Nothing + Nothing = Nothing

Mario Loyola provides some useful history and a realistic assessment of "collective security" under the United Nations treaty, in the (subscription-only) Weekly Standard:

When the Great Powers convened an international conference in San Francisco to adopt the U.N. Charter in 1945, they began their work with an elegant draft treaty, the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals, named for the gorgeous Georgetown estate where their foreign ministers had spent much of the previous summer hammering out the outlines of the new world order. The Proposals were a monument to the State Department's institutional talent for careful technical study and drafting precision. Alas, they emerged from the San Francisco conference mutilated, enshrining a presumption against the use of force that only the Security Council can override.

In the original draft, the use of force was presumed legitimate so long as it comported with the purposes of the new organization--which included the maintenance of international law, and the prevention and removal of threats to the peace. This would have left the legality of many kinds of wars--preemptive action, humanitarian intervention, arms control enforcement--where it belongs, in the evolving body of customary international law. But the final text reversed this presumption: It made the use of force illegal in almost all cases--no matter how necessary or justified--unless the Security Council first approves.

Instead of facilitating collective action, as the drafters had imagined, the Security Council under this new dispensation would mainly function to block the use of force by the very states for whom legitimacy matters most--the great democracies. The U.N. was conceived as a body that would make it impossible for an aggressive regime like Nazi Germany to violate treaties with impunity and arm for a war of conquest. But the San Francisco conference gave birth to a system that would have made Hitler's rise even easier. . .

Alas, Roosevelt died a few months too soon, and the finishing touches on the U.N. were left to a pair of Midwesterners--Harry Truman and Arthur Vandenberg--who were as idealistic as they were simple-minded. Truman dreamed of creating a Parliament of Man, and this almost childish fantasy lives on in the U.N.'s claim for itself not only of "unique legitimacy" but also, even more improbably, success. In his 2003 speech to the General Assembly, Kofi Annan intimated that America was challenging the system that had preserved international law and world peace for nearly 60 years. This is a fantastical denial of history. It is the United States that has preserved some semblance of order in the world for the past 60 years, while the U.N. dedicated itself chiefly to abusing Israel.

Just as Ghandhi's non-violence would have been ineffective were Indians battling, say, the Soviet Union, the U.N. acts to check only the virtuous nations. Which, unfortunately, don't include France.