Recently, members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) voted unanimously in favour of adopting a proposal to condemn the Crimean referendum as illegal, with two exceptions: China, who abstained, and Russia, who voted against the proposal.
In any other democratic forum, this would not matter, but Russia, as a permanent member of the UNSC, can veto any resolution that this organization attempts to pass. This veto power needs to be reformed.
When the United Nations was founded during World War II, it was decided that Great Britain, China, the Soviet Union, the US, and France would be the permanent members of this Security Council, and would have veto power in issues relating to threats to the peace and stability of the world. One reason for this power was to ensure the major powers act in concert, and to prohibit the UN from taking future actions against its principal founding members.
It’s a problem that there is nothing binding about the General Assembly overriding a Security Council veto.
In many ways, these five nations are the biggest threat to world peace. A report to the United States Congress on international arms sales found that these five nations together were responsible for 78 per cent of all arms deals to developing and industrialized countries from 2004 to 2011. Further, all five of these nations have been guilty of using the power of veto to block actions against their own countries.
These have included an attempt to condemn the American invasion of Panama, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Suez Crisis. The veto has allowed these nations to act as they see fit without fear of condemnation by the UN.
Yet there does exist a process by which the United Nations can circumvent a veto or the threat of a veto; UN Resolution 377, known colloquially as “Uniting for Peace.” This resolution was adopted by the UN in 1950, allowing for the General Assembly to convene an emergency special session in the event that “the Security Council [ . . . ] fails to exercise [ . . . ] international peace and security in any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression.”
The problem with Resolution 377 is that it is more a tactic of putting pressure on belligerent nations than firm action. Unlike the veto system in the United States, where a presidential veto can be overridden with a two-thirds majority in each house, there is nothing binding about the General Assembly overriding a Security Council veto.
This is simply because the task of the Security Council is to enforce the peace, and any permanent member that does not agree with the resolution is likely to prevent the deployment of peacekeeping forces to a conflict zone.
So even if, for example, the UNGA was to initiate the process involved in invoking Resolution 377, it is entirely possible that Russia will simply ignore the action, much as they did in 1980 when the General Assembly protested the Soviet Union’s presence in Afghanistan.
What is needed here is reform, but it is difficult to see how this can be accomplished. The United Nations does not have any real power to enforce its will, and the will of the international community, on nations that choose to ignore it. For all of its accomplishments, this continual failure to protect the nations of the world from the will of the permanent members will be part of its legacy.
