Proposed UN system will also be unfair

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): The expansion of the United Nations Security Council, formally put on the agenda late February by General Assembly president Ismail Rizali, will have two predictable effects. The Security Council will become so unwieldy that real decision-making moves elsewhere. And the international community will be convulsed for years by struggles to get the (largely meaningless) new seats.

The latter process has already begun. Last month, South Africa's President Nelson Mandela went to New Delhi and signed a joint declaration with Indian Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda to bring 'democratic reform' to the UN Security Council. "We do not accept a few countries dictating to the world by exercising the veto power," said Mandela afterwards. "We want countries, big or small, to have an equal say on global issues."

Fine words, but do Mandela and Deve Gowda really want Barbados (population 275,000) to have the same influence on the world's affairs as South Africa (45 million) or India (950 million)? Of course not.

If you are truly want 'global democracy', then either all 184 UN members should have an equal vote (and we abolish the Security Council). Or else every million people should have one vote at the UN (and we abolish the Security Council). Mandela and Deve Gowda show no interest in either of those propositions.

So did Mandela go to New Delhi just to mouth some platitudes in public? Not at all. He went to forge an alliance with India over the new permanent seats on the Security Council.

India is the world's second most populous country (after China), so it would seem a safe bet for a permanent seat on the expanded Security Council. However, its main Asian rivals for that seat, Indonesia and Pakistan, are both Moslem countries.

Pakistan and Indonesia together have only one-third of India's population -- but the current plan could easily produce an expanded Security Council on which there was still no Moslem permanent member. So New Delhi can imagine a scenario where the 40-odd Moslem member countries of the UN voted to boost Indonesia or Pakistan into the 'Asian' permanent seat instead. Even India needs allies, therefore -- and South Africa is an obvious candidate.

Africa will also get just one new permanent member -- and South Africa, as the only industrialized country south of the Sahara, wants to be the one. Ethiopia has as many people, but is very poor. Nigeria has twice as many people, but a military regime. The only rival that really worries Pretoria is Egypt.

Egypt is Arabic-speaking and predominantly Moslem. It is really part of the Middle East. But technically it is in the African continent, so if the Moslem countries put all their votes behind one candidate, their choice could also fall on Egypt.

That could spoil South Africa's chances as much as an Indonesian or Pakistani candidacy could spoil India's, so the Indo-South African alliance was almost inevitable. And that is just a foretaste of the deal-making and back-stabbing that will be unleashed by the plan to 'democratize' the Security Council.

The plan to enlarge the Security Council was formally unveiled late February. The present five permanent members -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France -- would be joined by five others: Germany, Japan, and one country each from Africa, Asia and Latin America. And the current ten non-permanent members, who are elected for two-year terms, would grow to fourteen.

The total membership of the Security Council would therefore rise from fifteen to twenty-four. Unfortunately, in terms of human dynamics, the total number of members would then be well beyond the limit at which effective decision-making ceases to be possible.

Committees with twenty-four members never make real decisions, so the Security Council would become a merely ornamental body. True decision-making power in the world would simply move elsewhere, to some informal, smaller gathering where the major players could cut their deals as usual.

In the short run, before some new venue is agreed, crises could escalate out of control. Even in the long run it will not enhance the predictability and transparency of world affairs, let alone 'global democracy'. So whose bright idea was this, anyway?

The idea of expanding the Security Council has been kicking around for decades, but it was U.S. President Bill Clinton who gave it wings. His problem was that the UN is hovering on the brink of bankruptcy because the United States owes it so much in unpaid dues. Yet, though the UN is an important element in America's own security, he cannot get Congress to pay up promptly.

So why not get Japan and Germany, the world's second- and third-richest countries, to sit on the Security Council? Then we can boost their dues to pay for the privilege. That was all Clinton really wanted. But in the real world of 1997 you cannot possibly sell an 'expanded' Security Council of only seven permanent members, five of them Western and the other two East Asian.

So five permanent members quickly grow to ten (but we won't let the new ones have the veto, thus stripping them of real power). And ten non-permanent members must grow to fourteen: can't have the great powers outnumbering the others. The whole thing rapidly becomes as pointless as it is unstoppable.

The Security Council's current membership list is capricious and unfair. Japan and Germany are bigger and richer than Britain and France, but they are not permanent members because they lost the World War II in 1945. China was independent when the UN was founded in 1945, whereas India didn't get its independence until 1947, so China is a permanent member and India isn't.

The present system is grossly unfair -- but the new one will be too. Moreover, it will create horrendous divisions as countries jostle for the new Security Council seats that are being created.

And in the end, the Security Council will cease to be the place where the world's most important business is conducted.