Un Security Council

[Lonan3]

The UN Security Council currently consists of 5 permanent members ( USA, UK, China, Russian Federation and France) plus 10 who are elected for a two-year term (presently Argentina, Denmark, Greece, Japan, UR of Tanzania, Philippines, Romania, Algeria, Benin & Brazil) with a a monthly rotation of the presidency (Greece at the moment, Japan in August).

In my opinion this is already a cumbersome arrangement which inevitably reduces the potential effectiveness of the Security Council and too often prevents it from taking the kind of action that it was intended to.

It not only requires 9 of its members to vote in favour of any action it suggests taking, it also allows the 5 permanent members to veto any such agreement. Thus the USA (currently the most-frequent veto user) has been able to prevent any condemnation of Israeli actions or it's own actions in Nicaragua, while the USSR was able to prevent any action against its involvement in Afghanistan a few years ago. (The only times when the UK has used the veto unilaterally was in the early 70s on the subject of S Rhodesia/Zimbabwe)

There is now a proposal to to add 6 new permanent places to the council - Germany, Brazil, Japan, India + 2 more from Africa - as well as an extra 4 elected ones.

This ungainly system has already seen the veto employed more than 200 times since its foundation so that, in many cases, a single country was able to prevent any action being taken even when the other states were in agreement.

Already the UN has become something of an irrelevance - at the very time when an efficient, world-wide organisation is desperately needed to tackle the issues such as terrorism, global warming etc.

So the question is, would an expansion of the Security Council to 25 really help the decision making process or would it, as I suspect, mark the final emasculation of an organisation that once held the prospect of producing a better world for everyone?

[VinnieK]

The problem with the UN is that it is organised on what is now an anachronism. At the end of the Second World War, Roosevelt saw a world policed by three powers: The USSR, The USA, and the British Empire, each with its own sphere of influence. This plan tacitly accepts these three as the 'first amongst equals', a final line of authority, hence their veto. France was included on the insistence of Churchill, to compensate for occupation and to keep the French government happy, despite Roosevelt seeing france finished as an international power. China was included for similar reasons, and due to the role of China in fighting Japan.

 

Of course, it all went to hell when the British Empire rapidly began to crumble, and the extent of the ideological difficulties between the USSR and the West began to become apparent. Ever since then, the veto has been nothing more than a tool of national interests (indeed, it was probably naive to believe that it could be anything but!), and so the question of who has the veto and who is a permanent member of the security council becomes more difficult and the present situation more artificial. Now, it may be deemed disagreeable that such a position should only be given to a fixed number of the most powerful of the world's nations, but at least that is a justification of sorts. Without the influence of a world empire, what justifies Britain's position on the council over Germany or Italy? Why post Soviet Russia over Japan?

 

An expansion of the security council would probably hinder the UN further, I agree. Any dilution of power tends to result in the growth of cumbersome bureaucracy, unseemly horse trading, and delays in the formulation and enactment of policy. The problem is that the present situation has been untenable almost from the very beginning of the organization's foundation, one of the reasons it has not showed signs of the kind of strain and doubt that is now becoming evident is because it is only now that other nations have, and quite rightly, pointed out the absurdity of the security council's present composition.

 

The choice is between perpetuating the anachronism of the security council, despite it affording disproportionate influence to some nations, and embodying the dubious principle that those with the greatest geopolitical power should also have the greatest legislative power, or diluting that power and exacerbating the already considerable difficulties in getting anything done via the UN.

 

In my opinion no simple tweaking with membership or procedure can surmount problems that are largely inherent to the foundations of the system itself. What is required is a more systematic and broad programme of reform, perhaps even questioning the purpose of the UN itself.