japanese territorial dominion; eventual establishment in Europe and Asia of balances of power which will most nearly ensure political stability in those regions and the future security of the United States; and, so far as practicable, the establishment of regimes favorable to economic freedom and individual liberty.” This unequivocal statement of our basic objectives and interests puts to rest the illusion that World War II was conceived and conducted by American leaders who took no stock in the need for discriminating judgments respecting vital interests. Quoted in Sherwood, , Roosevelt and Hopkins, Vol. 1, p. 496Google Scholar.

29 Churchill, Winston S., The Second World War: The Gathering Storm (Boston, 1948), p. 169Google Scholar.

30 The psychological turn of mind among certain professional Western soldiers before the Second World War offers a further illustration of this point. Admiration and respect for Germany's amazing rearmament program inspired the opinion that the conquest of England by Germany would prove the inevitable superiority of ground and air over sea power.

31 Stimson, , On Active Service, p. 233Google Scholar.

32 Ibid.

33 Senator Vandenberg urged that the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals include: “If the Security Council finds that any situation which it shall investigate involves injustice to peoples concerned it shall recommend appropriate measures of adjustment which may include revision of treaties and of prior international decisions.” Vandenberg, , Private Papers, p. 163Google Scholar.

34 Quoted in Freeman, Harrop and Paullin, Theodore, Coercion of States in Federal Unions (Philadelphia, 1943), p. 14Google Scholar. The late Professor Edwin Borchard warned: “There is no element of the proposal of punishing aggressors which is not contested by history and disproved by experience.” “The Impracticability of Enforcing Peace,” The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 55, p. 968 (08, 1946)Google Scholar.

35 Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics Among Nations (New York, 1948), p. 335Google Scholar.

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