ABSTRACT
From the earliest days of the Westphalian order, a number of thinkers had advanced similar views of a collective security alternative to what they saw as the dangerous every-state-for-itself permissiveness of the European normative system. The Covenant of the League of Nations, at whose heart lay the collective security commitment, was in form and in theory a social contract among the states that ratified it. The comments on some important weaknesses and inconsistencies in the Covenant in fact are comments on the unwillingness of those who created the League to abandon altogether traditional Westphalian modes of behavior even while they supposedly were committing themselves to a radically new concept. The security problem for the globe's citizens today is multifaceted and in very many of its aspects seems to be inadequately treated by the Westphalian system. Within the twentieth-century, the laissez-faire underpinnings of Westphalia have begun to look increasingly inadequate as the basis for addressing other important issues.
