#131
protect itself?
The question should, perhaps, be broadened,
What measures can the Security
Council take "to maintain or restore international peace and security" once an
attack with atomic weapons has been launched?
Such devastation is likely to be
wrought in the attack that the victim's need will be restoration from the ground
up.
Its security will have been shattered at the first blow.
If so, the only
‘protective. measures that will make any sense must be measures to prevent attack,
thless, in other words, the Security Council has always at its command the means
of preventing the aggressive use of atomic weapons, its function as the agent of
collective security will amount to relatively
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a world in which such
We apons
by a state legally
its task,
The may indeed
go further than this and say that a threat of aggressive use by a state actually
possessing a stock of such weapons will have to be recognized as bringing into
operation (for what it is worth) the right of self defense.
Otherwise the law-
abiding nation will be exposed to swift annihilation,
We have been assuming for the moment that atomic weapons may be freely produced or acquired,
Our argument is that under these conditions the Security
Council's protective function is moved back to the prevention of attack,
Even
in a world without such weapons, the Council would always make great efforts to
provent war breaking out rather than delay its action until hostilities had
begun,
Now, far more imperatively thm before, security from mass destruction
demands that the attack shall not be launched,
It therefore becomes important
to estimate the Council's chances of accumilating such actual power as will make
it an effective preventive force.
Article 13 of the Charter imposes on all members the obligation to negotiate with the Security Council agreements specifying the forces and facilities
which they are to make available for the maintenance of international. security.
Later, in Article 45, members undertake to hold air contingents immediately