Collective Security Systems during and after the Cold War Essay

Collective Security Systems during and after the Cold War - Essay Example The theory of collective security intended to keep security and maintain peace through a sovereign international organization. In this assignment, I will discuss collective security during and after the old War. Since United Nations was a key organization in dealing with collective security, the organization will be emphasized in an attempt to discuss collective security. Discussion After the League of Nations became incapable of providing collective security to the states, it disintegrated; this led to the development of United Nations. According to the United Nations Charter, the United Nations was to provide peace and deal with security matters, but had to rely on the leadership of Russia and the United States since they were the two super powers. However, although the leadership of security and peace matters rested on the superpowers, the emergence of Cold War and its consequences, in terms of bloc politics, blocked the United Nations from performing its principal goal of providi ng collective security (Kupchan 1991, p. 123). In the hostile condition of the Cold War, the United Nations could not perform its role to implement the provisions of the Charter in most cases related to international peace and security. Although the Cold War barred the United Nations from performing its function satisfactorily, especially in security and peace matters, it successfully pursued its Charter goals in other areas like decolonization, which aided in achieving collective security. After the end of the Second World War, winners of the war saw the need of finding a World organization, which could deal with issues relating to maintenance of peace and security. On this bid, the United Nations became established with an aim of correcting the deficiencies of League of Nations. The principal intention of the superpowers while establishing the United Nations Charter entailed finding a remedy to chief weaknesses of the League of Nations; these included the absence of collective sec urity system for the upholding of international peace. During the Cold War period, the United Nations played a significant role in fighting for collective security among states. After the start of the Cold War in 1947 up to 1960, formation of a collective security was a massive failure. The chief reason for failure of having a collective security system during this period arose from tensions of the Cold War. The idea, which was put during the formation of the United Nations, provided that the two principal powers had to direct the Security Council in formulating the collective security system. However, there emerged mistrust between the two principal powers, which led to divided ideologies of providing a collective security. This division between the two superpowers became vast since the United States used the United Nations to contain Russia (Thakur 2006, p. 109). Under these circumstances, it was remarkably difficult for the United Nations to establish the proposed machinery for m aintaining international peace and security. Since West and East did not trust each other in undertaking military operations on behalf of the United Nations, the activities of the Security Council became limited to a capacity that it could not establish the collective security system. This became evident during the Korean War and the Suez Canal Crisis. During these two conflicts, the Superpowers were still divided and the UN was not capable of providing collective sec