Following the efforts of the idealist at preventing
war in the post world war era, the institutional approach emerged. It was the general belief during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that international wars could be avoided if
there were institutions which could
serve as a way for the peaceful resolution of disputes. This resulted to the
establishment of the League of Nations in 1919 and the United Nations in 1945.
So,
the events that followed the twentieth century disregarded the institutional
approach. The first thing is that the First World War occurred reason being
that the balance of power collapsed. the
second thing is that the league of nations could not prevent the second world
war, and
third, UN failed to prevent the treacherous and precarious cold war between the super powers,
with the unbridled craze to acquire nuclear
weapons which could return the world
to perpetual destruction, if a third
world war is allowed to take place, still, we should acknowledge that the institutions are man-made and human beings
are full of crisis.
The gulf crisis lead to a war situation is
necessarily the inability of the UN or the Arab league to prevent it, but the
Sadan Hussein. Again, the international courts inability to enforce her
judgments against erring states could be traced to the behaviour of state
leaders’ negligence of the international court rule or order and the structural
body as well. Example UN invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. In summary here, the
institutional approach is still important and what is needed is to carve out
supranational institutions that can separately sanction misbehaved states.