SC elections and things that don't make sense

After years of studying the UN, I’ve now gotten to the point where most of the time I more or less know what’s going on at the UN and why. So naturally I have just one question for the Saudi Foreign Ministry: What the fuck?

I apologize for the vulgarity, but it is proportional to my inability rationalize Saudi Arabia’s actions. Now, I suspect most people reading this don’t have the faintest idea what I’m on about so let me explain. Every year the UN General Assembly elects five states to serve as non-permanent members of the Security Council for the next two years. In odd numbered years, one of these five states must be from Eastern Europe, one from Latin America or the Caribbean, one from Asia, and two from Africa. Additionally, one of the three seats allocated to Africa and Asia must be held by an Arab state alternating between Africa and Asia.

In light of these rules, I’ve always found Saudi SC membership policy somewhat perplexing. The Arab Swing Seat has essentially meant that since the current rules were introduced in 1965, Saudi Arabia was in a position to say, “We want a seat on the Council” every four years and could reasonably expect to get elected every time. Yet, they never chose to do so. Although a founding member of the UN, and significant regional power, Saudi Arabia has served a sum total of zero years on the Security Council.

While I don’t know the actual reason for this decision, it’s not too difficult to come up with a plausible one. Given Saudi Arabia’s incredibly complicated relationship with the United States, Council membership could easily have put the Saudi government in an awkward position of either going against it’s policy on Israel in voting for an essentially pro Israel resolution, or jeopardize it’s relationship with the US by voting against. (For non-permanent members, an abstention is essentially a symbolic no vote.)

However, all that changed two years ago when Saudi Arabia declared its candidacy for the 2013 Security Council election. While, as is the case with much of Saudi foreign policy, the reasoning for this decision remains unclear, I strongly suspect the beginnings of the Arab Spring were strong factor. The events that followed were fairly predictable. With only a limited number of eligible states, most of which have friendly relations with Saudi Arabia and no real chance of beating them in the election, to say nothing of the stability of some of their governments, no other state chose to run against the Saudis, and on 17 October the General Assembly elected Saudi Arabia by overwhelming majority.

Twenty-four hours late, the present confusion started. In a press release on its website, the Saudi Foreign Ministry put out a statement stating that they would be declining their election the Security Council, citing “double standards” and the Council’s inability to meaningfully address the Syrian Civil War. Things got even more complicated at that day’s UN press briefing when UN spokesperson Martin Nesirky said that while he had seen the statement, the UN had received no official communication declining the election, meaning that as far as the Secretariat was concerned Saudi Arabia would be a member of the Security Council staring 1 January 2014.

While it took them about three weeks to get their act together, Saudi Arabia has since officially communicated its intention to decline its election to the UN, making way for new elections, but the underlying question remains: What the fuck? The question of why Saudis actually declined their election is far more perplexing than their past membership policy. The official reasons they cited simply don’t add up. Every independent analyst, from Louis Charbonneau, to Mark Leon Goldberg, to the Washington Post, to myself (though admittedly I’m nowhere near the level of expertise of the other three) agree that in taking a seat on the Council the Saudis are would have an excellent opportunity to address the very issues the cited as their reasons for refusing the seat.

It’s been my experience that no matter how different they are from myself, assuming that any actor in international relations is crazy is a fundamental mistake. This leads me conclude that there are other reasons. I just don’t know what they are.

Security Council Reform: The perspective not heard

It is a strange day indeed when I find myself agreeing with the Canadian government on a matter of foreign policy, yet that is exactly the case today. While I don’t particularly like his choice of words in his address to the General Assembly this morning, I appreciate the fact that John Baird spoke out against the obsession much of the rest of the world seems to have with reform of the United Nations and in particular of the Security Council. The system isn’t perfect. Some reforms are and always will be necessary. But how is it that whenever conversation turns to this organisation that does so much good work in this world and remains a pillar of the international community that the conversation invariably turns to reform?

The answer, at least as far as western world is concerned, is a simple one. There is a tendency to expect much more of the UN than of what is capable, and more than those things for which it was designed. It is because of this misunderstanding, that we all seem to agree, at least in principle, on Security Council reform for example. In seven years of studying the UN, I have never heard anyone make a compelling argument defending the status quo. Yet the arguments clearly exist, because, at least as far as membership goes, that’s precisely what I believe.

Let me say at the outset I think the working methods of the Council are flawed. What happens behind the scenes to negotiate the text of resolutions and presidential statements must be far more inclusive. Carne Ross, a former chief negotiator for the UK on the Security Council, once said that the people of Kosovo were never consulted on any of the resolutions the Council adopted concerning them, and that despite the fact that the UN ran the Kosovar government for nine years. The people effected by resolution should, whether through state or civil representation, be consulted in their drafting. That being said, changing the membership structure of the Council will not change that.

The point most often attacked, and understandably so, is the veto power, and choice of which states hold it. It is here that we come to our first instance of misunderstanding. In 1945, the founders of the United Nations were concerned about the possibility of a third world war. And who can blame them? There had been two in the past thirty years. In both cases, the spark that lead to war breaking out was a powerful country attacking a much weaker country, which in turn lead other powerful countries to take up arms against the former. In 1914, Austria’s invasion of Serbia provoked Russia into action. While in 1939, Germany’s invasion Poland provoked Britain and France. What was recognised then, and remains valid to this day, is that if there were to be a third world war, it would inevitably feature at least two of the P5 nations on opposing sides. So those states most likely to respond to overtly belligerent action were given the power to stop the UN from legitimising it.

In the same vein, the P5 nations remain the only ones capable of unilaterally undermining decisions of the Council. We saw this in 2003 with US invasion of Iraq, and in 2008 when Russia invaded Georgia. Granted, the UK and France have lost significant influence since 1945, but the EU of which they are a part is certainly more than capable of defying the Council should it so choose. On the other hand those states currently seeking permanent membership are not in that position. If India had objected to intervention in Mali, or Japan to sanctions against Guinea-Bissau, it would not have been a serious problem. These states contribute significantly to the United Nations and there support should sought whenever possible. Invariably, their approval of a particular Council action will be beneficial, but their objection is neither a threat to international peace and security, nor does it jeopardise the effectiveness of the action.

The second common criticism is that the Council is not representative, and I would agree with that. In terms of the number of member states, Asia is under represented among non-permanent seats, while Latin America is over represented among the rotating members. However, I reject the notion that this is a problem. The Council representativeness would be a virtue if the council were an activist body. It is not. As a rule, its inaction tends to be far more controversial that its action. There was significant pushback on the intervention in Libya, but that’s not surprising. A third of the Council did not support resolution 1973, and the intervening forces overstepped their mandate by quite a ways. That particular case notwithstanding, resolutions adopted by Council tend to reflect, at least in principle if not in the particulars, the consensus among international community.

Current composition of the Council is, in my opinion, a rather elegant balance of legitimacy, relevance, and effectiveness. The states that need to be there in order to give effect to the Council decisions are represented, there are enough other states, which are well distributed enough, to ensure that the rest of the world agrees with Council action, and the membership is small enough so that the Council can actually get things done. Council membership is not intuitive. The aesthetics of it often run contrary to our democratic sensibilities. That makes the Council an easy target for criticism. It does not, however, make it wrong.