2023-09-24 00:21:00
Foto: 123RF.
The UN General Assembly was this week the stage in which countries such as the United States, Brazil and Ukraine reiterated their desire to modify the Security Council, so that it is more representative of a new global order, but analysts pointed to Télam that there is no agreement regarding the “criterion” to change it and that it continues to work “for what it was designed.”
He Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskywas one of the leaders who proposed changes in New York in the highest body of the UN, which is made up of five permanent members, with the right to veto – Russia, the United States, France, the United Kingdom and China – and another ten rotating members, elected every two years.
Specifically, the president criticized that Russia, which in February 2022 launched an invasion of his country, continues to be one of the five members of the Security Council with the right to veto and assured that this “power” in the hands of the “aggressor” is which brought the UN to “a stalemate” and called for Moscow to be stripped of that capability.
“Ukrainian soldiers are doing with their blood what the UN Security Council should do with its vote,” Zelensky said Wednesday.
He US President Joe Bidenin addition to promising to “reform” the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), presented to the Assembly the need to “have more voices and more perspectives at the table” of the Security Council.
For his part, the President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silvawho has long insisted on the need to reform the UN body to include other regions and give his country a seat, considered this week that “it has been progressively losing its credibility.”
“Its paralysis is the most eloquent proof of the need and urgency to reform it, making it more representative and effective,” he said.
Photo: Archive.
The leaders’ speeches expose two main arguments for reforming the Security Councilwhich is the only UN body that has the power to create binding international law and that to do so must not only gather the support of at least nine members, but also cannot have any vote of the “group of five” against .
On the one hand, some leaders criticize that the five permanent members have veto power, because that can prevent UN action in cases in which they are protagonists of internationally reprehensible acts.
This veto power prevents, for example, Russia from being expelled from the UN, because that action requires the action of the Security Council.
Another demand for change is based on the fact that the organ is one of the institutional structures that reflected the international order resulting from the Second World War, but that order has changed and it is necessary to include more voices.
“The Security Council are the winners of World War II and there has always been a debate as to whether that is more stable or less stable. Most literature tends to say that the Cold War era was a stable era due to nuclear deterrence. Now, its reform has been proposed since 1984 and it was never possible to agree on what criterion,” he told Télam. Rut Diamint, principal researcher at Conicet on defense and security issues.
In this lack of common criteria, he recalled that Japan has maintained since the 1980s that it should be a member of the Council for its “contribution to the United Nations, because it was a large contributor,” while Brazil has argued its need for inclusion due to its own weight. .
“There was never a criterion that even had the acceptance of the majority and now it remains the same,” said the former advisor to the UN General Secretariat on disarmament issues.
Photo: Archive.
At the same time, he maintained that Zelensky’s argument that Russia is blocking any possibility of negotiation is not a “reason to generate change.”
Meanwhile, the academic secretary of the Argentine Council for International Relations (CARI), Juan Battalemetold this agency that when the Security Council deals with issues that “involve the great powers” with the right to veto “it is designed to be paralyzed and the response is diplomatic, of negotiation between great powers, which is what is seen in Ukraine or you can see it in Taiwan.”
“The Security Council works for what it was designed to do, which was to essentially prevent a new (Adolf) Hitler, a new actor who takes his feet off the plate and tries to build hegemony through war. Like all actors that can be hegemonic are within the Council, so why reform it? That gives them a basic status quo,” said Battaleme.
“Everyone below says: and then what is it for? “It serves all other international security issues, in which the great powers have no direct interests,” he added.
Along the same lines, Diamint commented that, beyond Ukraine, “in other cases it has been effective because it was not a direct interest of either Russia, the United States, or its allies, and, therefore, it gave resolutions that in some way they helped find a more peaceful system.”
And when asked why the organization does not have greater intervention, he clarified that “the United Nations is nothing more than what the actors allow and the actors, which are the States, do not want it to do more.”
Regarding the prefiguration of a new global order, which pushes for greater representation, Battaleme highlighted the configuration of a moment marked by “two great powers, China and the United States, which it is not known if they will achieve the status of superpowers like the that there was during the Cold War,” and that at another level, there are “multiple minor powers.”
In this reorganization, still incipient, the demands to withdraw Russia’s right to veto appear as a proposal without clear consensus and even modifications to the current system, according to some analysts, could lead to a moment of instability.
“There are many countries that consider that this would somehow be opening a Pandora’s box and that these mutual vetoes end up being more stable than any other change,” Diamint noted.
Furthermore, the proposals to modify the organization do not question it in its entirety, since the countries maintain that it should be reformed, but not its total challenge.
“It is an institution that the great powers or regional powers still want to be part of,” said Battaleme, who noted that the demand for reform “is always there, but it never happens.”
However, the United States seems to take note of the demands that were heard in forums such as the Brics, in which it does not participate.
According to media such as The Telegraph, Washington would support the entry of “five or six countries” which could be India, Brazil, Germany, Japan and South Africa, but it is not known whether or not they would have the right to veto.
A reform of the Security Council would also imply an amendment to the United Nations Charterwhich could be vetoed by one of the permanent members.
“It is a period that is going to put a lot of stress on the United Nations in terms of the tensions between the great powers that are not satisfied with the international status quo. They are going to show their paralysis. That dissatisfaction is going to become much more evident and There is going to be a crisis of legitimacy in the Security Council, but I don’t see it going to be dismantled as such,” Battaleme estimated.
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