International Organization and Collective Security: Lessons from the Korean War

Purpose: This article explores the evolution of collective security and global governance at the level of international organization, through the lenses of historical institutionalism and social constructivism. It assesses the roles of discrete international organizations, the broader process of international organization, and controversies surrounding their dualistic nature. Importantly, the process of international organization is viewed as one of trial and error, with the failure of any one manifestation of the phenomenon resulting in learning from mistakes and building on what worked, rather than abandoning the project. Key to understanding, therefore, is analysis of competing strands of institutional path dependencies and their interaction with critical junctures of dramatic watershed events. Given the culmination of the historical and social evolution of collective security in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), the most important critical juncture for analysis is the Korean War, which featured the first use of Chapter VII enforcement actions under the UN Charter. Method: This research project used a qualitative approach consisting of literature review and document analysis. The results of this study should be supplemented by quantitative and qualitative studies in the future. The literature review consists of a comprehensive assessment of scholarly academic publications from competing perspectives in the fields of political and moral philosophy, public administration, and international relations. The document survey is mainly related to the policy documentation output of national governments and international organizations, as well as media reports. Results: The research identifies how the historical evolution of collective security principles and practice championed by liberal internationalists is repeatedly de-railed by the realities of critical junctures. By mapping the historical and social evolution of international organization (the process) and international organizations (manifestations of the process at any given point in time), it is possible to generate a much greater understanding of the forces at play. The Korean War is a particularly salient focal point, as it highlights some of the previously learned lessons of collective security (such as the importance of universality and keeping all the great powers actively involved in the mechanisms of global governance), as well as the challenges stemming from them (such as institutional inertia due to ideological divides in the UN Security Council). It is not an exaggeration to claim that following the Korean War, international organization and collective security were irrevocably changed. Conclusion: The feasibility of the provision of collective security through IOs and the process of international organization at any given time is a product of a combination of path dependency and critical junctures. As the first, and for a long time, the only Chapter VII enforcement action carried out under the auspices of the UN, the Korean War holds a unique position of influence upon our understanding of the evolution of these currents. At first sight appearing to be the culmination of the liberal internationalist collective security paradigm, it instead ended up refocusing attention on realistic and pragmatic international security governance. With the end of the Cold War, the next critical juncture encountered by global security governance, it seemed that the pendulum had once again swung towards global public governance. However, following overreach during the Libya intervention, there has been another dramatic correction back in the direction of statecentricity.