The Collective Security And Balance Of Power Approaches

The League of Nations was established in 1919 after the deadly and devastating conflict of World War I. The nations of the world needed a way to rebuild and regain trust in one another after this worldwide atrocity. President Woodrow Wilson believed that an international peacekeeping organization, such as the League of Nations, could achieve this monumental goal. President Wilson was convinced that the League could prevent another wWorld wWar, preserve peace, and promote total disarmament among nations. Wilson went to the Treaty of Versailles negotiations with a Fourteen Point Plan for peace, but he sacrificed almost all of his plans so that the League of Nations could be established. This organization, however, would never live up to the President’s dreams for its success. Despite Woodrow Wilson’s support for the League of Nations, it failed as a peace keeping organization because the United States did not participate, its decision making process was ineffective, and it lacked an armed force to impose its decisions.

Leonard Beaton similarly argued for the need to expand conceptions of security outward from the limits of parochial national security to include a range of systemic considerations. Likewise, Stanley Hoffman argued for the need to begin ‘turning national security into an aspect of world order policy’. Hedley Bull argued against excessive self-interest in approaches to national security, and for a broader view in which common interest and linkage among securities receive greater attention. More generally, Krause and Nye observed that ‘neither economists nor political scientists have paid enough attention to the complexity of the concept of security, including its instrumental role in the enhancement of different values’. The Brandt Commission called for a new concept of security that would transcend the narrow notions of military defence and look more towards the logic of a broader interdependence. The common theme underlying these voices was that a notion of security bound to the level of individual states and military issues is inherently inadequate.

By the end of the first world war, the international community founded the League of Nations, the first international security organization with the primary goal of maintaining world peace. The first world war saw drastic increases in mankind 's capacity to kill other human beings and cause insurmountable harm to human society and culture. The human condition was drastically different. With a new world war on the horizon, the international community had decided to band together to form a way in which it could help exercise the correct legal disposition and formality to positively influence the world. An international body was crucial after the first world war in order to maintain peace and order as the world picked up the pieces from their injustices. This was also true after the Second world war where the world saw, again, how the cruelties of humanity had to be prevented in order for the international body to prevent the forming of higher casualty rates and human suffering.

Ikenberry argues that there are many dilemmas within the organization of the international world order. The liberal order is defined by its openness and its rule based order. Order is maintained in these institutions when states agree to follow the rules set by these institutions. The liberal order has sought to establish its rules in a non-biased system that will not discriminate other states, so that the entire institution can agree on these regulations. However, this has raised many serious dilemmas’. There seems to be concern of how the balance of power operates. Ikenberry argues that the international order has been put into place

In this essay, I am going to look at the successes and failures of the League of Nations (LofN) in its struggle for peace throughout the 1920’s. The LofN was the ‘brain child’ of American president Woodrow Wilson. The four other main powers (Britain, France, Japan and Italy) joined along with approximately 60 other countries from around the world. The U.S.A then abandoned its ‘child’ as to social and economic unrest led to a more isolationist foreign policy. Yet the other four main countries continued to support the LofN and formed the council, consisting to the ‘most powerful countries’. The LofN was set up to enforce peace in Europe and the world. It created various

The balance of power theory is viewed as critical policy in the handling of international relations. To fully comprehend how the balance

International order, though it may be fleeting in the grand scheme of history, seems to be at least on a continuous track of lingering longer and longer each time before chaos takes over. The Persians, Greeks, and Romans all seemed to enjoy ever-increasing periods of relative peace at the top of their systems of international order before it unraveled. Most of Europe was in good order on the tail of the Industrial Revolution until some arch duke decided to vacation in Sarajevo. After each major conflict, the world re-shuffles itself and order is established again in some form or fashion. The players are bigger and more numerous with greater consequences for conflict but order is still unseated from time to time and the rules of the existing orders seem to change daily. Realism can explain this violent cycle of order and disorder. States and even non-state actors continuously seek to balance regional power in order to secure their survival in a world dominated by fear and uncertainty; if unable to balance that power through violent means, players will seek to form alliances and organizations to at least prevent domination; once a status quo has been created and survival is temporarily assured, players will seek to maintain life within that order; new members thrust the order back into violence and potentially chaos if unable or unwilling to play by those rules. This cycle of power balancing can be illustrated in three phases. International orders are created as

The “Balance of Power” was one of the most frequently used words in the international relation; it was the one that relates itself to peace. In another word, if the power becomes unbalanced or destabilized, war will become as unavoidable. However, what exactly is the definition of “balance of power?” According to Dictionary.com, it is “a distribution and opposition of forces among nations such that no single nation is strong enough to assert its will or dominate all the others” ("The Definition of Balance of Power"). So, it can be treated as a policy, one that has a great impact on the power distribution among countries. As such, each country would take their own actions to protect itself from attacks or from being in a disadvantaged situation by maintaining the power equilibrium. To illustrate the importance of “balanced power,” one could recall one of the well-known destructive war-- the First World War, also known as the World War I, has an impartible relation with this “Balance of Power.” World War One, as we know, began in 1914 to 1918 and made its name by the serious consequences it brought. The consequences of World War One had also lead to the World War Two and the cold war. For the major powers involved in this world war, which are —Germany, Great Britain, France, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. This war started locally in Europe between two countries, but soon things got complicated, and it started to come down to a war that the whole world was involved in. From the

     After the tragedies of World War II, European leaders have made striving efforts to prevent such a catastrophic event from occurring on their continent again. The best solution seemed to be highly mechanized cooperation among the highest European powers to assure that future conflict, and perhaps war, could not arise between them. If all the states ran themselves in a manner cooperating with their neighbors, conflict could be avoided. To prevent other nations from not cooperating, treaties and institutions would have to be designed for each area of international interest such as trade, communications, security, and so forth. As the century progressed, more organizations, institutions and associations were

“ Here is a task truly of, by and for the world, one that should rally nations. The nature of this task however, must be clearly understood; only then can suitable means for accomplishing it be formulated, only then can the role that the United Nations could and should play be appreciated” ( Wilcox/Haviland, 29). There are many international organizations that have been talked about throughout this semester. One of the most important ones is The United Nations. The United Nations was established October 24, 1945, and has since then been impacting the country. The United Nations main purpose according to the lecture notes is “ to provide a global additional structure through which states can sometimes settle conflicts with less reliance on the use of force , for whole purpose of the United Nations is to provide the globe a forum by which countries may settle disputes through this forum peacefully as opposed to relying on a force which has been the case historically” ( Kopalyan, Module 8). Thus meaning The United Nations was set up to handle problems peacefully rather than going to war to try and solve problems. “Powerful economic as well as political forces are at work to bring about a growing integration of the world community, and the United Nations and its related agencies are uniquely fitted to assist in the task” (Wilcox/Haviland,45). This was some of the reason that the United Nations was created.

Following the second of the World Wars, the League of Nations was replaced by the modern United Nations. This organization's aims were similar to their predecessor's, to maintain harmony through settling border disputes and to offer humanitarian aid wherever necessary, but the UN's charter states further that tolerance and equality is necessary in peace:

The Balance of Power is a fiercely debated topic within the realm of international relations. Its true definition has been impossible to pin down and how it manifests itself has been argued over by many academics, in addition to this the idea is divided between the schools of thought that it is a force for preserving peace or a force for tension and war. This essay will look to examine the balance of power using retrospective analysis of historical events, focusing on the lead up to and the outbreak of WWI and its conclusion and the Cold war. Through this it can be hoped to find a clearer definition of the balance of power, whether it is really a balance analogous to a set of scales and whether the balance of power is a way of preserving peace and stability or whether it is on the whole, better termed as the balance of war, creating only tension and instability.

can be seen that in the real world the system is composed of of various types of

"The League of Nations was doomed To failure from the start" Adam Jenner Many may believe that the League of Nations was doomed to failure as soon as the doors of their Geneva headquarters were opened; many may say that it was built on unstable foundations; that the very idea of it was a grave misjudgment by the powers that were. Indeed it is true that the League of Nations, when it was set up was marred with many fundamental flaws. The League of Nations was formed after the end of the First World War. It was an idea that President Wilson introduced as an international police force to maintain peace and to ensure the devastating atrocities like the First World War ever happening again. The principle mission of the League of Nations was to maintain World Peace. Their failure as the international peacekeeping organization to maintain world peace brought the outbreak of Second World War. Their failure in policing and preventing peace in settling disputes throughout Europe, erupted into the most devastating war ever. Through my analysis of the failures of the League of Nations to maintain world peace, my arguments will demonstrate the understandings of the reasons and events that created the most devastating environment for the Second World War.

First, the Theory of UN Collective Security briefly summarizes why the UN was established after WWII and how it has served the global community as a method to avoid war and conflict through collective security. Collective security is introduced as a principle that allows nation-states to be interconnected in a way that no only prevents war and conflict, but also provides methods that can be