INTRODUCTION
The United Nations stands as a success to the idea of a multilateral organization to prevent another world war. With the principles of peace, sovereignty and equality, the United Nations was structured into six different head organs which were the General Assembly (GA), the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Trusteeship Council, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Secretariat and the Security Council. These organs were further given different mandates to uphold the principle behind creating this organization. The GA was given the role of pursuing international peace, security and disarmament, the ECOSOC was given the role of promoting economic and social matters, the Trusteeship Council was the given the task of handling the trust territories such as colonies and encourage their development towards autonomy, the ICJ was given the power to act as neutral legal body in case of dispute between states and the Secretariat was given the responsibility to act as the administrator to this large organization. But the Security Council was put at the helm for any decision to be taken. While organizations such as the GA and ECOSOC were based on consent and negotiations, the Security Council was given a more authoritative power in implementing decision that it deems fit and creating legal obligations for all members of the United Nations. Thus, my aim in writing this essay is to further study this unique structure and the given power of the Security Council and determine if this is reflection of liberal or realist assumption.
STRUCTURE AND POWER OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL
The structure of the Security Council is quite different from the other organs. The general composition is very small with only room for 15 members but the reason why it stands unique to other bodies of the United Nations is because while all countries get to be either a part of the GA or have anon-discriminatory election in the ECOSOC, the Security Council holds elections for only ten seats and the rest five are to remain constantly occupied by China, France,Russia (or USSR back then), UK and USA. Another contrasting ability based on its structure, are the voting rights for members in the Security Council. While the policy of equal importance of vote is followed both in the GA and ECOSOC, the Security Council follows a different voting structure for both non-permanent and permanent members. Article27(3) of the Charter provides that for any decision to be taken, both affirmative votes from non-permanent members and concurring votes of permanent members are needed. This means that a vote of disagreement from any of the permanent members would lead to the decision not being implemented. This process is what we have popularly known as the Veto in the Security Council. Although one might argue that this was given as a privilege to the permanent members of the Security Council when the UN was setup after World War II, it becomes quite contrary to principles of sovereign equality under Article 2(2). However,this isn’t the only provision that exists contrary to the principles of the Charter. Article 24 of the Charter lays down that the primary responsibility of the Security Council is to support international peace and security and in upholding this responsibility all states shall agree to carry out all decisions taken by the fifteen members under Article 25 and that the council could use force under Article 42 if need be. This provision morally nullifies the principles of individual state sovereignty and the need to pursue peaceful settlement of disputes. Although there have been instances of inter-state conflicts such as Korean War and Indo-Pakistan War of 1965, the ability of the Security Council to successfully maneuver the situation to broker peace or ceasefire agreements, creates an even deeper discussion in this debate over the nature of it being liberal or realist.
DOES THE SECURITY COUNCIL HAVE A COLOUR OF LIBERALIST ASSUMPTIONS?
If there is any organization under the United Nations which truly acts on liberalist assumptions of mutual respect and equality in terms of its structure, then it is the GA. Its composition of all members of the United Nations under Article 9 and the ability to discuss any matter of international peace and security by even non-members of the United Nations under Article11 of the Charter, has made itself known as the “town meeting of the world”. If principles such as equality and mutual respect don’t resonate well with structure and power of the Security Council, it is the relationship that it shares with the GA that gives it a colour of liberalist assumptions. The Charter gives General Assembly the responsibility to elect non-permanent members to the Security Council under Article 23 and amend the Charter to change the structure of the Security Council under Article 108 of the Charter.An example of this ability was Resolution 1991 A which changed the number of non-permanent members from six to ten. Further, because of the possibility of lack of consensus due to the structure of the Security Council, the General Assembly may hold the final decision under the Uniting for Peace in GA Resolution 377A. GA Resolutions 1237 on withdrawal of foreign troops from Jordan and Lebanon, and ES 6/2 on withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan are instances when the Uniting for Peace was invoked by the Security Council. A further look should be given to the role of “equitable geographical distribution” under Article 23 which decides the composition of the non-permanent members in the Security Council. Under the GA Resolution1991 A, the set pattern of geographical representation for 10non-permanent members is:
● 5 states from Africa and Asia
● 1 from Eastern Europe
● 2 from South American
● 2 from Western Europe and other regions
And while states are to vote through a secret ballot, there exists no system of nomination. This gives an opportunity to all states to freely participate in the elections to the Council by creating an equal platform under this equity. Thus, even if liberal assumptions don’t seem to exist directly, it continues to run from the shadows of Council.
IS THE STRUCTURE AND POWER OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL BASEDON REALIST ASSUMPTIONS?
The most realist assumption in the structure and power of the Security Council is the concept of permanent membership and veto. With the ability to maximize power to defend, the power of veto has been quite a lot since its introduction to the voting system. Although the Cold War was an era of vetoes such as USSR veto over 3 resolutions against India during the 1971 Indo-Pak War or the US veto over 1983 invasion over Grenada, a relevant case would be the 21st century era veto by Russia and China on the USA moved draft resolution which called the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down and stop violence against its opposition. While USA viewed that this would be a major step towards ending violence in Syria, China and Russia argued that this would-be detrimental to the concept of sovereignty enshrined in the Charter. This however wasn't based on just the assumptions of upholding the charter but on necessity of both China and Russia to counter Western Hegemony to continue its existence in international politics. Since the fall off USSR and the creation of Sino-Russia treaty of Friendship, both China and Russia have continued to exercise a soft power of balancing through the Security Council in an attempt to curve Western Influence as they neither have the military capacity nor the economic advantage over USA. And while USA looked to take down one of the key remaining anti-western dictators in the region, Russia sought to defend the Assad regime for two basic reasons. Firstly, Russia wished to maintain its military bases and economic influence in Syria and if Bassar Al-Assad should have fell, it would have been a significant strategic blowback. Secondly the middle east in recent years had become a heavily US dominated region with strong ties to all major actors such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and still Syria remained to be the few to be independent of US influence. Thus, to continue to maintain its influence, it became necessary for Russia to veto any resolution that sought a change in regime. China, on the other hand, in its effort to become a strong economic hegemony, had strong bilateral trade forums such as the Syrian Chinese Business Council and a heavy trade in communications, electronic equipment and heavy machinery. Further Chinese state-owned China National China National Petroleum Corporation and Sinochem owned a heavy stake in the Syrian oil fields. This exercise of veto in the Security Council on this agenda becomes a key example of Mearsheimer’s offensive realism where states would continue to exercise power in its search for becoming hegemony only for its survival. In fact, not just in terms of veto but also the pursuit to becoming a non-permanent member of the Security Council, to wield both hard and soft power in the attempt to gain something become a reflection of Mearsheimer’s principle. Thus, the structure and power of the Security Council brings light to realist thoughts and practices.
CONCLUSION
What started off as just a debate over the reflection of its structure has now transcended into what comes first, the liberal support to maintain peace from the dark or the light of realist notions. I tend to believe that although liberal assumptions of equality and cooperation does exist,the Security Council’s reflection of realist assumption of power politics weigh a lot more than the former. The ability to veto any changes to the Council under Article108 and the influence over other nations have stopped various liberal attempts to restructure the Security Council such as the Uniting for Consensus and G4’s search for permanent membership. Further, while the Security Council acts as a legal obligation creator through Article 25 of the Charter for all members, liberal organizations such as the General Assembly only could create recommendations and soft laws based on consent among all members. Thus, even if liberal notions do continue to exist from the shadows, it will never outweigh the realist structure and power of the Security Council.
