Is the United Nations Security Council too dysfunctional to continue to operate in a dangerous world? President Zelenskyy of the Ukraine gave a passionate speech last week challenging that august body to either act on behalf of his besieged, invaded member nation, or “dissolve yourself altogether.” It was hyperbolic, even incendiary language, to be sure, but is not without some merit.
image via wikimedia commons
President Zelensky’s frustration at the international security organization’s inaction is entirely understandable. As Karen DeYoung and John Hudson described the moment in the Washington Post:
“Are you ready to close the U.N.?” asked a tired-looking Zelensky, looming over the council chamber on a massive video screen. “Do you think that the time of international law is gone? If your answer is no, then you need to act immediately.”
It is easy to get frustrated at the arc of history’s bend as a goliath nation lobs missiles at its neighbor while the world watches. The United Nations Security Council consists of 15 members, out of which only 5 nations – the United States, the UK, France, Russia and China — are permanent and hold the power to impose a veto on the council’s resolutions. Considering the geopolitics of today, such a configuration seems …. almost quaint.
“Quaint,” via wikimedia commons
What about Japan, the world’s third largest economy? What about India, the world’s third most populous country? It should be noted, dear reader, that an expansion of the Security Council — adding India, say, or Japan or even the highly influential South Africa — would not solve the problem of the Russian veto one whit.
After more than 75 years, it is right and proper for serious observers of the international order to reevaluate the continued relevance of the United Nations Security Council, particularly now, in the hour of the wolf. Since 1945, when the victors of World War II granted themselves permanent seats with a veto, very little has changed despite the end of the Cold War, the rise of international terrorism and Russia and China’s increasing use of the veto to protect their own national interests.
Let’s take a look at Russia, the cause of President Zelenskyy’s deepest concern. The most pressing problem at hand is Russia’s ability to veto any resolutions under its powers as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council that touches upon its horrific war in the Ukraine. That war, if it continues its present trajectory, could lead to an even greater genocide (as if “soft genocide” is anything other than a war crime), or, even more catastrophically, to World War 3. No end seems to be in sight; cities are being decimated. Already political figures from around the world are outright calling for Russia to be expelled from the Council and their veto power dissolved — but good luck on that front. It is virtually impossible to expel Russia from the Council.
The problem is further compounded by the fact that even if we could get around Russia’s impenetrable Veto, China -- another permanent member of the U.N. Security Council with veto power -- stands shoulder-to shoulder on the issue alongside its ethnonationalist ally. Both stalwart powers use their veto regularly to keep the august international security body from interfering in the brutal internal affairs of autocracies. And so, the United Nations Security Council, the premier international security body on the planet, appears to be at an impasse.
Both China and Russia have abused the Veto, most recently and infamously in Syria. In the case of Syria, Russia cast its 14th Veto, preventing humanitarian aid from reaching Syrians during their civil war. At that point, it became clear to all that the Security Council was profoundly broken. "While the Veto was created to amplify unanimity in (Permanent 5 members), this power has been recurrently abused to further the national interests of these countries and their allies and uphold their hegemony," writes Syeda Nabiha Wadood in Eurasia Review.
What is to be done? Various Security Council reforms have been proposed over the years. Eliminating the veto; expanding the Council; admitting more permanent members. But what about just abolishing the Security Council altogether? Could the General Assembly — at the urging of 3 of the 5 Permanent members of the Security Council, promote and usher through an abolition of the Council? Article 108 states:
Amendments to the present Charter shall come into force for all Members of the United Nations when they have been adopted by a vote of two-thirds of the members of the General Assembly and ratified in accordance with their respective constitutional processes by two-thirds of the Members of the United Nations, including all the permanent members of the Security Council.
A long, long shot solution would be to harness the energies of reform — largely from the Third World. The Third World has been deeply aware of the “quaint” — and, quite frankly, colonial — nature of the Security Council. There has been a strong reform movement from within the General Assembly for decades. To the eyes of many Third World diplomats, of which my father was one, the Security Council was a gentleman’s club for the winners of the Second World War, one that has become, over the years, more and more surreal. The increasingly left out General Assembly is where a lot of these proposals come from and, unfortunately, where they go to die, unburied and unsung.
So — why not go for the long shot? If the United States, joined by Britain and France, decided to lobby the Third World — and the General Assembly — that the Security Council has outlived it’s “colonial” beginnings, things might get more than a little interesting. There is probably already a two-thirds majority in that body to dissolve the Security Council. The trickiest part of this long shot is that the Security Council itself — with Russia and China as members — would have to be shamed into voting against the continuation of the itself. The gamble of the West in this admittedly unlikely scenario — along with two-thirds of the General Assembly — would be that peer pressure and shame and the goodwill of the Third World, which both Russia and China assiduously court, would be enough for those two ethno nationalist giants to abandon their fancy perches in Manhattan.
Such a grand strategy would be an incredible bank shot. It would involve: a) Getting a two-thirds majority in the General Assembly, and, b) shaming Russia and China into abandoning the Security Council, their autocratic “safe space.” The first part of this thought experiment is doable if we can bring the UK and France on board and rigorously work the diplomatic backchannels. The second part — shaming China and Russia into giving up an incredible geopolitical tactical advantage in the veto — would be an incredibly difficult lift. The former goal is achievable with great effort, while the latter is perilous, involving many moving parts falling into place, the possibility that autocratic regimes like China and Russia can be shamed and, finally, just plain luck.
That having been said, when was the last time we took such a great diplomatic gamble, risking our soft power reserves in order to uplift the muffled voices on our shared planet? It is the right thing to do, allowing the countries of the world to act on a straight two-thirds majority through the General Assembly. Of course ethnonationalist right-wing media organizations will cavil about “sliding to Gomorrah,” Or “Third Worldism,” but the United States of America is not going to perish from this earth because it no longer has veto power in the Security Council. The United States will be fine in such a world.
The old order of the UN Security Council is, quite frankly, no longer tenable as the Ukraine war shows us daily. The Security Council stands athwart the inevitability of multipolarity. And if China and Russia want to argue on behalf of late 20th century colonial structures to African and Latin American dignitaries, then that in and of itself is a victory for the West, which has lost ground in those countries for quite some time. Let China, enemy of colonialism, explain to Sri Lanka why they need a veto on the Security Council but Sri Lanka does not. Allowing the so-called Second and Third Worlds a serious say in global security, and not just as footnotes, asterisks and afterthoughts, is the best possible alternative to the present disfunction of late 20th century powers pompously presiding over everyone else.