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Obama’s Endorsement and UN Security Council Reform

- November 8, 2010

President Obama scored some brownie points today when he publicly endorsed India’s bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.David Bosco rightly points out that this endorsement has few, if any, practical consequences. Yet, as Matthew Yglesias argues there are few downsides to having China, France, or Russia play the bad guy that blocks the ambitions of India, Brazil, and so on.

India did score on the practical side last week when it secured an increase in its IMF quota and voting power. Is there really no hope that UN Security Council reform could happen? The IMF’s institutional structure looks flexible compared to the UN. Yet, there hadn’t been any meaningful voting reforms at the IMF in a dozen years. Perhaps the relative power changes that are increasingly becoming apparent could lead to UN Security Council reform as well? I see two scenarios under which this may occur. Both are somewhat implausible but not impossible.

The first scenario is that the countries that aspire a seat at the table somehow agree to one and only one reform proposal. The problem so far has been that there are more clever reform proposals than one can keep track off. If there were convergence around a single proposal, it would be difficult to block Just to illustrate, all five permanent members voted against parts of the expansion of the Security Council in the 1960s, yet they all ratified within a few years out of fear that they would isolate the have-nots (reform is voted on in the General Assembly and needs ratification by two-thirds of all UN members, including the five veto powers). Such agreement may seem impossible but perhaps the increased coordination among BRIC countries offers some potential. The big question is whether the aspiring powers are willing to compromise in order to attain something (UNSC membership) that is of questionable practical value. As one former president of a middle power once told me: Security Council membership is just one more way to get into trouble with the United States. Perhaps better to continue to stress how unjust the current distribution of formal power is.

The second scenario is that its outdated composition makes the Security Council increasingly irrelevant. UN institutions typically reform much more rapidly when they are challenged from the outside. There is some evidence that the G-20 is increasingly becoming a place where security issues are discussed. The G-20 does not vote on resolutions with legally binding effects but it may increasingly become the place where the actual bargaining is done. If this practice evolves, then the pressures for reform could evolve with it.

I should stress that I do not see either scenario happening anytime soon but I am not as certain as I was a few years ago.