E-Paper
US tilts, but keeps cards close to its chest
On paper, US policy on UN reform remains centred on the entry of Japan and Germany. There is some evidence, as the Indo-US relationship picks up momentum, that Washington may be shifting its attitude of neutrality regarding India getting towards one of support.
There is a widespread assumption that a key obstacle to India's ambitions to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council is the United States. During the Cold War this was probably true. But then expanding the Security Council was not really a serious matter.
With the end of the Cold War, this all changed. The US saw the UN as playing a key role in handling the Rwanda and East Timor-type problems of the world. Under the first Bush and Clinton administrations, reforming the UN Security Council was a serious issue along the Potomac. The US was more or less neutral about India getting a permanent seat - its interest was to get Germany and Japan at the table.
Following 9/11 the US's interest has shifted once again. The present Bush administration has tended to be more sceptical of the UN and, therefore, less concerned about its reform. On paper, US policy on UN reform remains centred on the entry of Japan and Germany. There is some evidence, as the Indo-US relationship picks up momentum, that Washington may be shifting its attitude of neutrality regarding India towards one of support. But it is still a long while before this becomes official policy.
US policy on UN reform
Washington, like pretty much every country in the world, recognizes that the United Nations Security Council needs to be changed. The permanent five represent the Allied powers who won World War II. Since then a Cold War pitted two of the five against the other three. And now there is a war on terrorism that seems to have fractured the permanent five even more.
The US has traditionally accepted that the United Nations has its uses. A positive vote on the East River provides legitimacy to everything from armed intervention to the provision of aid. It also provides a vehicle for burden-sharing when it comes to handling various international problems. Even a superpower can't do everything - or even wants to.
The US would like the blue flag to help the stars and stripes. It doesn't want the UN to become powerful enough to block US action. And it will not let its national interest be sacrificed to the UN beyond a certain point. In this, the US is no different from any other major power, including India. Its threshold of tolerance for the UN is lower because its ability to carry out unilateral action is greater.
Which is why there seems to be such a contradiction in US policy towards the UN. On the one hand, statements demanding the UN function better, be more active. On the other, a willingness to ignore or ride roughshod over what the UN mandates.
Post coldwar theatre
In the immediate post-Cold War period, Washington accepted that the present P-5 structure needed to be changed. It focused on getting two of its closest allies, Japan and Germany, permanent seats. Its arguments lay largely around money - these were respectively the second and third largest paymasters of the UN and therefore deserved more than a crummy place in the General Assembly. Unspoken was the view that Tokyo and Bonn traditionally took their foreign policy cue from Washington.
The question was how to secure a consensus to get Japan and Germany a seat on the high table. Thus the proposal, still stuck in the UN's Open-Ended Working Group, to have three more permanent seats - with one each being given to a country from Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The US was willing to consider a doubling of the number of permanent seats in large part because none of the proposed new members would have the veto. It wanted two nations in and was willing to pay a price of an additional three seats to do. An additional political price would be an expansion of the number of rotating, non-permanent seats. However, the veto would remain limited to the original permanent five.
As the US representative to the Economic and Social Council, Sichan Siv, made clear in October last year that "a reformed Council, with Japan and Germany assuming a permanent seats, and with an expanded number of rotating seats, would better enable the Council to exercise its primary responsibility of international peace and security under the Charter."
