ABSTRACT
The specialists in international affairs who came to the fore after World War II had a different view of the world from their predecessors. Bringing order to the world community seemed a less rational enterprise than it had been before the war. From the scrutiny of covenants and agreements, the focus shifted to an examination of the underlying forces that shape national behavior. A preoccupation with the national-security component of power leads to an overly simplified view of world politics. Collective security, no less than the balance of power, is driven by the pursuit of national interests, as distinct from the interests of supranational groups or organizations. The prospects for a collective-security system at any given time depend largely on the prevailing attitudes toward sovereignty and the uses of force that are associated with it. In the advanced democracies, collective security encounters a special set of attitudes and emotional responses that are often at cross-purposes with each other.
