Collective Security

11 Pages 2810 Words

h a membership approximating universality, an organisation is most likely to successfully suppress aggression from within. Further to these principles, there are certain conditions given, which must be met in order for collective security to function at all. The most important of these is that power is diffuse among all states. This is to ensure that no one state could be so dominant as to make any potential opponents unable or unwilling to resist it. Secondly, collective security requires that there is a general agreement, particularly among the stronger states (great powers), regarding the political nature of the order of states. As collective security seeks to maintain peace, and thus the status quo, the vast majority of states must concur to the defined political map.
Born from the ashes that the Napoleonic Wars had left, the ‘great powers’ of Europe, Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Great Britain, met at Vienna to create what has become known as the Concert of Europe. At the Congress of Vienna, the lands from which the defeated France...