The Case for Collective Security
A plea made almost 80 years ago is highly relevant today
Norman Angell was forgotten long ago, but today, as NATO members gather in Brussels to discuss how to respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I want to share some of his words.
Angell was a British journalist and peace activist. In the years prior to the First World War, he wrote a pamphlet, expanded into a book entitled The Great Illusion, in which he argued that nations could no longer profit from going to war and plundering their neighbours. It was very widely read. And widely misunderstood — many people took Angell to be saying that war had become unprofitable and therefore war would never come again. He repeatedly corrected that misinterpretation but it stuck. When the First World War came, he was mocked, then and for decades after, as the man who said war would never come shortly before it did.
In the 1920s, Angell kept making the case for peace. In 1933, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for having exposed by his pen the illusion of war and presented a convincing plea for international cooperation and peace.”
Given this lifelong commitment, you might think Angell was one of the many who responded to the rise of Hitler with calls for negotiation and appeasement. In fact, Angell supported the war against fascism. And he turned the power of his pen toward convincing Americans to abandon isolationism and make common cause with the Allied nations.
In 1943, he published Let the People Know. In it, he spoke directly to Americans who wanted nothing to do with foreign entanglements, so he started by laying out the arguments against going to war. There are no straw men there. Angell spelled out the arguments in detail and with as much force as he could muster. (This is a technique now called “steel-manning.” It is as rare as it is wise.)
Then he rebutted the arguments one by one, in plain, blunt English. It’s an impressive demonstration of rhetorical craft.
It’s also highly relevant today. Because Angell starts with what he calls “The Basic Principle.”
No nation in the modern world can possibly defend itself effectively against the form of violence most likely to threaten it unless it is prepared to take its part in the defense of others. By refusing to concern ourselves with the defense of others we make our own impossible.
To illustrate, Angell cites the chain of small countries Nazi Germany steamrolled.
These states of continental Europe have perished as free nations because each said in effect: ‘We refuse to be concerned in defending the security of the rights of others; we will defend only our own.’ Because all said this in one form or another, they were all at Hitler’s mercy; at his mercy however much they armed. A Norway or a Denmark might devote 90 per cent of all its national resources to arms and still be at his mercy….
“We will not defend others, only our own.” The slogan had eaten into the heart of France where so many had said not merely, "why should we fight for the Czechs?” but also “Why should we fight for the English?” It had eaten into the heart of many English, who, years before, had said, “Why should we fight for the Manchurians, or the Chinese, or the Abyssinians, or the Spanish Republicans, or for Danzig or the Rhineland?” From the moment that Hitler could get those whom he planned to conquer to be guided by such slogans, he knew full well that they would be at his mercy, for he could pick them off one by one, applying the most hackneyed device of conquest and tyranny: divide and rule.
After all, ten men can overcome a hundred, ten times their number, if the hundred insist that each must defend himself individually, not in co-operation with others; for in that case the ten do not face a hundred, they only face one, one at a time.
Angell doesn’t use the term, but this is the case for collective security. It is why NATO was founded. It is why NATO is meeting in Brussels today.
It is why Normal Angell may be forgotten but he is as right as ever.
Did Angell's opinion change when nukes entered the picture? The main argument for America/EU holding back is risking escalation. But I imagine it's a similar argument… why risk nuclear war over a non-NATO country like Ukraine?
Wait wait wait. Isn't the logic of Angell's argument (in particular his mention of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and China) that the West - Poland, Germany, France, Britain, the United States, Canada - should be fighting Russia for Ukraine's independence right now? Isn't this the fallacy of the harmony of interests taken from a different angle, not just that it'd be irrational and immoral for a country to attack another, but that it'd be rational for all countries to respond by going to war with the aggressor? (See E. H. Carr, "The Twenty Years' Crisis 1919-1939.")
The actual Western response is to (1) raise the costs to Russia, through strong sanctions and through military aid to Ukraine, and (2) humanitarian assistance to the millions of refugees who have fled. But we're not following Angell's view.
Certainly it makes sense that countries seek alliances to defend against threats, but that's different from what Angell is saying, which is (if I understand correctly) that a threat to any one country is a threat to all other countries, and thus that there's a natural alliance between them. This is the mistaken reasoning on which the League of Nations was founded. NATO was set up with different assumptions and more limited objectives.