NUSRAT MIRZA
When house of Lords of Great Britain was making problem for the crown, it was decided to expand in large quantity that House of Lords lost its importance. Applying the same tactics USA and its allies are trying to reduce Chinese and Russian influence by increasing the number of their friends in UN Security Council and further restrict the Russian and Chinese to use the veto.
USA is interested in giving permanent seats to Japan, India and others while Pakistan being a nuclear power in Islamic world at this of time. In any case as nuclear power Pakistan is eligible to be permanent member of UN Security Council. In this case, India North Korea and Israel could also be considered.
The things are being complicated and the countries of the world have kept under puzzle, pressure and keeping them busy for useless discussion. As a discussion point, the Biden administration also must navigate a host of competing proposal- that illustrate. But complexity of global coalition-building for any cause. A Uniting for Consensus proposal – backed by countries including Italy, Argentina, South Korea and Pakistan that could lose out to regional rivals in the French- and British-supported plans – would add nonpermanent seats but no new permanent members.
This has been discussed by Pakistan’s permanent member in United Nation Munir Akram who has rightly said “This is undemocratic; it is unequal; it is contrary to the principle of sovereign equality of states which is part of the U.N. charter.” He further said that Pakistan particularly opposes the appointment of its adversary India as a permanent member.
We don’t think that it is a good principle that you put a country permanently on the Security Council, because then it is not held accountable for the way it behaves Akram said. If we look the Russian and Chinese point of view: The Russian position is a UN reform should provide greater and more equal representation of all the countries and regions, above all the developing states.
In other words, Russia comes out for a reform, including the enlargement of the UN SC (with the preservation of veto by the permanent members), but it sees the consensus approach, without the sidelining of dissenting states, as the key to transformations.
According to the formal rules a two-thirds majority is required, but the presence of big regional players in the opposition troika would have a negative impact on the functioning of the entire Organization. When it comes to reforms of the United Nations, it is indispensable for China and Russia, as long-time UN champions and supporters, to take the lead in promoting bottom-up approach to UN reforms.
Moscow and Beijing have already accumulated a lot of experience in working together in drafting UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions, in setting agendas for UN General Assemblies and in interacting with various groups of UN member states.
When some talk about how to make the UN more efficient and more relevant in global politics, they usually focus on reforming the UNSC. There is no shortage of ideas and even detailed plans of how to expand the composition of UNSC and how to modify the veto power rules within the body.
It is hard to argue against the need to introduce changes to the UNSC current mode of operations. And, the Council demonstrates difficulties to jointly approach some of the most devastating and dangerous conflicts faced by the world-be it in Africa, in the Middle East, in South Asia, in Latin American and in Europe and elsewhere.
The current international environment, however, does not appear conducive to launching any far-reaching UNSC reforms today or tomorrow. An enlargement of UNSC would make the difficult task of reaching consensus in the United Nations Conference Building in New York City even more challenging; new permanent members would come with their own agendas, priorities and-alas!-with their prejudices and biases.
The idea of a veto power abolition would undoubtedly meet fierce resistance from the P5 permanent group members. Does this mean that one should put all the plans to enhance the United Nations on the back-burner? Not at all. Contemplating an enhanced UN, one has to keep in mind that the United Nations is much bigger than its Security Council, all the importance of UNSC notwithstanding.
Under the contemporary unfavorable circumstances, a bottom-up approach to the UN reforms might turn out to be more practical and more productive than a top-down approach. The United Nations is a graphic illustration of how the 20th century modernist institutional culture confronts the 21st century post- modernist international realities.
The needed adjustment is huge, even without touching the Security Council for the time being. There is an urgent need to provide for more targeted coordination among numerous UN agencies, in particular-to overcome the existing gap between the UN security agenda and its development agenda.
There is a clear necessity to produce a new set of KPIs (Key Performance Indicator) for the vast UN bureaucracy, which is quite often too much focused on formal report writing. One should think about how the United Nations could make more use of the global civil society and independent expert knowledge.
The United Nations should modernize and upgrade its peace-keeping capacity in view of the changing nature of modern conflicts and to move from mostly reactive to proactive approaches to conflicts. UN has to address in a more energetic and systematic ways pending problems of red-tape, bureaucratic duplication, excessive administrative costs and so on.
For an intellectual, the question why five members have veto power? One answer that they are nuclear power and that they formed United Nation. In expansion of UN Security Council, the simple formula could be that those countries which are nuclear power should be given permanent Seat in the Security Council with veto power and then should divide the seat on region basis. Otherwise UNO will face difficulties or will breathe its last like League of Nations.
