ABSTRACT
The first variations on the theme of collective security appeared in the late middle ages, and are instructive for their differences from the twentieth-century concept as well as their similarities to it. Some of the proposals provided for a council of great-power representatives to determine whether aggression had occurred and to impose whatever sanctions they deemed necessary. As the principal alternative to collective security in the management of interstate conflict, the balance-of-power ideas that had their heyday in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries shed light on the thinking behind the modern concept of collective security. Bodies like the International Telegraphic Union and the Universal Postal Union typically included a policymaking congress of all the members and an executive council of limited membership, which met regularly to oversee the implementation of policy. The public unions established habits of businesslike cooperation among a large multinational membership, a pattern that many hoped could be extended to the harder issues of international security.
