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The Struggle For A Permanent Seat At The Security Council: A Critical Assessment Of The Contestants In 2012
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The
membership and structure of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC)
have been among the most controversial and intractable issues considered
by UN member-states since the establishment of the organization in the
mid-1940s (Article 23 of the United Nations Charters). Tillema (1989)
opined that the importance of the UNSC, particularly the council’s
permanent seats, stems largely from the status and prestige associated
with its decision-making authority on questions of global peace and
security. In fact, permanent membership is equated with “great powerâ€
status in the international political system.
As a consequence, it is
perhaps not surprising that a number of emerging global and regional
powers throughout the world – including Japan, Germany, India, Brazil,
Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt have sought permanent seats
on the United Nations Security Council during the past few decades.
However, Malik notes that, despite a tremendous amount of discussion and
debate, there has been little consensus on the matter of United Nations
Security Council restructuring, including to what extent the council
ought to be enlarged, how many new permanent and non-permanent members
ought to be added, whether the new members ought to be extended the veto
privilege and which specific countries ought to be added as permanent
members (Malik, 2005: 19).
Although much has been written about
United Nations Security Council restructuring during the past decade
from an institutional perspective, (Russett et al., 1996; Daws, 1997;
Schlichtmann, 1999; Afoaku and Ukaga, 2001; Berween, 2002; Weiss, 2003;
Thakur, 2004; Blum, 2005; Malik, 2005; Price, 2005; Soussan, 2005),
there has been relatively little focus on the politics of seeking a
permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council from the
perspective of an existing or emerging global or regional power.
Although
the United Nations Security Council has been restructured only once in
more than sixty years, there have been several attempts over the years
to achieve this goal. As a result of several new UN member-states due to
decolonization in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Spain and several
Latin American countries proposed amendments to the UN Charter in 1956
to increase the number of non-permanent seats on the United Nations
Security Council from six to eight (Bourantonis, 2005). He also notes
that after several years of debate and disagreement, including the
Soviet Union’s insistence on linking the issue of United Nations
Security Council restructuring to the issue of mainland China’s
membership in the UN, there was a “breakthrough†on the issue in the
early 1960s. In December 1963, the United Nations General Assembly
(UNGA) formally approved amendments increasing non-permanent seats from
six to ten, and the amendments were ratified by the required number of
member-states in 1965 (Afoaku and Ukaga, 2001; Weiss, 2003; Blum, 2005).
As
a result of continued decolonization, overall membership in the UN
continued to grow significantly from the mid-1960s to the late-1970s. At
the same time, developing countries were increasingly dissatisfied with
the abuse of the veto power by the permanent members and the lack of
“equitable representation†for Asian and African countries on the
various councils of the UN. Bourantonis (2005) noted that consequent
upon this scenario, India and several developing countries proposed
amendments to the UN Charter in 1979 to increase the number of
non-permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) from
11 to 14. “In 1980, several African, Asian, and Latin American countries
proposed increasing the number of non-permanent seats on the United
Nations Security Council from 10 to 16†(Blum, 2005: 637). But as noted
by Archibugi (1993) unlike the previous effort to restructure the United
Nations Security Council in the early 1960s, these subsequent efforts
were unsuccessful largely because of heightened tensions between the
U.S. and the Soviet Union during this period.
With the end of the
Cold War in the early 1990s, there was renewed interest in restructuring
the United Nations Security Council to reflect the changes in the
international political system (Russett, et al., 1996; Drifte, 2000;
Miyashita, 2002). In December 1992, the United Nations General Assembly
(UNGA) approved a resolution sponsored by India calling upon the United
Nations Secretary-General to invite member-states to submit proposals
for United Nations Security Council reform, resulting in proposals from
some 80 countries (Drifte, 2000). A year later, the United Nations
General Assembly established an “Open-Ended Working Group†to consider
the proposals for United Nations Security Council reform (Daws, 1997;
Price, 2005; Schlichtmann, 1999; Bourantonis, 2005). Several options for
United Nations Security Council restructuring were among the proposals
submitted to the working group, including a proposal by the Non-Aligned
Movement (NAM) calling for an increase in permanent seats from five to
nine and non-permanent seats from ten to seventeen (Berween, 2002).
In
1995, the United Nations General Assembly approved the Declaration on
the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations, which stated the United
Nations Security Council should be “expanded and its working methods
continue to be reviewed in a way that will further strengthen its
capacity and effectiveness, enhance its representative character, and
improve its working efficiency and transparency†(Schlichtmann,
1999:510). Two years later, UN Ambassador Ismael Razali of Malaysia
proposed adding five permanent seats (without veto power) and four
non-permanent seats to the United Nations Security Council.
The
Razali Plan, which permitted the United Nations General Assembly to
choose the countries to be given permanent seats, was ultimately blocked
by members of the NAM, as well as countries such as Italy, Egypt,
Mexico, and Pakistan (Bourantonis, 2005).
After a decade of intense
debate on UN reform, the then Secretary-General of the United Nations,
Kofi Annan established a 16-member high-level panel in 2003 to evaluate
and recommend specific options. In 2004, the panel proposed two
different options for United Nations Security Council restructuring: (1)
six new permanent seats without veto power and three additional
non-permanent seats; and (2) eight four-year renewable seats and one
additional non-permanent seat (Blum, 2005; Price, 2005). After debating
these and other options for United Nations Security Council reform
during much of 2005, the United Nations General Assembly was unable to
come to a consensus on how to restructure the council. Such that
Brazil’s UN Ambassador Ronaldo Mota Sardenberg expressed frustration
with the outcome of the debate by stating that a “few countries, seeking
to avoid any decision on this matter, take refuge on claims for
consensus and on allegations on the disruptive nature of the issue†and
that the actions of these countries “only contribute to the perpetuation
of current inequalities in the structure of the organization, and to
the frustration of the aspirations of all members, for a more balanced
distribution of power in the work of the Security Council.â€
On this
background therefore, this study seeks to investigate the prospect of
the contestant for the United Nations Security Council’s permanent seat;
with focus on Nigeria and other contestants such as Japan, Germany,
India, Brazil, Egypt and South Africa etc.
1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
There
has been general agreement over time that the Security Council is an
unrepresentative relic and that its composition is a throwback to the
immediate Post-World War II global order. Several recommendations for
expanding the Council have been proposed since the end of the Cold War.
For instance, the Commission on Global Governance recommended
establishing a new class of five…
standing members, the intent of
which would be to reduce the status of permanent membership; increasing
the number of “non-permanent†members from ten to thirteen; and
eliminating the veto, except for very exceptional and overriding
circumstances related to the national interests of the major powers
(Knight, 2005:106).
According to the theory of cognitive dissonance,
our minds find it taxing to hold two mutually inconsistent beliefs for a
protracted period (Evanston and Row, 1957). The mind seeks to reconcile
them over time, if necessary by substantially modifying one of them or
by denying its validity altogether in order to relieve the dissonance.
Politics, of course, holds innumerable examples of the phenomenon.
At
the United Nations, there may be no starker case than that of the
protracted and polarizing matter of Security Council reform. On one
hand, judging by public statements, it is generally accepted that the
Security Council is long overdue for a major overhaul. The calls for its
radical reform have come with such frequency and from so many quarters,
as to qualify as common wisdom.
In this connection Japan and
Germany, the second- and third-biggest contributors to the UN budget,
have been campaigning for permanent seat status on the Council. India,
the world’s second most populous country, and Brazil, Latin America’s
biggest country, also have designs on achieving permanent status on the
Council. These four states have banded together to press their case
before the UN membership, and they are joined in spirit by the Africans,
who want two seats for their continent (perhaps Nigeria, Egypt and
South Africa).
None of these proposals for UN Security Council
expansion is likely to go far. However, China mistrusts Japan. Italy
opposes a permanent seat for Germany and has instead proposed a single
permanent seat for the European Union. This latter recommendation is
opposed by Britain and France who would have to give up their permanent
seats under that scenario. Under the current charter, regional bodies
are not UN members and would therefore be ineligible for seats on the
Council. Mexico and Argentina oppose Brazil’s quest for a permanent seat
on the Council, and Pakistan opposes India’s bid.
The implications
of the preceding analysis is that the United Nations Security Council,
which is seen as the key organ of the United Nations charged with the
responsibility of ensuring international peace and security are both
technically and procedurally dominated by the winners of Second World
War who shaped the Charter of the United Nations in their national
interests, dividing the veto-power pertinent to the permanent seats
amongst themselves; thereby giving the council the character of
inequity, undemocratic, unrepresentative of the races of world,
unaccountable et cetera to the larger world community that make up the
organization.
It is in order to address this anomaly that scholars
such as Chopra, (2001), Beigbeder, (1994), Rourke (2002), Canton,
(1986), Barry (2003), Kegley (1985), Roskin (1993), Roberts (2000),
Goodrich (1999), Sheever (1999), Roskin (1993), Huggins (1988), Sigler
(2002), (Maya, 2005), Brocker (2000), Hopkinson (1998), Galtung (2000),
Cede (1999), Bourantonis, (2005), Afoaku and Ukaga (2001), Weiss (2003),
Blum ( 2005), (Archibugi, 1993) and Heinrich (2012) have argued and
continue to argue that there is the dire need for the reorganization and
reformation of the UN Security Council both in terms of composition and
voting pattern to reflect the multilateral character of the
organization.
However, while these group of scholars and existing
literature on the issue of United Nations Security Council reform
largely succeeded in providing the descriptive analysis of the need to
reform the United Nations Security Council and the on-going bid by some
perceived “developing nations†in all the geo-political regions of the
universe for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council is
very informative; it contains neither a thorough discussion of the
potential strategies for obtaining a permanent seat nor a theoretical
framework that might be used to further analyze the bids for these group
of countries seeking permanent seats on the United Nations Security
Council.
Moreover, they fail to provide us with the yardstick with
which we can use in ascertaining the method and criteria that can
qualify a country to be (s)elected for such position of permanent seat
at the United Nations Security Council. On the account of this, the
study therefore elicits the following research questions:
Is the need
to reform the United Nations Security Council implicated in the
geopolitical realities of the 21st Century membership of the
organisation?
Is the quest to reform and enlarge the structure and
voting pattern in the United Nations Security Council aimed at making it
more democratic, efficient and legitimate?
1.3 OBJECTIVES OF STUDY
The
broad objective of this study is to interrogate the issues involved in
the quest and struggle for Permanent Seat at the United Nation’s
Security Council: A Critical Assessment of the Contestants in 2012â€.
However, the study will address the following specific objectives:
To
determine if the need to reform the United Nations Security Council is
implicated in the geopolitical realities of the 21st Century membership
of the organisation.
To ascertain whether the quest to reform and
enlarge the structure and voting pattern in the United Nations Security
Council is to make it more democratic, efficient and legitimate.
1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY
The
study has both theoretical and practical significance. Theoretically,
the study will provide a comprehensive insight into the looming and
cyclical issue of United Nations reforms, especially in to the United
Nations Security Council reform by giving a detailed account of both the
remote and immediate factors that necessitate the call for the
reformation of the structure of the council and its voting pattern; it
will also account for the reasons why the current veto wielding members
(the so-called big five) have been giving the move a sort of lip service
and lackadaisical attitude, rather than giving the issue the
seriousness and attention that it deserved. It will also provide the
reading public with a clear cut meaning and nature of the functions of
the United Nations Security Council, its structure and the provision of
the United Nations Charter as it regards the membership and power of the
Security Council. It shall equally add to the extant body of
literature that borders on United Nations Reform and the Quest for
permanent seat in the world especially as it concerns Africa, which
Nigeria is part and is vehemently positioning itself as the beautiful
bride to be crowned with one out of the two proposed slots (seats) that
is to be allocated to Africa.
Practically, it shall be of immense
benefit to diplomats, public policy formulators, politicians and high
level representative at the international level especially policy makers
that are saddled with the task of devising appropriate institutional
mechanisms for the smooth and foreign policy thrust that will enable
their home government to adequately lobby and canvass for the its
allocation or (s)election. For the United Nations Security Council, It
will also provide the basis to scholars for further research into the
United Nations Reform and the expansion of the composition of the
security for both the permanent and non-permanent categories.
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]This work set out to investigate the struggle for Permanent Seats At The Security Council: A Critical Assessment of the Contestants in 2012. While observing that there exists a fundamental need to reform and enlarge both the membership and voting pattern in the Security Council in order to reflect geopolitical realities of the 21st Century by making both the organisation and the Security Council in particular to appear democratic while at the same time enhancing its efficiency and legitimacy aro ... Continue reading---
