Pragmatic Euphony  

The French President Nicolas Sarkozy in his talk with the reporters at New York:

We cannot wait any longer to turn the G8 into the G13 or G14, and to bring in China, India, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil.

And George Bush, in his final address to the UN General Assembly also spoke about reforming the UN. He, however, stopped far short of explicitly asking for a reform of the UN Security Council.

Mr. Bush urged the UN itself to allow reform of its massive bureaucracy, saying the world body can act “for the good’ – but also suggesting it was falling far short of its “extraordinary potential.”[NP]

Meanwhile there have been certain positive developments at the UN in the discussions on the expansion of the UN Security Council.

India received a boost earlier this month when the outgoing UNGA president Srgjan Kerim — followed by Nicaraguan successor Miguel D’Esco Brockmann — revived the entire process by calling for inter-governmental negotiations and fixed a deadline of February 29 next year for a final decision.[IE]

The other group -‘United for Consensus’ (UFC), informally called the Coffee Club, led by Pakistan and Egypt, is putting a proverbial spoke in the wheel against the G-4 [India, Japan, Germany and Brazil] proposal.

Pakistan and its allies had favoured the open-ended working group (OEWG) continuing negotiations until consensus is reached. But India had advocated that the issue be sorted out at inter-governmental negotiations as OEWG had failed to reach any agreement after more than a decade of discussions.

After intense discussion, the OEWG agreed to recommend that the UN General Assembly begin informal negotiations on expanding membership of the Council no later than February 28 next.[Rediff]

The whole gamut of reforming the UNSC is a complicated and long-drawn process. There are no substantive differences between the G-4 and UFC proposals, more so after the G-4 is believed to have given up its proposal for Veto rights.

The G-4 proposal envisages addition of six permanent and four non-permanent members, taking the total strength to 25 but UFC has proposed addition of 10 non-permanent members.

Under the G-4 proposal two permanent seats would be allotted each to Asia and Africa, one each to Latin America and Europe.

The expansion would necessitate amendment of the Charter, which requires that the resolution on expansion gets two-thirds majority in the 192-member General Assembly and two-third member States, including five permanent members, ratify the decision following their own legislative proposals.

Most commentators have observed that Pakistan is taking an obstructionist view on China’s behest. China is strongly opposed to a permanent seat for Japan. Although it has not stated its opposition to the Indian candidacy, recent developments at the Nuclear Suppliers Group[NSG] meet at Geneva have been ominous. The Western media’s recent portrayal of India being used by the US as a countervailing force against China would also be playing in the minds of the Chinese.

Pakistan with tacit support from China has been actively blocking G4 efforts in the past few years to agree on a formulation for UNSC expansion. Earlier, Pakistan and China worked together to ensure that there is no consensus in the Africa Union over two countries that could be nominated from the continent as permanent members.

While Africa did have its own bitter politics over the issue, there was hope after the G4 decided to give up veto rights in a bid to reach a broader understanding with existing UNGA members. However, African countries insisted on veto rights and raised objections to the number of berths being sought for Africa. It was later revealed that Pakistan and China had stepped up diplomatic pressure to end even the remotest possibility of a consensus in Africa.

One is not certain about the kind of diplomatic pressure that the Pakistanis can employ in Africa. However the Chinese do have a significant say with most of the non-democratic governments in the African continent. Nevertheless  the NSG waiver example has proved that if the US decides to push the case for an Indian inclusion in the UNSC, it is certain to see the light of the day.

It is another matter altogether that the Indian government may not like to direct all its energies on to a issue which has little real returns for the country. The quest for a UNSC seat, in that sense, is different from the Indo-US nuclear deal. The G-8 expansion seems more likely to happen soon and may fetch greater benefits for the Indian state.

A couple of other issues come into play here. The reform of the UNSC has actually turned out to be merely an expansion, whereas it should also include removing the dead wood from the council. If the UNSC is to be  a true reflection of the present-day geopolitical structure, the UK and France have no reason to retain their place at the high table. Yeltsin’s Russia certainly didn’t deserve to be there, but Putin’s Russia with its Oil Power may just scrape through in my list.

An expansion of the UNSC to 25 members is going to further reduce the effectiveness of the world body by making it even more bureaucratic and unwieldy. The place at the high table may then have even a lesser value than what it is currently being made out to be.

A philosophical question to end with. Do we want a world dictated by cabals, called the G-8, NSG or the UNSC? Or we don’t mind that as long as India is a part of that clique?

Update – Check out C Raja Mohan’s piece on UN’s irrelevance.