‘Indispensible, yet Ineffective’: A Realistic Framework for United Nations Security Council Reform.[1]
JOSEPH KIERNAN
The case for reform of the United Nations Security Council is debated by those who favour a Security Council which is representative of all the worlds great powers, and those who argue that the current reform drive has been unsuccessful because it fails to take into account the ‘precedent-bound nature of the UN and the intrinsically political character of its decisions’ (Luck 2005: 409). Evidence of the latter is no where more evident than in the Security Council, where the permanent five members (P5) reserve the right to use their veto to shape international affairs.
Pretty much everyone might agree that the Security Council’s permanent, veto-wielding membership reflects a bygone age, but very little progress has been made to reform it because ‘no consensus exists about the exact shape of the Security Council, or the elimination of the veto’ (Weiss 2003: 149).
For example at a meeting of the General Assembly on Security Council Reform in 2011, proposals were put forward by the G4 (India, Germany, Brazil and Japan) calling for an expansion in both permanent and non permanent membership, while Canada, a member of the Uniting for Consensus Group (UFC) – which calls only for an increase in non-permanent membership- voiced their opposition to the G4 proposal by suggesting that ‘the Security Council cannot be effectively reformed by simply extending the privileges of a few, to a few more.’
If everyone were to agree to an increase in permanent membership, would this have the effect of improving the Security Council’s: diminishing authority; its ability to debate issues that matter; and its ability to hand down opinions that count?
In the first instance – assuming that ‘legitimacy is the flip side of authority whereby declining legitimacy implies diminishing authority’ (Sandholtz 2008: 151) – , a move towards the granting of permanent membership for those countries in the G4 would most likely have a positive effect, albeit as a public relations exercise.
However, the backing of India and Japan’s membership by the United States is also likely to set off fresh concerns in Beijing and has already had the effect of souring relations between the US and Pakistan.
For these reasons it is improbable that permanent membership will be granted, not to mention the difficulties which extra membership would pose for the deliberation process within the Security Council.
In the second instance- its ability to debate issues that matter- it is unlikely that an increase in permanent membership would have the effect of creating a ‘better Security Council which could get more done.’
We could ask ourselves, would an increase in membership resolve the current split over Syria, ‘with Russia declaring it will work with China to block any move to authorize military intervention?’ Or were the UN founders correct in deliberately dividing member rights and roles by establishing a restricted Security Council, as opposed to its predecessor the League of Nations (Weiss 2003: 148)? It seems plausible to suggest that the founders were right to restrict membership to the Council in light of the failings of the League.
The third instance- the ability to hand down opinions that count- is more problematic. It could be argued on the one hand that increasing membership to include the great powers would give greater clout to decisions, thereby producing decisions ‘that count’. On the contrary though as already discussed above, reaching a consensus is difficult enough among the P5, therefore it may not be wise to add more great powers to an already complex decision making arena.
So where does this leave the reform process? And in what areas can improvement be sought having established that extending permanent membership may not be the best option available?
An obvious place to start is with the P5. If ‘compromise’ is what’s needed to allow for other great powers to take a seat with a veto, then it could be argued that Britain and France should step up to the plate, thus allowing for a European seat . This needless to say is probably never going to occur, and comes with its own problems such as how to reach a European consensus on Security Council related issues.
But even if by some chance they were willing to share one seat, thereby making room for possibly India, there still exists the problem of excluding Brazil and Japan.
All of this is to suggest that, while the case for reform may be strong, ‘political obstacles often make formal adjustments by way of amendments difficult, if not impossible’ (Falk 2005: 10).
Reform must therefore be ‘modest’ and ‘acceptable to the vast majority of governments, as consistent with their sovereignty’ (Russett, 1996: 262). Therefore, any proposals which call for a radical structural reform of the Security Council will almost certainly fail, as they have done so over the past six decades.
Taking everything into consideration, the evidence suggests that extending permanent membership is difficult, if not impossible to achieve, for it risks complicating an already complex decision making process. Extending the veto to other countries should not be on the table either, as it would only hinder future decisions over when to act in the interest of the International community.
Reform then it appears should be incremental, and realistic in how it is conceived, in allowing for those political obstacles which are inherent in the Security Council.
[1] Herbert Nichols, 1962 ‘The UN will remain both indispensible, and in certain unavoidable respects, ineffective,’ in Mats, Berdal, ‘The United Nations Security Council’ on reading list.
I have to agree with Joe’s analysis of the central argument, that by either expanding the permanent membership to more than 5 powers (P5) and further extending the veto to other countries will only hinder the future decision making process of an already complicated security council.
The council as it stands consists of the P5 and 10 other member states. Obvious criticisms have been made about the Security Council. Taylor & Curtis (2011) argue the point that the Security Council does not represent the current distribution of either economic or military power in today’s world. This is important because many developing countries argue that they’re underrepresented in the council
Importantly, Joe recognises that within the proposed reforms there are certain complications, like the issue related to France and Britain regarding a single European seat and how adding more actors into the mix will further complicate the decision making process.
Something that I think is also important is the interests of the current actors in the P5, particularly the United States, China and Russia. The three mentioned value their position within the P5 greatly, all for differing reasons. It helps the United States keep their hegemon role, whilst it gives countries like China and Russia the power to try and diverge attention away from certain atrocities that are committed within their own states (Falk 2005).
Unquestionably, reform in the case of the United Nations will be quite hard, and I believe that this is bound to the mere fact that the United Nations is as Inis Claude (1956) puts it; a world organisation for state decision-making. This makes complete sense, the United Nations is made up of individual nation states, and from a realist’s perspective; states nearly always try to protect their own interests.
Essentially, echoing Weiss, what we need to move towards is a method of “Governance without Government” (Weiss 2008; 10-11). Ideally, the United Nations would be a completely sovereign entity, free of any real ties to certain nations, but unfortunately it relies on states for funding and survival. Until this is tackled, I think it will be hard to promote any positive structural reforms within the organisation.
In complete agreement with Joe, Thomas, and the Economist article “Thinking the UNthinkinable” (clever play on words); a sweeping reform to the Security Council would bring about greater strength the decision-making process within the UN. The obvious, albeit difficult, next step would be the expansion of the Security Council from its existing five veto-holding (P5) countries and ten observing, non-voting nations to include at least some other nations to better reflect the power balance of the world. However, as Joe asked, does giving more true authority to the Security Council actually increase its legitimacy? Or, instead, would this action only further inhibit the decision-making abilities of an already hampered process by throwing more opinions and biases into the bureaucratic cogs?
In this regard, I tend to agree with the Canadians and the Uniting for Consensus Group for wanting more non-permanent members to attend the Security Council sessions (Hansen 2011). This would help shape the discussions of the meetings, while also not spreading around authority to a point where nothing is accomplished. This route to reform may be the most feasible option as well, since it does not shift the power structure of the Security Council, but this reform would certainly change its dynamics. Even if the members of the G4 were given a permanent, non-voting role within the Security Council it would not take away from the authority of the P5 and might actually add some legitimacy to any decision made as more input could then be heard. This, as Joe, Thomas, and the article all point out, would need to be done incrementally and carefully as to ensure the reforms occur, while also avoiding sparking any arguments that may further stall the process.
Kiernan’s paper concisely tackles the challenges that arise when practically conceiving the possibility of reform within the Security Council. The title ‘Indispensable, Yet Ineffective’ effectively captures the very complex tug of war type challenge that exists among opposing sides of the reform debate. However I would argue that while these challenges do exist, it is not impossible to overcome them.
The three principal points of this article undoubtedly hold a great deal of merit. Here I will just broche the second point – the ability to debate issues that matter. The suggestion is that increasing membership and particularly permanent membership, will complicate issues and is unlikely to ‘have the effect of creating a better Security Council which could get more done’.
This is a reasonable argument however failing to make changes to the level of membership and merely making ‘modest’ changes will likely only prolong the underlying issues being raised by those seeking reform. A change to membership could be aided by accompanying changes to the process by which the Council deals with arising issues.
In the short term, undoubtedly an expanded Security Council would face many complications, such as making decisions, however in the long run these problems could be resolved. The argument that expanding the council’s membership would make the decision making process too difficult is debatable. Reform does not necessarily need to rest on adding members to the council. There could possibly be room for greater technical/organisational changes within the UN Security Council.
For instance, decision making procedures may be adapted to suit a larger membership, the instances whereby the veto power is allowed to be used could be limited or there could be a clearer set of laws/rules regarding acceptable state behaviour whereby there is less debate on what is a wrong or right action, or what merits sanctions, intervention etc. More issues could become a matter of law rather than an issue to be voted on.
If an organisation as great as the United Nations could be created in the first place, sure many of the technical/organisational difficulties that arise from an expanded Security Council can be overcome. As the Economist article Thinking the Unthinkable notes Nobody should think that designing a new UN would be easy. But the alternative of a declining UN is messy .
Given the widely accepted need for reform of the council the issue at stake is how to go about it. What can incentivised the P5 to make genuine compromises? In an ideal world, where states, namely the P5, could see the benefits of relinquishing current power in favour of greater long term gains, the Security Council should work towards reform involving the removal of the Veto. This prospect is as of yet highly unlikely, however extension of membership seems to exist as a possibility. The prospects of a more balanced and internationally representative council could possibly lead to deeper levels of cooperation in the long run.
I would agree that there must be reform within the Security Council to validate its relevance. But I also agree with Taylor and Curtis (2011), that if it doesn’t represent the big players then it loses its relevance. As Brazil has now overtaken Britain as the sixth largest economy in the world, Britain’s position in the P5 with the exclusion of Brazil discredits the UN. A single seat for Europe with a rotating presidency could be a good thing as Britain and France seem to have their seats for nostalgic reasons rather than anything that either will offer in the future. Germany should have as much right to a veto on the Security Council as any other European country at the moment. The expansion of the Security Council could cause difficulties amongst the countries coming to a decision, perhaps a top tier could be created for the real global economic powers such as the US and China although this would bring with it its own set of problems.
Institutions need to be able to adapt to changes or they will lose their credibility. I think its necessary to appease the big economic powers somewhat, since the failure to do this was one of the shortcomings that led to the failure of the League of Nations.
It is hard to tell whether or not making it more representative will have the effect of making it more efficient but at the moment it seems the best platform the world has for states to come to resolutions and by incorporating developing counties it gives it a sense that it is at least moving with the times.
The points raised by Joe, Thomas and James echo the sentiment throughout the relevant literature that meaningful reform is desirable, yet difficult because of the vested interests of the P5. This is a realistic analysis of the status quo.
Where I part company, however, is in especially Joe and James’ proposition that gradual, incremental reform is the solution. I would propose two lines of argument why radical change may be more feasible and desirable than they suspect.
First, the historical record of UN institutional development is not one of evolution. Rather, long periods of stagnation were interrupted by sudden, substantial reform in response to crises. I believe this pattern may be open to explaination using a rational choice framework. In a business-as-usual setting countries will generally be tempted to use their voting power on issues not directly pertaining to their core interests as leverage to extract privileges. Security Council reform belongs in this category because at any time only a handful of countries need to fear Chapter VI or VII action. The United States and other important players will meanwhile be unwilling to invest the sort of resources needed to acheive the nescessary supermajority unless the issue is evidently in their own self-interest, especially as they can expect others to invest in the opposite outcome. A global crisis has the potential to break such a stalemate by either 1) redefining self-interest for all (or most) players, or 2) creating the willingness to invest in diplomacy for a disproportionally affected state. While the window of opportunity may be small, as it was for the ‘original crisis’ (WWII), this does keep the possibility of radical change alive.
Second, radical change is more desirable than my classmates believe, because the alternatives are highly unlikely to have an impact. James proposes giving G4 members a permanent non-voting seat, arguing that this would add to SC-decision legitimacy by having broader input. However, I believe it is entirely unlikely that anyone will see SC-decisions as more legitimate because Brazil got to sit in on the meetings. The permanent five will have no reason not to continue to vote in accordance with their self-interest. The only time “input” will lbe taken seriously is when it is coupled with a veto. Indeed, the SC greenlight for the Korean War shows how even the Soviet Union’s superpower-level input was swept aside the minute it lost its voting power. Giving the G4 observer status will only lead to frustration and decreasing legitimacy as their input is ignored. Similar arguments can be made against other proposals for ‘soft reform’, which do nothing to address the power relations determining SC outcomes.
The only way forward, then, is real, structural reform. Even SC reform is not unprecedented. The replacement of Taiwan by China is an example. Focussing on procedural detail, however, wil get us nowhere.
Btw: sorry for the late hour, only just got back to Dublin.