The proposal that Japan, India, Germany and Brazil become permanent members of the UN Security Council is almost certain to fail, but it may trigger sweeping reforms in an institution dating from 1945 that is incapable of coping with the issues of 2005.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil presented their joint bid in New York on Sept. 22, asserting that "they are legitimate candidates for permanent membership in an expanded Security Council."
The Security Council today has five permanent members with veto rights: the US, China, Russia, the UK and France, the victors of World War II.
Ten other members are chosen to rotate through the council on two-year terms.
Opposition to the new proposal was immediate. China, South Korea and North Korea objected to Japan's bid. Pakistan, with support from China, opposed India. Italy opposed Germany, as well as expansion of the veto. Spanish-speaking Mexico, Argentina and Chile opposed Portuguese-speaking Brazil.
Moreover, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa are also vying for permanent membership. Other African countries argued for wider representation, as did Arabs, Asians and Latin Americans. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has ordered a study due by the end of the year on possible changes. Observers of the UN said reform is the talk of the headquarters in New York, because the UN's ineptitude has become increasingly clear. In its latest dithering, the UN has dawdled over the Sudan, where 6,000 to 10,000 people a month are dying from starvation or being killed in civil strife.
As David Brooks of The New York Times has written: "The US said the killing in Darfur was indeed genocide, the Europeans weren't so sure and the Arab League said definitely not and hairs were split and legalisms were parsed and the debate over how many corpses you can fit on the head of a pin proceeded in stentorian tones while the mass extermination of human beings continued at a pace that may or may not rise to the level of genocide."
As far as long-standing conflicts in Asia are concerned, the UN has done little to foster reunification of South Korea and North Korea, to ease the dispute between China and Taiwan, to combat terror and piracy in Southeast Asia, to mediate between India and Pakistan over Kashmir or to end 20 years of ethnic strife in Sri Lanka.
Victor David Hanson, a historian at Stanford University, wrote recently: "Our global watchdog, the UN, had been largely silent. It abdicates its responsibility of ostracizing those states that harbor mass murderers, much less organizes a multilateral posse to bring them to justice."
Schemes for fixing the UN Security Council and General Assembly have been flying around for months. The key is to find an acceptable balance among the major powers, the middle powers and the smaller nations.
In the Security Council, the world's powers supposedly exercise leadership, but the UK and France have long since slipped off that top shelf. If they could be persuaded not to veto reforms, perhaps a three-tiered Security Council could be assembled. Criteria for the top and middle tiers would be population, political stability, economic strength and military power.
The top tier would comprise the US, the EU (including the UK, France, Germany and Italy), China, India, Japan and Russia. The veto would be diluted by requiring two nations to block an action.
In the middle would be permanent members without a veto -- such as Brazil, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Korea, Indonesia, Egypt and Mexico. In the third tier would be members rotating by geographic region -- Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Arab world and Pacific island nations. In the General Assembly, which has nearly quadrupled from 51 members in 1945 to 191 members today, the US vote counts no more than that of Palau, population 20,000. Consequently, the assembly is largely ignored.
To make the General Assembly effective, weighted voting would be tried. A nation, for instance, would get one vote for every 100 million people and another for every 2 percent of the world's GNP. That would give the US 17 votes (three plus 14) and China 15 votes (13 plus two). Resolutions would be binding -- they are not now -- if they gained two-thirds of the vote.
All of this is admittedly speculative. As a devoted advocate of the UN says: "That the UN does not fairly represent today's world is true -- but that doesn't make re-organizing it any easier."
Richard Halloran is a journalist based in Hawaii.
US President Donald Trump has gotten off to a head-spinning start in his foreign policy. He has pressured Denmark to cede Greenland to the United States, threatened to take over the Panama Canal, urged Canada to become the 51st US state, unilaterally renamed the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America” and announced plans for the United States to annex and administer Gaza. He has imposed and then suspended 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico for their roles in the flow of fentanyl into the United States, while at the same time increasing tariffs on China by 10
Trying to force a partnership between Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and Intel Corp would be a wildly complex ordeal. Already, the reported request from the Trump administration for TSMC to take a controlling stake in Intel’s US factories is facing valid questions about feasibility from all sides. Washington would likely not support a foreign company operating Intel’s domestic factories, Reuters reported — just look at how that is going over in the steel sector. Meanwhile, many in Taiwan are concerned about the company being forced to transfer its bleeding-edge tech capabilities and give up its strategic advantage. This is especially
US President Donald Trump last week announced plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on eight countries. As Taiwan, a key hub for semiconductor manufacturing, is among them, the policy would significantly affect the country. In response, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) dispatched two officials to the US for negotiations, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) board of directors convened its first-ever meeting in the US. Those developments highlight how the US’ unstable trade policies are posing a growing threat to Taiwan. Can the US truly gain an advantage in chip manufacturing by reversing trade liberalization? Is it realistic to
Last week, 24 Republican representatives in the US Congress proposed a resolution calling for US President Donald Trump’s administration to abandon the US’ “one China” policy, calling it outdated, counterproductive and not reflective of reality, and to restore official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, enter bilateral free-trade agreement negotiations and support its entry into international organizations. That is an exciting and inspiring development. To help the US government and other nations further understand that Taiwan is not a part of China, that those “one China” policies are contrary to the fact that the two countries across the Taiwan Strait are independent and
RSS