Systems for Peace or Causes of War?: Collective Security, Arms Control, and the New Europe

Systems for Peace or Causes o f War’? Collective Security, Arms Control, and the New Europe of collective security has created a psychological situation in which the United States cannot turn its back on the concept, not because of what collective security can accomplish . . . but because of what millions of people . . . believe it may accomplish in time. Collective security has come to be the chief symbol of hope that . . . a community of nations will develop in which there will be no more war. Arnold Wolfersl The achievement of orthodox status is very often fatal to the integrity of a concept. When it becomes popular and respectable . . . men are strongly tempted to proclaim their belief in it whether or not they genuinely understand its meaning or fully accept its implications. If the tension between their urge to believe in it and their disinclination to believe that it is valid becomes too strong, they tend to resolve the difficultyby altering its meaning, packing into the terminological box a content that they can more readily accept. Inis L. Claude, Jr.2 Collective security is an old idea whose time keeps coming3The term has been resurrected and revised in three generations of this century, once after each World War-the First, the Second, and the Cold War-and has been The author is grateful to Bruce Cronin, Will Daugherty, Robert Gilpin, Stanley Hoffmann, Charles Kupchan, Deborah Larson, John Mueller, Joseph Nye, Paul Schroeder, Paul Stares, Richard Ullman, and Kenneth Waltz for criticismof earlier drafts, and the Pew Charitable Trusts for support. This draft still does not do justice to all the criticisms, especially those of Kupchan and Ullman. A similar version of this article will appear in Jack Snyder and Robert Jervis, eds., Coping with Complexity in the International System (WestviewPress, forthcoming). Richard K. Betts is Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. 1. Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962), p. 197. 2. Inis L. Claude, Jr., Swords Into Plowshares, 4th ed. (New York: Random House, 1971),p. 246. 3. The concept can be traced back at least as far back as the last millennium, when French bishops in a council at Poitiers and a synod at Limoges declared war on war, decided to excommunicate princes who broke the peace, and planned to deploy troops under a religious bannner to use force against violators. Stefan T. Possony, “Peace Enforcement,” Yule Law Journal, Vol. 55, No. 5 (1946). ~ ~~ Intermtionnl Security, Summer 1992 (Vol. 17, No. 1) 5 lntemational Security 17:l I6 used to refer to: (1) the Wilsonian or ideal concept associated with the Fourteen Points and League of Nations; (2) the Rio Pact, the United Nations, and anti-communist alliancesincludingthe UN Command in Korea, NATO, the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty, SEATO, the Baghdad Pact, and CENTO;4 and (3) current proposals for organizations to c o w peace in Eur~pe.~ The protean character of collectivesecurity reflects the fact that many who endorseit squirm when the terms are specified or applied to awkward cases. This has occurred with all incarnationsof the idea.6The main problem is the gap between the instinctive appeal of the idea in liberal cultures as they settle epochal conflicts, and its inherent defects in relations among independent statesas they move from peace toward war. When particularcasesmake the defects obtrusive the idea is revised rather than jettisoned. When revisions vitiate what essentially distinguishesthe idea from traditional concepts it is supposed to replace, the urge to salvage the idea confuses strategic judgment. That is harmless only as long as strategy is not needed. 4. This was prevalentin official thinking in the first half of the Cold War. For example, seeJohn Foster Dulles, War or Peace (New York: Maanillan, 1950), pp. 89-95, 204-207; and Dean Rusk, as told to Richard Rusk, and Daniel Papp, ed., As I Saw It (New York Norton, 1990), pp. 503505 . 5. For example, Richard Ullman, Securing Europe (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1991); Gregory Flynn and David J. Scheffer, "Limited Collective Security," Foreign Policy, No. 80 (Fall 1990),pp. 77-101;CharlesA. Kupchan and Clifford A. Kupchan, "Concerts, CollectiveSecurity, and the Future of Europe," Zntemutionul Security, Vol. 1 6...