Strategic Panorama 2009 - 2010 - IEEE

International relations and the new world governance
are no more than recommendations. Decision-making power is vested in
the Security Council, the body made up of the major powers with right of
veto and a permanent seat, together with other states that take turns to
sit on it. The sobering lesson in realism taught by the Second World War,
a war which could have been avoided, led the multinational organisation
par excellence, the United Nations, to become precisely what it aimed
in theory to combat, a classic directorate. Public international law was
thus organised around an institution which legitimised the voice of the
most corrupt governments and was based on the principle of inequality
between states. But nothing else was possible and it was better to have a
United Nations with those limitations than nothing at all.
The Security Council was established, granting the right to a permanent
seat and right of veto to the states then recognised as great powers.
Over time that share-out has become as anachronistic as it is unfair. Aside
from whether or not the very existence of these privileges is acceptable, if
we really want the major powers to be represented on the Council, states
like Japan, India and Germany, among others, urgently need to be given a
seat under the same conditions as the five permanent members. The need
for a reform of the Council was raised years ago and little progress has
been made to date. The Council’s authority depends on its credibility, but
its particular composition merely undermines it. Today’s global society is a
far cry from that of 1945. The Security Council can still perform important
tasks and for this purpose its composition needs a thorough overhaul.
However to date there is no reason to be optimistic.
Those who designed the Security Council were aware that granting
rights of permanence and veto would prevent many of the post-war
world’s most important problems from being addressed. As soon as one
of the five great powers considered that an agreement was contrary to
its national interests it would veto it, resulting in inaction. The outbreak of
the Cold War highlighted this. The dissolution of the Soviet Union aroused
expectations about a possible recovery of the multilateral spirit, but the
differences between the great powers have merely caused them to continue
in their old ways, save on very rare occasions. The Security Council is
very useful as a centre of diplomacy where the member states’ ambassadors
have the chance to exchange points of view and learn in some detail
of the various stances. This information has facilitated rapprochement and
the achievement of common positions on many occasions. But when this
has not been the case the Security Council has become an ineffective
witness to all kinds of disasters.
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