By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Time To Expand The UN Security Council

For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” U.S. President Joe Biden said of his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, a month after Russia launched a brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Biden’s off-the-cuff remark, which his administration swiftly sought to walk back, did not merely reflect anger at the destruction unleashed by Putin’s war of choice. It also revealed the deeply held assumption that relations between Russia and the West cannot improve as long as Putin is in office.

Today however there is growing resentment about the amount of attention and money that the West is funneling toward Ukraine. Countries outside Europe are plagued by war and hardship, yet their suffering commands only a fraction of the attention paid to Kyiv. As Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar put it in June 2022, the priority that the richest states have given to Ukraine treats Europe’s problems “as the world’s problems,” even though “the world’s problems are not considered to be Europe’s problems.”

This discontent poses a challenge for the Biden administration. In fighting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression, and in dealing with the economic, political, and territorial ambitions of an ascendant China, the United States will need to look beyond its stalwart Western allies and shore up support worldwide. It will especially need to bolster its ties to the many rising powers, such as Brazil and India, that currently balance between Washington and its main rivals. Some of these governments share U.S. interests; New Delhi, for example, is also contending with an increasingly muscular Beijing. Yet none of them will become full partners with the United States if they feel that American policymakers neither take their desires seriously nor treat them as geopolitical peers.

These countries have diverse interests, making it impossible for the United States to please them all. But there is a way for Washington to take the lead in supporting these countries’ ambitions and reflecting their increasing clout: jump-starting the long-stalled debate over expanding the UN Security Council. Many of the world’s most powerful developing states have long sought a place in the body, and a credible U.S. drive to add them would have singular, symbolic significance. If successful, the drive could also yield practical benefits. An updated global security architecture would fortify the post-1945 rules-based system that the Biden administration champions, tamp down on geopolitical resentments fostered by the West’s perceived influence hoarding, and offer possible ways to more effectively isolate and stigmatize China and Russia when they breach global norms.

Crafting a workable proposal will not be easy, and the drive is not without risks. Decades of past schemes, after all, never gained much traction, and the bar for change is high. To be enacted, a proposal for Security Council reform must win the support of two-thirds of the member states of the UN General Assembly (or 128 of the current 193) as well as all five of the council’s current permanent members.

So far, most formulas have focused on adding specific countries as permanent members of the Security Council, a highly controversial proposition both because it might dilute the influence of the council’s existing permanent seat holders and because it could privilege a new group of nations in perpetuity at the expense of their regional rivals. The Biden administration could lower the hurdle by proposing that the UN create a new, more flexible tier of council seats allocated according to the objective criteria of population and gross domestic product. The occupants would shift periodically—perhaps after a decade of service—if their statistical rankings changed. Although extending veto rights to such long-term members would not be politically viable, they would enjoy other benefits, including a long-term voice and vote in the world’s premier security forum.

Building in such flexibility would help safeguard the council’s credibility over the long run. The UN Security Council’s structure has not changed since its inception, and so it is now out of sync with current geopolitical realities, diminishing its global importance. By allocating seats based on objective criteria, the body would naturally evolve alongside the world it is intended to serve. And if the change came in response to a plan from Washington, the United States would earn credit for its leadership on an issue that matters to the capitals it needs most.

 

Actions And Words

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it seemed as if the world might rally behind the principles of nonaggression, sovereignty, and human rights. But outside the West there was skepticism. Major African, Asian, and South American states abstained from UN General Assembly resolutions condemning the war. Many African and Middle Eastern countries complained that Europe was welcoming Ukrainian refugees while spurning arrivals from Syria, Sudan, and elsewhere. According to U.S. officials, South Africa has even supplied arms to Russia, despite pledging to remain neutral. The war has strained global food supplies, disrupted the flow of energy, and exacerbated inflation—especially in developing states. The result has underscored long-standing resentments over the current world order and the traditional great powers that continue to dominate it.

The Biden administration knows that it needs to improve its ties to intermediate states, especially as Beijing and Moscow try to woo these countries away from Washington’s orbit. It knows that championing Security Council reform would be an effective way to do so. That is why, in an address at the UN last September, U.S. President Joe Biden stressed that he supports increasing the number of nonpermanent and permanent council members. He reaffirmed the United States’ prior calls for certain countries to receive permanent seats (Washington has backed the council aspirations of Germany, India, and Japan) and spoke of the need for representation for Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as Africa, on an enlarged council. Biden’s speech appears to have been more than just empty rhetoric. According to reporting by The Washington Post, U.S. diplomats, including U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield, have been canvassing ideas for expansion—a process that is intensifying as this year’s General Assembly opening session approaches in September.

Biden’s words were well received and echoed by other global leaders. The United Kingdom’s foreign minister, for instance, called for expanding the council in June. Biden’s remarks also kindled some measure of anticipation among aspirants, suggesting that their long-standing hopes may not be forever in vain. But to show that it is serious about not just endorsing but driving forward a more representative world order, Washington has to champion a proposal that can surmount the barriers that have stalled Security Council reforms for decades.

Foremost among those obstacles are the council’s five permanent members. Each of these states—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—has used its sway to rebuff past expansion efforts through either active opposition or passive indifference that reinforced the status quo. Their reasoning is simple and self-serving: these countries are unwilling to relinquish their own veto power and would rather not afford commensurate privileges to other states, which could potentially obstruct their interests.

But the permanent members are not the only obstacles. There are many countries outside the Security Council that would covet positions in it, and they are at odds with regional rivals over who should get new spots. Egypt and Ethiopia, for example, have no interest in seeing Nigeria represent their continent. Italy would hate to see Germany ascend. Argentina and Mexico oppose Brazil’s ambitions. And even if these states could sort out their differences, would-be reformers have struggled with practical considerations. A council that is too large, unwieldy, and veto-ridden might fail to carry out routine work—such as mediating conflicts and overseeing peacekeeping missions in Africa—that today proceed relatively smoothly.

 

Fair Enough

It is possible, however, for the United States to craft a proposal that overcomes many of these hurdles. It can start by steering clear of adding new permanent members, and instead call for a fresh, separate class of long-term seats allocated not by fiat or through horse-trading but on the basis of objective criteria. Such a system would leave the current permanent five states’ veto powers intact; realpolitik means that that facet of the system is effectively impossible to change. But the long-term seats would still render the Security Council’s decision-making more inclusive and representative.

There are reasons to think most of the contenders, and maybe all of them, would accept such a proposal. Although some council aspirants, such as India, have voiced reluctance to accept anything short of a veto-wielding seat, others—including Japan and Germany—are thought to be more open to compromise scenarios that would fulfill some, if not all, of their hopes. And governments bent on getting a veto, like New Delhi, might ultimately come around if long-term seats were available but permanent membership seemed far away. The often fierce competition for two-year rotating council seats is testament to the value that capitals attach to being part of the inner sanctum of peace and security. Even without a veto, a council seat means getting to speak in front of the cameras, table proposals, and set the council agenda when taking a turn as the body’s rotating monthly chairperson. It allows countries to rub shoulders with the world’s foremost powers.

The new states would also still be able to drive forward council action and help stop proposals from passing. Today, council decisions are based on an affirmative vote of nine out of 15 members, subject to veto by any of the five permanent members. In a reformed council, the threshold for action could remain a majority plus one, giving the new members a chance to help vote measures up or down.

Rather than preselecting countries for these long-term seats, the U.S. proposal should set objective measures to determine which ones get elevated. The simplest to use are the most up-to-date International Monetary Fund and UN figures on GDP and population. They are, after all, perhaps the best quantifiable proxies for a country’s international sway and power. Washington could specifically propose adding two members to the Security Council—one for population and one for GDP—from each of the UN’s five regional groups: Asia-Pacific, Africa, Latin America and Caribbean, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe and Other (which includes the United States as an observer and for voting purposes). If the leading states from one group are already permanent members, the second-place states based on each criterion would be elevated instead. If a single state led in both population and GDP, the second seat could go to the country with the second-largest populace.

From Asia-Pacific, this formula would give seats to India for population and Japan for GDP. From Africa, Nigeria and South Africa would become members. Brazil and Mexico would be elevated from the Latin America and Caribbean group. Poland and Ukraine would join from Eastern Europe, while Germany and, depending on the timing, either Italy or Canada would ascend from the Western Europe and Other group. If the tier of ten short-term elected council members were left untouched, a new proposal could yield a total council size of between 20 and 24 (depending on the specificities of the plan adopted): a figure within the range of other proposals that have long been under discussion.

This allocation would make the council’s representation much broader than it is right now. It would, however, still overrepresent Europe and, potentially, North America. If other continents objected to the skew, the United States could propose capping each UN region to three or four countries in total, perhaps depending on whether the United States is treated as a formal member of the Western European and Other group. If reformers wanted even more parity, they could cap the number of states per region at two, grandfathering in existing states, and prioritizing population over GDP when needed. A cap of two would prevent any new additions from Western Europe and Other and limit Asia-Pacific and Eastern Europe to just one new member. Instead of nine or ten new countries, such a formula would yield just six: Brazil, India, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, and Ukraine. Other variations on this proposal could allocate the number of new seats per region proportionately, based on the total population of the area, or based on the number of individual sovereign General Assembly members within an area.

This system would not quell the misgivings of Pakistan about an Indian seat, or of Egypt about Nigeria’s ascension. But by continuing to limit veto rights and ensuring that the seats could change hands over time, the proposals would at least be more palatable. India could not, for example, singlehandedly stop a resolution that would make life easier for Pakistan. Egypt could take comfort in the fact that South Africa might not be on the council forever.

Crucially, adopting a criteria-based system subject to regular updating would help prevent the Security Council from simply adopting a new, calcified makeup. To create additional permanent seats in the 2020s would doom the Security Council of the 2040s or 2050s to the very same politically enshrined obsolescence that has bedeviled the body for years. And by codifying up front that GDP and population calculations for long-term seats would be reviewed after each decade, no country—even those on the council—could dispute what the latest figures on GDP and population dictate in terms of council composition. As with the body’s well-established existing system of rotating temporary seats, the periodic refreshes would be carried out methodically, without opening up new political debates.

There is, in fact, precedent for UN reform that incorporates automatically updating eligibility. In 1973, the General Assembly adopted a peacekeeping scale of assessment that gave certain developing countries steep discounts on their payment shares. But after 27 years, some of the beneficiaries—including Qatar, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates—had grown wealthy and therefore no longer needed concessions. In 2000, the UN membership negotiated an overhaul of this system, stripping undeserving states of their lowered rates and fashioning a new scale that pegged discounts to per capita GDP—ensuring that countries’ payments would adjust as their relative wealth shifted.

 

Risks And Rewards

It is true that many of the countries most likely to receive membership under this proposal—particularly Germany, India, and Japan—top the list of states that Washington is already on record as wanting to add. And on balance, there is reason to think that Washington would gain from this proposal. The newly elevated long-term members would include established democracies whose presence could raise the reputational costs for China and Russia if they used their veto to shield human rights abusers or if they stood in the way of efforts to quell conflicts like the civil war in Syria, which mostly defied council action for years in the 2010s. If the United States and its allies were successful in making common cause with new long-term members on key priorities, the political costs of Russian and Chinese obstruction would rise even further. Washington is already deepening ties to India and Nigeria, and if the U.S. proposal to get them on the council succeeds, these relationships could grow warmer.

But the merits of a criteria-based system transcend any country’s particular national interests. The metrics, after all, are objectively fair reflections of the international system: money gives states substantial might, as do people. By adding countries with bigger populations, the United States would also help make sure that the council represented far more of the world than it does right now. Although it seems virtually impossible for the council to morph into a truly equitable global body, at least for the time being, even the most vehement critics of American power would be hard-pressed to argue that admitting the planet’s most populous or prosperous countries is a self-serving proposal.

In fact, there are ways that Washington could lose from the additions. New Delhi, Pretoria, and other Security Council aspirants are home to deep-seated anti-Western strains that have come to the forefront in their responses to Russia’s invasion. Although the U.S. veto would remain a forceful bulwark against unpalatable outcomes, it is possible that these governments and other new admits could harden into an unfriendly bloc. By advancing this reform, the United States would be gambling that, in drawing leading global South countries closer to the inner circle of international governance, it could prevent such a group from emerging—and achieve diplomatic strides with some tough counterparts. Although securing agreement on a new Security Council formula with Beijing, Moscow, and the U.S. Senate is a daunting task, a scheme attracting substantial global backing could build powerful momentum, forcing key outliers to negotiate their differences and make concessions. A scenario in which Washington champions a popular new paradigm only to have China and Russia block passage could scramble current international alignments.

For Washington, then, opening discussion on a criteria-based system is a wager worth taking. The United States needs closer friends outside Europe, and it desperately needs to safeguard the rules-based international order. Working to increase the size of the Security Council would help bolster Washington’s reputation while affording the United Nations a new lease on life at a time when the post–World War II system of global governance is at risk of collapse. Doing so would inaugurate a new chapter for the existing international order. Indeed, even if the UN does not agree to Washington’s proposals in the near term, they could still help spark progress. Inserting new ideas in an effort to unstick the debate could catalyze the council to reinvent itself.

Such renewal is essential to keep the UN functioning. The impasse over Security Council reform has endured for generations. At some point, this brittle, archaic system will buckle beneath the weight of the world. Such a collapse may not seem imminent, but as with fault lines in the earth, geopolitical dynamics can shift unexpectedly, irreversibly, and sometimes catastrophically. And although the council is often dismissed as impotent, its implosion for failure to accommodate long-standing frustrations would leave behind a more chaotic and dangerous world.

 

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