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Beyond Trending: What is collective security?
Amid widespread debate over the “rupture” in the post-war order, the critical question is whose vision for global governance would redefine it, and whether collective security architecture would evolve into universal institutions, alliances, or ad hoc coalitions.
Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney delivers a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (Photo/AP)
“Every day we are reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry. That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must,” said Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at Davos, invoking Thucydides’ aphorism of power politics in an anarchic world order.
Instead of facing subordination or isolationism, the middle powers, argued Carney, must act together because “if you are not at the table, you are on the menu”. He outlined various means of collective investments to build resilience, specifically when the architecture of collective problem solving (i.e., WTO, the UN, the COP) is greatly diminished, on which middle powers relied.
The warning also reminds us of the logic of collective security, as Carney reiterated that on Greenland, “our commitment to Article 5 is unwavering”. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) states that an armed attack against one NATO member shall be considered an attack against them all.
Collective security
The idea of collective security involves a set of legally established mechanisms designed to prevent or suppress aggression by any state against any other state.
One of the earliest experiments in collective security was the League of Nations, formed after WWI. It was grounded in the liberal internationalism of former US President Woodrow Wilson, famously articulated in his ‘Fourteen Points’, which sought to replace the balance of power politics of anarchical international relations with law, institutions, and collective restraint.
However, the experiment proved short-lived. The League ultimately couldn’t prevent the outbreak of WWII, prompting international relations theorist E H Carr to call the League of Nations – and the liberalism that underpinned its ideals – ‘utopian’.
The United Nations (1945), which replaced the League of Nations, was seen as an attempt to create a more robust collective architecture. Unlike its predecessor, it sought to address power imbalances through the Security Council and granted its permanent members veto powers so that they could contribute to international peace and security.
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But recent power projections by great powers – evident in Ukraine, Gaza, Venezuela, and in coercive pressure elsewhere – are seen as exposing the limits of collective security when great-power interests collide.
Regional security mechanisms
Although NATO is not a collective security system, but rather a strategic Western alliance, it has often been invoked in relation to collective security due to its “one for all and all for one” logic against external aggression.
As the post-war order is debated, the emergence of other regional security architectures presents an interesting development. Initiatives such as the US, Japan, and the Republic of Korea Trilateral Pact (2023), Trilateral Security Cooperation in the Western Balkans (2025), and the Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement (2025) between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan suggest that states are increasingly leaning towards smaller, interest-based coalitions rather than universal institutions.
Against the backdrop of major powers frequently violating rules in the “unhindered pursuit of their power and interests”, such regional mechanisms present interesting developments along the rupture in the world order. The critical question now is whose vision for global governance would redefine this rupture, and whether the future of collective security architecture would be shaped by universal institutions, alliances, or ad hoc coalitions.
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