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Security Council Reform: Past, Present, and Future Shashi Tharoor

E ven though it has been more than a year since I left the service of the

United Nations, the one question people have not stopped asking me

here in India is when our country, with . billion people and a booming

economy, is going to become a permanent member of the Security Council. The

short answer is “not this year, and probably not the next.” But there are so many

misconceptions about this issue that a longer answer is clearly necessary.

The problem of reforming the Security Council is rather akin to a situation in

which a number of doctors gather around a patient and all agree on the diagnosis,

but they cannot agree on the prescription. The diagnosis is clear: the Security

Council (SC) reflects the geopolitical realities of  and not of today. This situ-

ation can be anatomized mathematically, geographically, and politically, as well as

in terms of equity.

Mathematically: When the UN was founded in , the Council consisted of

 members out of a total UN membership of  countries; in other words, some

 percent of the member states were on the Security Council. Today, there are

 members of the UN, and only  members of the Council—fewer than  per-

cent. So many more countries, both in absolute numbers and as a proportion of

the membership, do not feel adequately represented on the body.

Geographically: The current composition of the Council also gives undue weight

to the balance of power of at least a half century ago. Europe, for instance, which

accounts for barely  percent of the world’s population, still controls  percent of

the SC seats in any given year (and that does not count Russia, regarded by much

of the world as another European power).

Politically: The Council’s five permanent members (the United States,

Britain, France, Russia, and China) enjoy their position, as well as the privilege

of a veto over any Council resolution or decision, by virtue of having won a

Ethics & International Affairs, , no.  (), pp. –. ©  Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs doi:./S

397

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war sixty-six years ago. (In the case of China, the word “won” needs to be placed

within quotation marks.)

In terms of simple considerations of equity, this situation is unjust to those

countries whose financial contributions to the United Nations outweigh those

of four of the five permanent members. Specifically, Japan and Germany have

for decades been the second- and third-largest contributors to the UN budget,

at roughly  percent and  percent, respectively, while still being referred to

as “enemy states” in the United Nations Charter (since the UN was set up by

the victorious Allies of World War II). Further, the current Council membership

denies opportunities to other states that have contributed in kind (through partici-

pation in peacekeeping operations, for example) or by size, or both, to the evol-

ution of world affairs in the more than six decades since the organization was

born. India and Brazil are notable examples of this latter case.

So the Security Council is clearly ripe for reform to bring it into the second dec-

ade of the twenty-first century. The UN recognized the need for action as early as

, when the Open-Ended Working Group of the General Assembly was estab-

lished to look into the issue, in the hope—or so then secretary-general Boutros

Boutros-Ghali declared—of finding a formula for SC reform in time for the organ-

ization’s fiftieth anniversary in . But the Open-Ended Working Group soon

began to be known in the UN corridors as the Never-Ending Shirking Group.

Rather than identifying a solution or moving toward compromise, the group

remains in existence to this day, having missed not only the fiftieth anniversary

of the United Nations but the sixtieth and now the sixty-fifth. Left to their own

devices, they will be arguing the merits of the case well past the UN’s centenary.

For a decade now, the Group of Four (or G-)—Brazil, Germany, India, and

Japan—have been in the forefront of an attempt to win passage of Security

Council reform, fully expecting to be the beneficiaries of any expansion in the cat-

egory of permanent members. They have been repeatedly thwarted. The problem

is quite simple: for every state that feels it deserves a place on the Security Council,

and especially the handful of countries that believe their status in the world ought

to be recognized as being in no way inferior to at least three if not four of the exist-

ing permanent members, there are several who know they will not benefit from

any reform. The small countries, which make up more than half the UN’s mem-

bership, accept this reality and are content to compete occasionally for the five

nonpermanent Council seats that come up for a vote every year. (These five

seats are voted on by all members of the General Assembly, and the candidates

398 Shashi Tharoor

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are generally regarded as representing their various regions—thus, often creating

vigorous lobbying and campaigning among the nations within a given region.)

At the same time, the medium-sized and large countries that are the rivals of

the prospective beneficiaries (that is, the G-) deeply resent the prospect of a select

few breaking free of their current second-rank status in the world body. Some of

the objectors, such as Canada and Spain, are genuinely motivated by principle:

they consider the very existence of permanent membership to be wrong, and

they have no desire to compound the original sin by adding more members to

a category they dislike. Many others, however, are openly animated by a spirit

of competition, historical grievance, or simple envy. Together, they have banded

into an effective coalition—first called the “coffee club” and now, more cynically,

“Uniting for Consensus”—to thwart reform of the permanent membership of the

Council. They say they would accept some other formula that does not give a few

countries privileges that they do not currently enjoy.

Let us remember that the bar to amending the UN Charter has been set rather

high. Any amendment requires a two-thirds majority of the overall UN member-

ship—in other words,  of the  states in the General Assembly. An amend-

ment 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 is not enough for the government of the day to be in favor of a reform;

its Parliament or Congress must also agree to the change). Thus, the only “pre-

scription” 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 opposi-

tion of any of the existing “Perm Five” (or even that of a powerful U.S. senator

who could block ratification in Washington). That has proved to be a tall order,

indeed.

After all, what countries would the world 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. But when Japan and

Germany began pressing their claims to permanent seats, the then foreign minis-

ter of Italy, Susanna Agnelli, wisecracked, “What’s all this talk about Japan and

Germany? We lost the war, too!” (Other historical factors intrude: neither

China nor South Korea is keen on seeing Japan rewarded today, given its record

of atrocities seven decades ago.) Even assuming such objections (notably from

Italy, Spain, Canada, and Korea, and among the Organisation for Economic

Co-operation and Development countries) could be overcome, adding these two

security council reform 399

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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 devel-

oping world. But which would these be?

In Asia, India, as the world’s largest democracy, its fifth-largest economy, and a

long-standing contributor to UN peacekeeping operations, seems an obvious con-

tender. But Pakistan, which fancies itself India’s strategic rival on the subconti-

nent, is unalterably opposed, and to some extent Indonesia seems to feel

threatened by the prospect of an Indian seat. Similarly, in Latin America, Brazil

occupies a place analogous to India’s, but Argentina and Mexico have other

ideas, pointing to Portuguese-speaking Brazil’s inferior credentials in representing

largely Hispanic Latin America. 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 civilization, Egypt?

No wonder the search for a reform prescription—a formula that is simul-

taneously acceptable to a two-thirds majority and not unacceptable to the Perm

Five—has proved so elusive. And while composition is the central challenge, it

is not the only one. Questions of the eventual size of a reformed Council are

also raised and further complicate the discussion. This is because it is generally

agreed that once additional permanent members have been added to the

Council, they must also be joined by additional nonpermanent ones in order to

give more representation to such regions as Latin America and Eastern Europe,

which would otherwise risk being marginalized in the new body. Might the

Council, then, become too large to function effectively?

And what about the veto? Permanent membership currently comes with the

privilege of a veto, but there appears to be less support across the full UN mem-

bership for new veto wielders than there is for the abolition of the veto altogether.

The G-, sensing the mood, announced they would voluntarily forgo the privilege

of a veto for ten years, but this did not noticeably add momentum to their cause.

For all of these impediments, I do still believe the Security Council has to

change sooner or later. The best argument for reform is that the absence of reform

could discredit the United Nations itself. Britain and France have become converts

to this point of view. I remember the late British foreign secretary Robin Cook say-

ing in  (on his first UN visit in that capacity) that if the Council was not

reformed without delay, his own voters would not understand why. Mr. Cook,

a fine statesman and a man of principle, did not realize that he was not destined

to see any Council reform in his lifetime, let alone during his term of office. And

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yet he understood that reform was essential, because what merely looks anoma-

lous today will seem absurd tomorrow. Imagine in  a British or French

veto of a resolution affecting South Asia with India absent from the table, or of

one affecting southern Africa with South Africa not voting: who would take the

Council seriously then?

There is perhaps another reason why the British and the French are genuinely

keen on seeing the Council reformed right now. Currently, everyone is speaking

only of expanding the permanent membership of the Council, not replacing the

existing permanent members. If reform is delayed by another decade, there is a

real risk that the position of London and Paris will no longer be so secure, and

the clamor for replacing them with one permanent European Union seat could

prove irresistible.

To date, the other three permanent members have been somewhat more luke-

warm about reform. Russia has officially pledged to support it, and has explicitly

backed the claims of Germany, Japan, and India to new permanent seats, but it is a

matter for debate as to how enthusiastic Moscow really is. Its permanent seat on

the Council was the one asset that, even during the shambolic years of the s,

allowed Russia to punch above its weight in international affairs. Few Russians

really want to see that position of privilege diluted by having to be shared with

several new countries.

The United States and China are even more skeptical. China shares Moscow’s

reluctance to see its stature diminished, but this is all the more true since it now

sees itself, quite justifiably, as having no peer in the world other than the United

States, whose economy it is on course to overtake within the next two decades.

The thought of sharing permanent status with India and Japan is not one that

evokes much joy in Beijing. As for the United States, it is still the sole superpower,

and its isolation in recent years on various issues, notably relating to the Middle

East, made the Bush administration profoundly wary of giving new powers to

countries that may stand in its way. It was striking that Washington’s support

of a seat for Germany faded away in the wake of Germany’s vocal opposition

to the  Iraq War, and it took years for the United States to formally endorse

India’s bid, because it was conscious that New Delhi votes more often against

Washington in UN forums than with it. That reluctance was finally removed in

November  during a visit to New Delhi by President Obama that was

aimed at sealing a strategic partnership, the credibility of which would have

been undermined by continued reticence on a Security Council seat for

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New Delhi. In addition, the United States likes a Council it can dominate;

Washington is conscious that a larger body would be more unwieldy and a bigger

collection of permanent members more difficult to manage. “If it ain’t broke, don’t

fix it,” American diplomats like to say.

But to much of the rest of the world, the Security Council is indeed “broke,” and

the more decisions it is called upon to make that affect many countries—author-

izing wars, declaring sanctions, launching peacekeeping interventions—the greater

the risk that its decisions will be seen as made by an unrepresentative body and,

therefore, rejected as illegitimate. The United Nations is the one universal body we

all have, the one organization to which every country in the world belongs; if it is

discredited, the world as a whole will lose an institution that is truly irreplaceable.

And that could happen. My worry, as an old UN hand, is that if Security

Council reform drags on indefinitely and inconclusively, key countries could

begin to look for an alternative. Five years ago, as a candidate for secretary-

general, I asked in a speech: “What if the G-, which is not bound by any charter

and writes its own rules, decided one day to expand its membership to embrace,

say, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa?” That is precisely what has happened

since, with the establishment of the G-, albeit as the premier global macroeco-

nomic forum, rather than the peace and security institution that the Security

Council is. Nonetheless, China aside, the other countries could well say, “Well,

we’re now on the high table at last—why not focus our energies on this body

and ignore the one that refuses to seat us?” The result could be a United

Nations dramatically diminished by the decision of some of its most important

members to ignore or neglect it, while the G- could well arrogate political

responsibilities to itself, unrestricted by any charter constraint other than its

own self-restraint.

If that were to occur, the loss will be that of the rest of the world, which at least

today has a universal organization to hold it together under the rules of inter-

national law—something vastly preferable to a directoire of self-appointed oli-

garchs that an expanded G- could become. So those small and medium-sized

countries that are throwing up petty obstacles to reform are being rather short-

sighted, not only because they fail to address the fundamental problem that I

described above but because their opposition, if it succeeds, could potentially

undermine the very institution that many of these countries, now in the forefront

of opposition to reform, have long seen as a bulwark for their own security and

safety in an unequal world.

402 Shashi Tharoor

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So what’s the answer? In  the G- took the debate away from the feckless

Open-Ended Working Group and into the General Assembly plenary, and per-

suaded the facilitator of the process, the ambassador of Afghanistan, to come

up with a text for discussion. Though his efforts have been hailed by enthusiasts

as heralding a genuine breakthrough in the process, his text is still replete with

square brackets indicating unresolved language, and thus revealing entrenched

and irreconcilable positions.

Tinkering with a reform resolution will continue, but no resolution can attract

enough votes unless the -member African Union (AU) is persuaded to step off

the fence that it has been straddling for years. African opponents of Council

reform have adroitly maneuvered the African Union into an impossible position

under the label “the Ezulwini Consensus” (named for the Swazi town in which the

formula was agreed). The Ezulwini Consensus demands two veto-wielding perma-

nent seats for Africa in a reformed Council, a demand couched in terms of African

self-respect but pushed precisely by those countries that know it is unlikely ever to

be granted. The AU’s rules mean that African positions are adopted by consensus,

thus taking  potential votes out of the equation in favor of a political compro-

mise. (As an Indian minister of state lobbying in Addis Ababa for Security Council

reform, I pointed out privately that “Ezulwini” meant “Paradise”; but that after

years of insisting upon, and failing to obtain, Paradise, it was necessary for

African countries to settle for what could be achieved on earth.) Africa’s naysayers

also know that insisting on a consensus decision makes it difficult for the majority

favoring reform to move the process forward. After years of accepting this

approach, such countries as South Africa appear to be challenging the time-

honored emphasis on consensus. If the African Union were to agree to a free

vote in the General Assembly, the prospects of a reform resolution attracting

the necessary  votes would brighten immeasurably.

As with most global issues, the key to breaking the logjam lies in

Washington. Most of the naysayers are U.S. allies who have been given a free

hand by Washington’s own lack of enthusiasm for reform. If a new U.S. admin-

istration could be persuaded that it is in America’s self-interest to maintain a

revitalized United Nations, credible enough for its support to be valuable to

the United States and legitimate enough to be a bulwark of world order in

the imminent future when the United States is no longer the world’s only super-

power, Washington could bring enough countries in its wake to transform the

debate.

security council reform 403

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That is a task that the Security Council “aspirants”—and notably the govern-

ment of a transforming India now entering into a strategic partnership with

Washington—are well positioned to perform. India clearly feels very strongly

that there is a definite need for an expansion of the Security Council in both cat-

egories, permanent and nonpermanent. But it also sees the Security Council as

part of a broader process of renewing the United Nations—not because it has

failed, but because it has succeeded often enough to be worth reforming. Like

many developing countries, India would like to see the General Assembly

strengthened as the primary intergovernmental legislative body, which it is not

yet; it has become too often a rhetorical forum, prone to declaratory effulgence

without effect, rather than one that acts as a legislative body driving the action

of the UN organization. The UN’s Economic and Social Council, too, should

become a more meaningful development-oriented body and a serious instrument

of development governance. A greater sharpening is also required in the focus and

the operational efficiency of the UN funds, agencies, and programs, whose effec-

tiveness is so important for so many of the world’s vulnerable people.

India is conscious, too, that the international financial institutions set up at

Bretton Woods in  are also in need of reform, since they too reflect the rea-

lities of a vanished era; till last year, for instance, Belgium disposed of the same

weighted vote as China in these institutions. The G- summit in Pittsburgh in

September  set in motion a process for global redesign of the international

financial and economic architecture, and is thus emerging as the premier forum

for international economic cooperation. The G- has become a meaningful plat-

form for North-South dialogue precisely because the South is not completely out-

weighed by the North in the composition of the G-. In the years ahead, India

will use its position in this grouping to pursue a long-term objective of broad par-

ity between the developed countries and the developing and transitional econom-

ies in the international financial institutions. After all, the recent global financial

crisis showed that the surveillance of risk by international institutions and early-

warning mechanisms are needed for all countries. In other words, it is important

that, in the context of global governance, the developing countries should have a

voice in overseeing the global financial performance of all nations, rather than it

simply being a case of the rich supervising the economic delinquency of the poor.

A reform package that incorporates both the Security Council and Bretton

Woods institutions could transform global governance, whereas failure to reform

could doom the prospects for an effective and equitable world order. The

404 Shashi Tharoor

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international system—as constructed following the Second World War—will be

almost unrecognizable by  owing to the rise of emerging powers, a trans-

formed global economy, a real transfer of relative wealth and economic power

from the West (or the North) to other countries in the global South, and the grow-

ing influence of nonstate actors, including terrorists, multinational corporations,

and criminal networks. Over the next two decades this new international system

will be coping with the issues of aging populations in the developed world;

increasing energy, food, and water constraints; and worries about climate change

and migration. Global changes, including India’s own transformation, will mean

that resource issues—including energy, food, and water, on all of which demand

is projected to outstrip easily available supplies over the next decade or so—will

gain prominence on the international agenda. The need for increased, more

democratic, and more equitable global governance will therefore be even greater.

Let us look even further than the next two decades. Growth projections for

Brazil, Russia, India, and China (the BRIC countries) indicate they will collectively

match the original G-’s share of global gross domestic product by –. All

four, probably, will continue to enjoy relatively rapid economic growth and will

strive for a multipolar world in which their capitals are among the poles. The

experts tell us that historically emerging multipolar systems have been more

unstable than bipolar or unipolar ones. The recent, indeed ongoing, global finan-

cial crisis underlines that the next twenty years of transition to a new system are

fraught with risks. Global policy-makers will have to cope with a growing demand

for multilateral cooperation when the international system will be stressed by the

incomplete transition from the old to the new order. And the new players will not

want to cooperate under the old rules.

The multiplicity of actors on the international scene could, if properly accom-

modated, add strength to our aging post–World War II institutions, or they could

fragment the international system and reduce international cooperation. Such

countries as India have no desire to challenge the international system, as did

such other rising powers as Germany and Japan in the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries. But they certainly wish to be given a place at the global high table.

Without that, they would be unlikely to volunteer to share the primary burden

for dealing with such issues as terrorism, climate change, nuclear proliferation,

and energy security—all of which concern the entire globe.

As someone who has devoted three decades of his life to multilateral

cooperation at the United Nations, I will say very strongly that my big fear

security council reform 405

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remains that if reform does not come, many countries will despair and lose inter-

est in the working of the world body. Alternative structures of world governance

could emerge that would in the end undermine the one truly effective universal

organization the world has built up since . “Reform or die” is a cliché that

has been inflicted on many institutions. For the United Nations, at this time

and on this issue, the hoary phrase has the merit of being true.

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