Collective Security: Revisiting a theory

If you ever took a course in international relations, you’ve already been here and done that, but you can comment if you like:

Starting on August 16th, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) begins its Annual Summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic.  The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is a collective security organization that demonstrates many elegant capabilities within the Central Asian region.  While Bishkek scours its streets and prepares its ornamental plantings for the summit, here at FPA Central Asia we’ll also be getting prepared. 

What is Collective Security?
Collective security theory is a liberal theory of international relations in that it emphasizes venues of cooperation and mutual obligation.  States enter multilateral agreement to refrain from attacking one another and for economic relations, but within an overarching organization to which they owe allegiance.  According to the theory, pledging to an international organization will create a more stable commitment than a large, confusing set of bilateral treaties.  In addition, collective security arrangements indicate that member states will not attack each other, and that they will rise in defense of a member state thus attacked.   According to Claude (1956):

The twentieth-century hope that international organizations might serve to prevent war, or , failing that, to defend states subjected to armed attack in defiance of organized efforts to maintain the peace, has been epitomized in the concept of collective security. . . .
Collective security can be described as resting upon the proposition that war can be prevented by the deterrent effect of overwhelming power upon states which are too rational to invite certain defeat.  

The first notable collective security arrangement was the ill-fated League of Nations.  The notion that The League was necessary came after a brutal World War I, where numerous bilateral and trilateral arrangments under balance-of-power initiatives could not be reconciled with each other when various nations commenced hostilities.  In some cases, states were committed by treaty to fight both for and against another; the war concluded nothing, and wrecked much. 

After Flanders Field, deterrence looked like an act of genius.  An overarching community system looked like the best way to maintain peace as a whole.  However, states were not yet ready for community; war reparations, isolationism, world economic depression contributed to the death of the League of Nations and the beginning of World War II.

Post-World War II
The United Nations is of course the most famous and successful collective security organization, and its Article 51 puts forth the obligation of mutual defense.  However, other collective security arrangement flourished, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Warsaw Pact countries, demarcating the lines of the Cold War. 

The rise of collective security was complicated by an increasing perception of clashing interests between the capitalist and communist blocs of states.  In the U.S., the theory of structural realism described the alliances of smaller states with “superpowers”.  Structural realism might magnificently explain the motives of these great powers, but even so, the motives of satellite states within these arrangements is better described by collective security: an alliance with a large, powerful state and its allies that would engage to protect it.  Smaller states could ally in order to meet security needs such as military training and military equipment.  In addition, they could more easily develop economic ties, for education exchange, industrial contracts, and infrastructure development. 

Each of these collective security arrangements also had substantial economic communities that developed alongside them, which has been one reason they have endured.  Collective defense plus economic communities has helped keep them strong, and in the case of NATO and Warsaw Pact arrangements, helped them evolve into new functions and spin off new organizations when the world changed, circa 1990. 

Post-Cold War
Now that the reason for structural realism and bipolar relations appears to have disappeared, collective security is described by even more overlap.  For instance, in Central Asia and the Caucasus, numerous collective organizations have arisen for economic or military cooperation.  Most of these states belong to more than one organization, with somewhat differing membership.  NATO, the OSCE, GUAM, the CSTO, EurAsEc, and –last but not least– the SCO–all have alliances or significant relations with Central Asian nations. 

This overlap in security alliances keeps Central Asian politics interesting and complicated.  One thing is for certain, however: most major collective security arrangements in Central Asia have a strong superpower component, and that superpower component tends to set the direction of activities within the alliance.  There is still an element of “great power” maneuvering involved–just more interlaced and multivalent. 

A second complication to the new collective security is that its enemies are frequently not other states or other collective security arrangements–but rather, non-state actors such as terrorists or international crime syndicates.  This also makes state cooperation under collective security more important than ever.

References:
The IR Theory Knowledge Base Web page
Inis L. Claude, Jr.  From Ploughs into Swordshares (1956) and Power and International Relations (1962).
Warsaw Pact at Wikipedia
NATO at NATO: click on “What is NATO?”
The UN Charter

Photos: Flickr.com; Watersecretsblog