Monday Backgrounder: What the hell is UNSC

Dreams of a Typewriter introduces a new weekly feature: Monday Backgrounder. This feature will discuss a new topic every week giving reader the basic knowledge about the subject so that you can pretend to know things without reading a newspaper... I should be paid for providing such public service. Wait, I already am.

The recent election of India as a non-permanent member of United Nations Security Council has created a lot of chatter. Our newspapers are falling on top of each other making it out to be greater victory than when India wins a match with Pakistan. So what is UNSC?

UNSC is a group of fifteen countries that makes up the security rules in the world. They have the power to impose sanctions (as in nobody will sell guns to this particular country,) ban terrorist organizations and sometimes send in the UN Peacekeeping Force. It is constituted of five permanent members (US, France, Britain, China and Russia) and ten temporary members, the position in which India was just elected. The non-permanent positions, although we like to make a big deal out of it, are not really so special to be elected to. In the last two years, members have included Vietnam, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Gabon (did you ever hear of Gabon?)

Now the funny part about the whole thing is that all five permanent members have "veto powers," that is, they can just say veto and the issue under discussion is immediately dropped. Its a sort of power that women have in relationships, while men always find themselves without any choice when they don't wanna talk about their "feelings." In this case, women are the permanent members while men are the non-permanent lackeys.

This power essentially renders UNSC useless in most of the cases. Since in most of the major topics the five alpha dogs of the world don't agree, the UNSC spends tremendous amount of time and energy discussing issues and countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone that no one cares or has heard about. Sometimes they do discuss important issues like Iran or Iraq (usually only the topics that America cares about.) However, to get an agreement on these issues, US makes side deals with rest of the council to get a unanimous verdict. It has been estimated that to vote alongside the US, non-permanent members usually get around US$20-40 million as bribe aid per vote.

Veto Power for Permanent Members 

Membership of the council does have some benefits likely setting the global agenda on security, but mostly it is just a prestige issue. UNSC can not stop any of the major powers (or even minor players) from doing anything. Wars still happen in the world and usually the fighting countries ignore UNSC declarations like grandma's advice. In fact, there have been studies showing how the UNSC sanctions increase the rogue nature of a rogue state. 

What India, along with Germany and Japan, has been trying for the last few years, is to get UNSC to grant them permanent membership. India considers this to be an acknowledgement from the world that India is now  in big leagues. However, it still remains to be seen if the big dogs are willing to share their precious veto power. 

So we won the UNSC seat, now what?

I imagine the Indian Ministry of External Affairs will be celebrating tonight, now that after a lot of lobbying they have finally won the non-permanent United Nations Security Council seat. Clearly the government is very happy, since they feel the election as an offset to all the damage that the CWG did to the Rising India rhetoric.

Now what? Obviously, the big thinkers of foreign policy in India Siddharth Varadrajan and C Raja Mohan have already given their take. The non-permanent seat is being seen by many as a sort of audition for India to later become a permanent member. Mr. Varadrajan sternly advises India not to be a US mouthpiece but instead develop its own identity as a "responsible" global power that can take its own decisions. This will raise its reputation in the eyes of rest of the world.

Hmm... I am thinking in very different lines. I would think that we can not possibly get a permanent seat without Uncle Sam's approval. Also, Uncle Sam still has the muscle in the world to do so, even when the rest of the world is not very enthusiastic about it (after all, they got us the NSG approval, albeit with support from some others). Moreover, the American  say-so in the world is waning, or at least the Chinese power is rising and consequently America is growing weaker by comparison. 

And it is not in the Chinese interest to give India a permanent seat. Since there is a lot of overlap in Indian and Chinese interests, why would Beijing want a potentially dissenting voice with veto power? And for precisely the same reason, the US has an interest in getting India the permanent membership because it will somewhat check the influence of China.

So, India has a very short time period before the window closes, that is US gets China as an equal contender in world dominance. After that it will be difficult for the US to take a big step like this without the Chinese approval or at least neutrality. Hence, may be we should take a gamble and become American protege for a little while and get them to sponsor our permanent stay in UNSC. Once we have the permanent lease, then  we can do whatever we want. Meanwhile, who cares what Mauritius or Zanzibar thinks?

Of course, this is just an idea - option in bureaucratic lingo; thank god I am not running the country.

Image: UNSC Chamber in New York
Image Credit: Patrick Gruban