November 9, 2010

• Security Council Expansion without Reformation is Fair but Dumb

  The question is, should the security council have a functional role or should it be merely a ceremonial title. Should the security council actively do stuff or just sit around preventing anyone from doing anything?

  President Obama is calling for India to be added to the Security Council and that’s all well and good. Certainly they deserve a place and there’s no rational reason Security Council membership should be locked in time to the way it was setup to begin with. Relative power levels of nations change over time. Any idiot can see that.

  But the Security Council is a single entity veto institution. That means that if  you just add more people to it then it is inevitably the case that there will be more vetos. The more people the more likely any given action will be something that someone objects to. The more vetos the less gets done. And if you add enough countries won’t it end up being the case that just nothing at all EVER gets done there. Already they rarely agree on anything. How will adding more people help the matter?

  So by all means do the fair thing and expand the security council. But if you’re going to do that, you also need to change the way it works in some kind of fundamental way so that it can make more decisions without needing absolute unanimity.  I have no idea how to do that, but it needs to be done.  Either that or we should just get rid of the security council altogether.

  Or is there something I’m not seeing or understanding? I admit I’m far from an expert on the United Nations. Feel free to enlighten me!

  • 7:10 am
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