Neutrality, Collective Security, and the Role of International Law

• In Event: Realism: War, Participation, and Restraint?

Abstract

Through the twentieth century, neutrality and collective security vied in American public and elite opinion as the preferable way of dealing with the international phenomenon of war. Neutrality sought to deal with war by isolating the bulk of the society of states from it, through respect for the rights and duties of belligerent and neutral powers. By contrast, collective security has sought to deal with the problem of war by creating a binding pledge by all states to come to the defense of any state attacked by any state, thus bringing all states into a war. The objective would be to deter any war through the creation of an unassailably powerful coalition that no potential aggressor could defeat. Each method reached a height of codification, neutrality in the Declaration of London of 1909, and collective security in the UN Charter of 1945. Neither method has achieved success in its theoretical or its legal form, though more informal patterns of behavior taking on some qualities of each have appeared in interstate behavior. States shy away from binding themselves to any particular response to war, preferring to rely on Robert Jackson's "prudential" responses rather than the "procedural" rules of international law.

Author

• David Clinton, Baylor University