The Key to Security Council Reform Is Fewer Permanent Members, Not More

The Security Council meeting on Dec. 8, 2023, on the war in Gaza. The author, a former United Nations under-secretary-general, proposes that amid the current intensified negotiations on Council reform, member states could “recognize that France and Britain no longer qualify geopolitically to be two of five permanent members of a post-colonial Council.” JOHN PENNEY/PASSBLUE

By Ian Martin via PassBlue

As the United Nations approaches its Summit of the Future in September, the anger of under-represented regions is compelling stronger statements of commitment to reforming the Security Council. Secretary-General António Guterres warns that “the alternative to reform is further fragmentation — it’s reform or rupture.” But despite current efforts to reinvigorate the process of intergovernmental negotiations, now in their 15th year, member states appear no closer to agreement on what change should look like.

Yet there is a feasible path to reform: Instead of considering more permanent seats, member states should recognize that France and Britain no longer qualify geopolitically to be two of five permanent members of a post-colonial Council. So it is time for them to join the competition among an increased, longer-term elected membership.

Two main approaches have been canvassed since 2005, when Kofi Annan, secretary-general then, presented two options for a Security Council enlarged to 24 members. His Option A included six additional permanent seats (without veto power) and three additional two-year seats. Option B featured no new permanent members but the creation of eight new four-year renewable-term seats and one new nonrenewable two-year seat.

Brazil, Germany, India and Japan (“G4”) adopted Option A, arguing that they and two African countries should be the ones added as permanent members, along with three or four more elected members. This will not happen.

The Western Europe and Others regional group is already over-represented, with two elected seats in addition to three permanent members — France, Britain and the United States — for its 28 members. So the Global South cannot be expected to agree to any further over-representation that would result if Germany were added.

The case for increased representation of the African bloc, which now has only three seats and no permanent member for its 54 states, is overwhelming, but the group has never agreed on which countries should occupy the two prospective permanent seats that it claims, along with five nonpermanent seats.

The claim of the Asia-Pacific Group is also overwhelming: three of the four most-populous countries in the world are among its 54 states, now represented only by two elected members and the permanent member China, yet there is no current likelihood that China would agree to India and Japan becoming permanent members.

The group of Latin America and Caribbean states also lacks a permanent member, but with no consensus within the bloc that this should be Brazil. Thus no region has agreed on future permanent membership from its respective group, and there is strong opposition from other states in their region to each of the proposed G4 permanent members.

Support for the G4’s proposal from France and Britain, coupled with the Biden administration’s supporting an increase in permanent as well as nonpermanent seats, helps their bilateral relations with the relevant aspirants, while not risking a serious challenge to Western over-representation.

The only conceivable path to reform is some version of Annan’s Option B, therefore. It would enable the G4 and their regional rivals, the major African countries and other middle or rising powers, such as Indonesia and Türkiye, to compete for four-year renewable terms and to remain Council members as long as they commanded support in the General Assembly.

But as long as France and Britain remain permanent members, how can India be expected to accept only nonpermanent status, or Africa to accept exclusion from permanent membership? When the overwhelming view of member states is that France and Britain are no longer geopolitically qualified to be two of five permanent members, why shouldn’t they have to compete for the four-year renewable terms too?

None of the permanent members can prevent the adoption of a resolution to amend the Charter in the General Assembly, where the veto does not operate. Under Article 108 of the Charter, they can only subsequently block its ratification through their legislatures. When in 1963 the Assembly voted to expand the Council’s nonpermanent members from 6 to 10, China (the seat then held by Taiwan) was the only permanent member voting in favor: France and the Soviet Union voted against, while Britain and the US abstained. Yet the amendment was ultimately ratified by the legislatures of all five permanent members.

The door is therefore open to reform today, so long as it does not go too far against the interests of China, Russia and the US. One can imagine circumstances in which the Chinese National People’s Congress, the Russian Duma or the US Congress would veto an amendment that had been opposed by their respective government, despite it being backed by more than two-thirds of the General Assembly. It is almost inconceivable, however, that the French or British Parliaments would isolate themselves from overwhelming world opinion by doing so.

The way forward is not, therefore, a negotiation led by permanent members. Instead, a cross-regional group of middle powers, in consultation with other member states, should negotiate the compromises needed to propose in the Assembly an amendment to the Charter creating additional four-year renewable seats and two-year seats, while removing France and Britain from permanent membership.

Negotiators would need to thrash out an appropriate regional distribution and to consider the interests of the Arab bloc (currently a subset of the Asia-Pacific Group) and the “small island developing states,” while avoiding a Council so large that it would be unwieldy. Ideally, France and Britain would recognize geopolitical reality and win themselves much good will by collaborating in a negotiation that involved renouncing their permanent membership.

There should be real competition in elections within each regional group, with proper regard to the criterion in Article 23(1) of the Charter that due regard should be “specially paid, in the first instance to the contribution of Members of the United Nations to the maintenance of international peace and security.”

Instead of the African Group having to decide which of its states should be permanent members, the contenders could compete in these elections. The competition for four-year seats would create a healthy accountability of Council members to the wider UN membership, especially as some of those initially elected would want to win renewal of their terms.

Such a reform would not make all the changes that some members want to see. Russia’s violation of the Charter by its invasion of Ukraine has led to calls for its removal from the Council, but that is not realistic. Many countries would like to remove the veto altogether, but that fails the test of necessary approval by the Chinese, Russian and US legislatures, although it might be harder for a permanent member to hold out against the great majority of a larger, more representative Council.

Nor would a reform along these lines ensure that the Security Council would overcome the divisions that are so disabling it today. But the major gain would be huge and long overdue, reinvigorating a Council that could better claim to represent the realities of the world of not only today but also tomorrow.

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