#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 “ % 2 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