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Journalism of Courage
Joel Brinkley’s article in the New York Times (IE, May 16) shows clearly that the US, which is so supportive of India’s aspirations for a greater role in international affairs commensurate to its size, population, resources and record over the past 60 years, is not willing to support India’s case for a UN Security Council permanent seat with a veto. Other members — Russia, China, UK and France — have been ambiguous to our claim knowing full well that the ultimate outcome will depend upon the US. Now the US has a strong spokesman in the UN itself. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, when he was in Delhi a few weeks ago, had delivered the US message: forget a permanent seat with veto.
The general opinion among foreign policy scholars in India is that we should not pin too much of significance to the veto power but get into the Security Council as a permanent member — even if our ultimate goal is to be on a par with the P5. In any case, the veto is an anachronism today — a relic of the post-World War II era. The victorious allied powers in 1945 gave themselves the power to say “No” if the majority attempted to impose their will on them in any future international conflict. The whole idea hinged on the philosophy that “nothing could be done to them against their will, and nothing could be done to others without their will”.
With the end of bipolarity and the emergence of the US as the sole super power, a veto has only nuisance value. Take the US invasion of Iraq. It gave up the idea of getting a second UN resolution authorising the war and went ahead unilaterally to wage the war, as any UN resolution would have been subject to a French, Russian or even Chinese veto. In other words, three veto-wielding powers could not prevent the US from unilaterally launching an illegitimate war against Iraq. It is doubtful whether any nation will be able to prevent the US from going ahead with another unilateral war if it chooses to do so in the future.
The restructured UN will have the Permanent Five with veto power, six others without the veto and 13 non-permanent members without the veto. The foreign minister blundered by publicly staking India’s claim for a permanent seat with veto power, thus increasing the value of the negative vote and the importance of those who work against India’s claim.
After the end of the cold war, the use of the veto has actually become so infrequent, the threat of its use has become enough for the US to achieve its goal. Hence, India needs to first get into the UNSC and then focus from inside on either restoring the veto power to the six new permanent members to reflect global power distribution or collectively work to adopt a new mode of decision making by majority which could include at least three Permanent members.
The writer is a former professor of Politics, University of Mumbai
