Business as usual: New members join the UN Security Council

Last week the United Nations General Assembly elected Egypt, Japan, Senegal, Ukraine and Uruguay to two-year terms as non-permanent members of the 15-member U.N. Security Council, on Jan. 1 to succeed Chad, Chile, Jordan, Lithuania and Nigeria, which are rotating off the council.

The Security Council is constituted of five permanent members, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, each bearing a veto, which means that each separately can block any action of the council. The role of the 10 nonpermanent members is important, and the slots are eagerly sought, but it remains the case that a vote could be 14-1 but the dissent would determine the outcome if cast by a permanent member.

The changes in non-permanent membership decided last week don’t make much difference to the United States, although the addition of Ukraine, with its current divided status, leaves a question mark as for whom exactly its government’s representative speaks.

The five permanent members are in place because the creation of the United Nations was one outcome of the World War II. Those five won the war. Until 1971, China’s seat was held by Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist China, by that time lodged on the island of Taiwan. Reality finally prevailed and the People’s Republic of China — Communist China — took Taiwan’s place on the council.

Since then, there have been other reality-based drives to change the composition of the council. If permanent membership were based on population, India, with 1.3 billion, would have a good claim. If it were economics, Japan would be there. If it were based on regional justice, there would probably be one European Union representative country, not two. If permanent membership were based entirely on region, complicated questions of which country would represent a region could become bitter.

The complexity of that question is what has preserved the status quo since 1945. The beat goes on.