The United Nations Security Council is an incredibly important tool for protecting both global security and U.S. national security. And it is a crucial forum for advancing U.S. foreign policy.
Unfortunately, the U.N. Security Council is broken. It needs immediate attention, and this has serious implications for the United States.
Background
The Security Council is the only body which can grant permission to violate a country's sovereignty against the will of that country. If the council votes to allow an invasion of country X, for whatever reason, there is no recourse, no court of appeals. Country X can do nothing but complain and prepare for the military attack.The council can authorize other violations of sovereignty short of invasion: sanctions, no-fly zones, inspections, etc. This is an enormous amount of power. But getting the 15 members to agree on any given action is quite difficult. Especially since the five permanent members (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States) all have veto authority. Any one of them can single-handedly stop any given action. The other ten seats rotate through all other countries, big and small. But those members have only normal voting power, no veto.
All this authority is spelled out in a treaty known as the "Charter of the United Nations," now approved by 192 nations. For the United States, the treaty was signed by President Harry Truman and approved by the U.S. Senate in 1945.
Also keep in mind that just because the council is the only group with the treaty authority to do these things, it doesn't mean individual countries and groups of countries won't also do things like invade or impose sanctions. The recent incursion of Ethiopian troops into Somalia was not authorized by the Security Council. Sanctions on Iraq, the no-fly zones, and the inspection of suspected weapons facilities in Iraq were all blessed by the world through the Security Council. The U.S. invasion of Iraq, however, was not.
Power and Problems
Still, the enormous power of the council is impressive. Too often the council issues toothless statements condemning this or that. But when they give the green light to actually do something, there is literally no higher political power on Earth.For Americans, this turns out to be a pretty good deal since our "permanent veto" status on the Security Council means the group will never be able to do anything contrary to U.S. interests. But herein also live the seeds of controversy and simmering disputes which are already draining power and credibility away from the council.
Those five permanent members are relics from the end of World War II, and they hardly represent the power realities of the 21st Century world. Japan and Germany give more to the United Nations than almost any other countries in the world, yet they are not represented on the Security Council. India is a rising power with nearly one-sixth of the world's population but no Security Council seat. The entire continents of Africa, South America and Australia have no representation on the council.
This is troubling because more and more countries are questioning the legitimacy and credibility of the Security Council. They wonder why they should listen to a body which might not even have a representative from their continent let alone their home country. They wonder why old colonial powers like Great Britain and France have voice but their former colonies do not. Why does China have a veto when it principle rivals, Japan and India, do not?
Can It Be Fixed?
For any institution, whether it be government, church or social, unanswered questions about legitimacy are a step down the path to irrelevancy. The Princeton Project, a massive effort last year to draft a bipartisan U.S. national security plan, included Security Council reform as one its major recommendations for protecting America's role in the world. Indeed, a safe and secure world without the council is hard to imagine. Furthermore, if the world tried to create a replacement for the council from scratch, it is even harder to imagine countries granting permanent veto powers to the United States or anyone else.So reform of the existing council is clearly seen as important to the world and to America. But plans for doing so have come and gone for years. The most realistic ones include expanding the number of total seats, creating some permanent seats without veto power, and imposing various limits on the existing veto. Two sensible options were included in a 2004 report from the Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.
The problem, therefore, is not a lack of potential answers but a lack of political will. No one wants to make this a priority. Inevitably this means the problem will only be addressed when a crisis forces attention, and we can only hope it won't be too late.
