Why Security Council is a distant dream

Even though it’s been more than a year since I left the service of the United Nations, the one question people have still not stopped asking me is when India is going to become a permanent member of the Security Council. The short answer is, ‘‘not this year, and not the next’’, but there are so many misconceptions in our country about this issue that a longer answer is clearly necessary.

The problem of reforming the Security Council is rather akin to a malady in which a number of doctors gather around a patient; they all agree on the diagnosis, but they cannot agree on the prescription. The diagnosis is clear — the Security Council reflects the geopolitical realities of 1945 and not of today. When the UN was founded in that year, the Council consisted of 11 members out of a total UN membership of 51 countries; in other words, some 22% of the members were on the Security Council. Today, there are 192 members of the UN, and only 15 members of the Council — fewer than 8%. So many more countries, both in absolute numbers and as a proportion of the membership, do not feel adequately represented on the body. The composition of the Council also gives undue weightage to the balance of power of those days: Europe, for instance, which accounts for barely 5% of the world’s population, still controls 33% of the seats. And the five permanent members (the US, Britain, France, Russia and China) enjoy their position, and the privilege of a veto over any Council resolution or decision, by virtue of having won a war 63 years ago. (In the case of China, the word ‘‘won’’ needs to be placed within inverted commas.)

So, clearly the Security Council is ripe for reform to bring it into the first decade of the 21st century. The UN recognised the need for action as early as 1992, when the Open-Ended Working Group of the General Assembly was established to look into the issue, in the hope of having a solution in time for the 50th anniversary of the world organisation in 1995. But the Open-Ended Working Group soon began to be known, in the UN corridors, as the Never-Ending Shirking Group. Instead of identifying a solution or moving towards compromise, the Group remains in existence, having missed not only the 50th anniversary of the UN, but even the 60th. Left to their own devices, they will be arguing the merits of the case well past the UN’s centenary.

The problem is quite simple: for every state that feels it deserves a place on the Security Council, and especially the handful of countries who believe their status in the world ought to be recognised as being in no way inferior to at least three if not four of the existing permanent members, there are several who know they will not benefit from any reform. The small countries that make up more than half the UN’s membership accept that reality and are content to compete occasionally for a two-year non-permanent seat on the Council. But the medium-sized and large countries which are the rivals of the prospective beneficiaries deeply resent the prospect of a select few breaking free of their current second-rank status in the world body. Some of the objectors, like Canada and Spain, are motivated genuinely by principle: they consider the existence of permanent membership to be wrong to begin with, and they have no desire to compound the original sin by adding more members to a category they dislike. But many of the others are openly animated by a spirit of competition, historical grievance or simple envy. Together they have banded together into an effective coalition to thwart reform of the membership of the Security Council.

The bar to amending the UN Charter has been set rather high. Any amendment requires a two-thirds majority of the overall membership, in other words 128 of the 192 states in the General Assembly. An amendment would further have to be ratified by two-thirds of the member states (and ratification is usually a parliamentary procedure, so in most countries this means it’s not enough for the government of the day to be in favour of a reform; its parliament also has to go along with a change.) This means that the only ‘‘prescription’’ that has any chance of passing is one that will both persuade two-thirds of the UN member states to support it and not attract the opposition of any of the existing Permanent Five (or that of a powerful US senator who could block ratification in Washington). That has proved to be a tall order indeed.

After all, who would countries want to see on an expanded Security Council? Obviously, states that displace some weight in the world and have a record of making major contributions to the UN system. Japan and Germany are the second and third largest financial contributors to the UN (though the Charter, drawn up in 1945, still calls them ‘‘enemy states’’, since the UN was set up by the victorious allies of World War II). But when they began pressing their claims to permanent seats, the foreign minister of Italy wisecracked, ‘‘what’s all this talk about Japan and Germany? We lost the war too.’’ Adding these two to the Council would, of course, further skew the existing North-South imbalance, so they would have to be balanced by new permanent members from the developing world. But who would these be? In Asia, India, as the world’s largest democracy, its fifth-largest economy and a long-standing contributor to UN peace-keeping operations, seems an obvious contender. But Pakistan, and to some extent Indonesia, are unalterably opposed. In Latin America, Brazil occupies a place analogous to India’s in Asia, but Argentina and Mexico have other ideas. And in Africa, how is one to adjudicate the rival credentials of the continent’s largest democracy, Nigeria, its largest economy, South Africa, and its oldest civilisation, Egypt? (And neither China nor South Korea is keen on Japan, with its record of atrocities seven decades ago, being rewarded today.)

No wonder a two-thirds majority has proved elusive for any reform prescription. But i do still believe the Security Council has to change sooner or later, and next week i will try to explain why, and perhaps how, India could one day assume its rightful place.