India and other claimants will have to snatch the veto from the Big Five

By Sankarshan Thakur

Russian president Vladimir Putin’s yes-no-but, sorry yes to India’s claim for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) embarrassed the visitor, but it also showed up New Delhi in pitiful light. The Big Ones can still toy with Indian aspirations on the international stage and get away with it. Putin did “correct” his blunt refusal to back India to a seat with a veto but it was an extracted correction. And the Russian leader made it seem a trifling affair — what he meant had been merely lost in translation. The Russians were not about to articulate a strong case for India. Nor is anyone else at the moment, other than enthusiasts at home. Do we have a case? Perhaps. Is there a way of barging in? No.

The UNSC is, unfairly, a rather tightly closed big boys’ club. For decades now, it has refused to recognise the presence of nations that have come of age at the door knocker — United Germany, Japan, India, even Brazil. The UNSC has declined to take note of the wholeness of the world it orders about from its high perch. Africa, the Arab nations, Latin America and swathes of Asia are unrepresented.

On the other hand, at critical junctures, the UNSC has found itself steamrolled or superceded by the unilateralism of the United States. American obduracy on leading the assault on Serbs is a fading memory. But its war on Iraq with the “coalition of the willing” is an insistent reminder that even the big boys’ club is no oligarchy of equals, that one of them can whip and effectively sideline the others.

Part of the idea behind expanding membership of the UNSC is to make it more reflective of the changed world. In India’s case, the reasons why she can lay claim to key global clubs have multiplied since 1994-95 when New Delhi began to seriously lobby for a permanent seat in the UNSC. The world’s largest democracy is a technology power, it commands a huge, if not the best equipped, military, and it is a nuclear power. More than all of these, India has emerged as a market the global economy cannot do without.

The high level committee appointed by Secretary General Kofi Annan on UN reforms has made two options available on expansion of the UNSC: add six new permanent members or add eight semi-permanent members with two nations each from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. India, Germany, Japan and Brazil began jointly lobbying for option one in September. The incumbents of the UNSC are clearly happier with option two which leaves the veto as their preserve. To expect them to throw the club is to expect easy concessions in a world that’s only getting more competitive. The September group will have to fight its way in. Nation’s aren’t ready to give up power. They are, as with the US, looking for opportunities to grab more.

Part of the recommended changes are decidedly aimed at checking American hegemony. The committee, headed by former Thai premier Anand Panyarachun, sharply noted: “The question is not whether such action (the US-led war on Iraq) can be taken; it can, but by the Security Council as the international community’s collective security voice.” Will expanding the committee help? That’s a tough question to answer. If the US could override the current UNSC, what stops it from doing the same with an enlarged one? France, China and Russia opposed the war on Iraq. What’s there to sustain the hope that a larger group comprising say Germany, India and Japan will be able to change that?