On the succession of Ban Ki-moon, pt 2

Having written about the selection of the next Secretary General before a few times, I figured I should follow up, because now that it’s actually done, I sure as hell have opinions.

For those reading this who haven’t heard yet, the new Secretary General will be Antonio Guterres, and I have nothing negative to say about the man. He is a UN high official of ten years standing. As an insider, he will probably be able to better manage the Organization’s internal politics than Ban Ki-moon ever did, and in light of current events, especially in Syria, having a former High Commissioner for Refugees at the head of the Organization can only be a plus.

Now some people are describing the choice as a loss for the increasingly vocal movement calling for a woman to lead the UN. I share their disappointment. Having a woman appointed to the post would have been huge. But I don’t see it as a loss. A woman may not have been chosen this time, but the selection process proved that it has become inevitable. Of the thirteen candidates for the position, seven were women, and four, I think, could reasonably be described as serious contenders. The final decision had much more to do with the candidates’ personal politics than anything else. The institutional sexism that has long denied women access to the Organization’s highest office still exists, of course, but it’s clear that it has waned to the point where it is no longer insurmountable, and that the appointment of a women as Secretary General is now merely a matter of time.

Speaking of the politics of the selection, they are still somewhat unsettling to me. They reveal just how much influence in Eastern Europe is still a matter conflict between Russia and the west. The Eastern European Group being the only one of the five regional groups to have not produced a Secretary General, since their introduction in 1965, pretty much everyone agreed going in that the next Secretary General should be an Eastern European. Yet all of the candidates were either too close to Moscow one hand or to Washington and Brussels on the other to be acceptable to the other side. I always knew finding an Eastern European for the job would be hard. I didn’t expect it to be impossible.

The final issue I’d like to address here is the process. For the first time, the selection processes was conducted largely under the scrutiny of the public eye, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. On a number of occasions, I have advocated against treating the United Nations as a democracy, because it decidedly isn’t. Its strength lies not in the universality of its ideals, but of its membership. The Secretary General is answerable to the member states, not the general public. Consequently, the process of choosing the SG must include the member states, but keeping it out of the public eye is not necessarily a bad thing. In the end, I think to openness failed to accomplish its objectives. As the Secretary General of the Asian Society of International Law put it, “the United Nations having its leader chosen by the lowest common denominator of what the P5 finds acceptable is not good enough,” but that’s exactly what happened. Instead all it really achieved was creating a very public disagreement on the issue between the governments of Russia and Germany, needlessly straining the relations between the two. I think this media saturated age, a more public selection process is inevitable, but I don’t think it changes much.

In Memoriam: Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1922–2016)

Today I pay tribute to one of the world's preeminent diplomats and agents of peace, as the we mourn the loss of former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. The news for, the most part, is abuzz with his failings, and not entirely without reason. His term of office saw genocide occur in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Yet something tells me, he would not have objected to this. He once said of the organization he lead: "One of the reasons the UN was founded was the need for a scapegoat when a crises escalates. After all, when things are easy everyone else is happy to mediate and get all the glory."

His time in office mirrored the manner in which he was selected. Boutras-Ghali alone, among the eight men to have head the United nations, was selected by the broader international community, rather than just the P5, when the Non-Aligned Movement insisted on an African Secretary-General. More so than his successors, he stood up the world's superpowers, and insisted on the Organization's independence. In the end this was his undoing, since caused the US to veto his renomination.

His greatest achievement, though, came outside the United Nations. As Minister of State for Affairs, he was part of the Egyptian delegation at Camp David, and had a hand in the important first step towards solving the still ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict.

May he rest peace.

On the succession of Ban Ki-moon

Having studied media coverage of the selection of the next Secretary-General in my last post, and found it to be woefully lacking, I will now attempt rectify that problem by studying the contest itself, and taking a more detailed look at some of the more serious candidates for what Trygve Lie called the most impossible job on earth.

Let’s start with background into how the SG is actually chosen. The hard and fast rules for the process are pretty minimalist. To be qualified to run, a candidate must be proficient in both English and French, and must be “a man of eminent accomplishments.” (This formulation was adopted in the late 1940’s, so don’t read too much into the unnecessarily gendered choice of words.) In order to run a candidate must also secure the nomination of their national government. The actual election is done first by the Security Council, who must adopt a resolution recommending one of the candidates to the Generally Assembly, who then approve or reject the Council’s recommendation by majority vote. In practice, this means that most the power the chose the SG lies with the permanent members of the Security Council. That’s not to say the rest of world has no say in matter. Both Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Kofi Annan were selected largely because the Non-Aligned Movement insisted on an African SG. Though to exert its influence, the General Assembly needs to be well organized, and there’s no indication that this has happened this time around.

In addition to the official rules, there are a number of unofficial rules that govern who can and cannot hold the position. For starters the SG must not come from a P5 nation and should probably not come from another major power either. Second, there is the geographic rotation based on the regional groups. Of the five groups, Africa, Asia, and Latin America have produced two Secretaries-General each. The Western European and Others Group has produced three (four if you count Gladwyn Jebb.) The Eastern Europe Group (EEG) has produced none, so by rights that’s where the next SG should be from. That being said, it may prove difficult in the current political climate, especially with what’s happening in the Ukraine, for the P5 to agree on an Eastern European. Finally, there’s the fact that SG is usually promoted from within. With the exceptions of Trygve Lie, the first Secretary-General, and Ban Ki-moon, all previous SG’s had significant experience working at the UN before taking office. (Quick aside: Ban Ki-moon did in fact briefly serve as Chief of Staff to the President of the General Assembly, but as UN-positions go, this is a relatively minor one and probably didn’t count for much in Ban’s election.)

So now on to the candidates themselves. At present four candidates have been formally nominated by their governments, and few more have publically expressed an interest in running. Of the four official candidates, I think Danilo Türk has best chances of actually getting the job. There are two main reasons for this. First, he is far less entangled in his country’s domestic politics than most of the others. This is an odd thing to say considering he served as President of Slovenia from 2007 to 2012. However, Slovenia is a parliamentary republic so the presidency is a largely ceremonial role. He also stood for election as an independent, meaning he doesn’t have party ties to the Slovenian government. The other reason is that he already has a proven track record of managing the UN’s internal politics. Under Kofi Annan, he served as Under-Secretary-General for political affairs from 2000 to 2005. Now it’s long enough ago that I don’t know how successful he was in that position, but just being appointed to the post says a lot about him. Türk’s personal politics are hard to pin down, which leads me to think he’s unlikely to be anyone’s first choice, but in a hostile political climate he seems like a viable compromise candidate.

The second candidate I’ll discuss, and first to be officially nominated is Irina Bokova. She has been Director-General of UNESCO since 2009, and before that she served in the European Parliament and in the Bulgarian Cabinet Office. Bokova’s candidacy is interesting to me since she appears to be an early favourite (if the press is to be believed) despite a few things on her resumé that would make her somewhat unpalatable to Eastern Europe, and to Russia in particular. What the press does make clear (and I do think they speak plausibly in this regard) is that she is a likely first choice for the western powers. She has been making all the right noises on the Islamic State, for example, and despite presiding over the first UN agency to admit Palestine as a member, she is sufficiently pro-Israel to garner American support.

What’s likely to cause problems for her is that, in a way, she personifies Moscow’s waning influence in Europe. She began her political career as a mid-level functionary in the Bulgarian Communist Party in the late 19080’s, but rose prominence in the years following the end of communism in Bulgaria, rising as high a foreign minister in the winter of 1996/97. During her time in the cabinet office, she spearheaded Bulgaria’s bid for EU membership, or, as the New York Times put it shortly after her confirmation in her current position, “she played an active role in Bulgaria’s political transformation from Soviet satellite to European Union member.” That’s not to say her relationship with Moscow is bad. Certainly, the Russian government isn’t going to veto her candidacy out of hand, but so long as they think that they get someone else, Bokova’s candidacy is unlikely to be successful. Finally, what’s most telling to for me is how she got her current position. She was never considered a front-runner to replace Koichiro Matsuura as head of UNESCO, and was confirmed by a majority of only four votes. I have to wonder how effective she’d be, if roughly half the UN membership didn’t want her in her current position at some point.

Next is Vesna Pusic, the current Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Croatia. Her candidacy, I’ll admit is a bit of mystery to me. For starters she has no prior UN experience whatsoever. Prior to the selection of Ban Ki-moon, I’d have rejected her election as impossible on that basis alone. On several occasions she has spoken about the “importance of repairing relations with Russia”, making it clear she has much closer ties to the west than to Moscow, so much of what I said about Irina Bokova applies to Pusic as well. In the end her lack of experience and personal politics make it unlikely she’ll be anyone’s first choice, but her comparatively high profile in European politics and her relationship with Moscow make her implausible as a compromise candidate as well.

The fourth official candidate is Srgjan Kerim, a former Foreign Minister of Macedonia and President of the UN General Assembly in its 2007/2008 session. I’ll be honest, I know next to nothing about Kerim, beyond his resumé, so his chances are hard to evaluate, though two things immediately stand out. He is the first candidate from outside the European Union, so EU politics are less likely to colour his candidacy. Second, unlike Vuk Jeremic whom I’ll be discussing later, he had the unanimous support of the EEG when he was elected President of the General Assembly. Both of these things speak in his favour, but at the end of the day, I have no idea where to place his chances.

Having just mentioned him, I’ll continue with Vuk Jeremic, the first of the potential candidates who have not been formally nominated. He served as Serbia’s foreign minister from 2007 to 2012, and as President of the General Assembly in its 2012/2013 session. Politically, he is sort of in the opposite situation as Irina Bokova. He has very good relations with Moscow, and is likely to be the Russian’s first choice, but the western powers have their qualms about him. Despite this, I think Jeremic might make a good compromise candidate. He has his supporters in the west; for instance, the Spanish Foreign Minister called him “the best candidate for Secretary-General”, though, as previously mentioned, he has his detractors as well, which lead to a very divided election to the GA presidency. He has also been a proponent of Serbia’s admission to the European Union, so there clearly is a willingness to work constructively with western leaders. As is the case with Irina Bokova, I think so long as the western powers think that they can get someone better, they won’t accept Jeremic as SG, but I do think they can be persuaded to change their minds.

On a personal note, Jeremic’s candidacy is the only on I have a strong opinion on. I began paying closer attention to the day-to-day workings of the United Nations during his presidency of the General Assembly. As such, I’ve heard him speak on a number of occasions and have been consistently impressed with what he had to say. Certainly, his communication skills would be a vast improvement over those of Ban Ki-moon. However, I do not think he should be elected because of Kosovo. The UN is still nominally responsible for its administration, and as a former Serbian government minister has a vested interest Kosovo’s final status. For example, getting the ICJ to rule on the legality of Kosovo’s declaration of independence was Jeremic’s idea. Though the strategy backfired spectacularly, it shows that there is a clear conflict of interest.

The final candidate I’ll address here is Helen Clark. She is the current Administrator of the UN Development Programme, and after Ban Ki-moon, probably to most visible UN high official these days. Before that she served as Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1999 to 2008. Clark seems like to most likely candidate should be P5 fail to agree on an Eastern European, and so far as I know the only non-European to have expressed an interest. Particularly of note here is that of all the candidates I’ve discussed, she’s the only one to have visibly strong relations with Beijing, having spearheaded the China-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement, the first ever free trade agreement China signed with a developed nation.

Fictional candidacies for Secretary-General

Note: This article includes a lot of names that might not be familiar to readers. I’ve included a glossary of who these people are at the end of the article.

With the selection of the next UN Secretary General about a year away, and a lot of speculation as to the succession of Ban Ki-moon going on in UN-centric publications, I figured it was high time I threw my hat into the ring. When I first began writing this it was intended to be an evaluation of the potential candidates, their background, qualifications, and electability. However, I quickly realized I simply don’t know enough about most of them to fill an entire article. What I feel compelled to address instead is the media coverage the process has received. The press has never been particularly good at covering the UN’s internal politics; I suspect this is partly due to a lack of interest from the general public, and partly due to a lack of transparency on the part of the Organization. What’s going on here, however, is an all time low.

Let’s begin with some background. There has been a long-standing agreement that there should be a geographic rotation of the country of origin the Secretary General. By rights, the next SG should be from Eastern Europe, since the EEG is the only one of the five regional groups to have never produced a Secretary General. However, it seems unlikely that in the current political climate, especially with what’s going on in the Ukraine at the moment, that any Eastern European candidate would be acceptable both to the US and the EU on one hand, and to Russia on the other.

Additionally, there is a growing movement in the press putting forward the idea that the next Secretary General should be a woman. I don’t disagree, but there is nothing to suggest that this movement has any meaningful support among the Member States. There are a number of women who have publicly expressed an interest in the position: Irina Bokova, Vesna Pusić, and Helen Clark. All three are eminently qualified, but it’s not clear whether any of them are politically viable. What is clear is that none of them will receive special consideration because of their gender.

Yet this impression has significantly coloured speculation by the parts of the press that support it. In many articles on the subject, it seems as if they simply decided to list off some women who seem like the could be qualified to be Secretary General, without any regard as to whether or not a candidacy would have even the remotest chance of succeeding and whether or not they are actually interested.

The most glaring example of this is the supposed candidacy of Dilma Rousseff. Very superficially she seems to fit the bill. If an Eastern European SG isn’t possible, Latin America seems like the most likely alternative, and she is a significant, female, diplomatic figure from that part of the world. However, there is nothing to suggest that she’s actually interested in the job, especially after winning re-election as President of Brazil last October. More importantly, her position on the NSA affair, particularly as it pertains to the United Nations, means she would have no chance in hell of getting past an American veto.

Other lists include names like Christine Lagarde, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Michelle Bachelet, Kristalina Georgieva, and Helle Thorning-Schmidt. They are all obviously qualified professionally, but speculation as to their candidacies has no basis in reality. It’s always been understood that the SG should not come from a permanent member of the Security Council, so Lagarde is out of the question. Johnson-Srileaf and Bachelet don’t leave office as Presidents of Liberia and Chile respectively until after the next SG’s term of office will start, not to mention the fact that there is no way the Organization will choose another African so soon after Kofi Annan. Georgieva’s supposed candidacy casually ignores that she would have to be nominated by the Bulgarian government, who have already nominated Irina Bokova. Thorning-Schmidt is the most reasonable of these, but there’s no mention of the fact that a candidacy was entirely dependent on her not winning re-election in June, or the fact that she would probably be subject to a Russian veto.

Speculation in the press is one thing. Hypotheticals can be interesting, informative and useful. What’s going on here however is pure fantasy, and I have no idea why it’s happening.

 Glossary of names

Irina Bokova

Bulgarian

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria 1996–1997

Ambassador of Bulgaria to the Francophonie 2006–2009

Director General of UNESCO 2009–Present

Vesna Pusić

Croatian

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Croatia 2011–Present

Deputy Prime Minister of Croatia 2012–Present

Helen Clark

New Zealander

Prime Minister of New Zealand 1999–2008

Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme 2009–Present

Dilma Rousseff

Brazilian

President of Brazil 2011–Present

Christine Lagarde

French

Minister of Finance of France 2007–2011

Managing Director of the IMF 2011–Present

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Liberian

President of Liberia 2006–Present

Michelle Bachalet

Chilean

President of Chile 2006–2010

Executive Director of UN Women 2010–2013

President of Chile 2014–Present

Kristalina Georgieva

Bulgarian

European Commissioner (various portfolios) 2010–Present

Helle Thorning-Schmidt

Danish

Member of the European Parliament 1999–2004

Prime Minister of Denmark  2011–2015

The things we choose to care about: ICJ decision on the Contra Affair

There is a scene in The West Wing where the president and his chief of staff are discussing an attempt to bring a foreign leader to trial in the US for using his position to support terrorists. The chief of staff says that they have to make sure that his plane lands in D.C. proper and not one of the nearby airports in Virginia or Maryland to ensure that a federal court has jurisdiction. The president just smiles and shakes his head, and then says, “You know, the law cracks me up sometimes. The things we choose to care about…”

This is precisely how I felt recently when I read the ICJ decision in the case concerning Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States). For Model UN geeks like myself this is a fairly famous and significant case for establishing the so-called effective control rule. In its 1986 decision, the court established the rule that if a state has effective control over a foreign violent non-state actor, in this case the Contras, then the state has some responsibility for the group’s actions. However, that is not what I’m going to be talking about here. Instead, I’m going to focus on the less well known 1984 decision in the same case on preliminary objections raised by the US government, because it really does leave you shaking your head and makes you ask why any of this matters.

The US objected to the jurisdiction of the court to even entertain the case. In this particular case, Nicaragua’s claim to jurisdiction was based on declarations. The Statute of the ICJ allows parties to make declarations accepting the jurisdiction of the Court in certain areas of international law and spells out what restriction and conditions, like reciprocity, may placed on the these declarations. The United States had made such a declaration in 1946, and was found to be in good standing.

The issues were with Nicaraguan declaration, arising from a small but significant divergence between the French and English texts of the Statute of the Court. The Statute has provisions setting up the ICJ as a successor the to the Permanent Court of International Justice, the judicial body of the League of Nations. The PCIJ allowed for similar declarations, so the Statute basically says that declarations made for the PCIJ also apply to ICJ. The issue is that the English text refers to “declarations…which are still in force”, whereas the French text refers to “déclarations faites…pour une durée qui n’est pas encore expirée” (declarations made for a duration which has not yet expired). While these expressions obviously mean very different things, cases in which a declaration is included by one formulation, but excluded by the other are not going be common. However, Nicaragua’s declaration is precisely such a case. The declaration was made unconditionally and without temporal limits, so clearly for a duration, which had not expired, but it had never entered into force (at least for the PCIJ).

The reasons why this happened is where you get the “things we choose care about” moment. In 1929, Nicaragua’s ambassador in Geneva on instructions from President Jose Maria Moncada made a declaration accepting the jurisdiction of the PCIJ. However, unlike ICJ declarations, PCIJ declarations were subject to ratification. This took a while, but in 1935, the Nicaraguan parliament ratified the declaration. Despite all of this, the declaration never entered into force, because an instrument of ratification was never deposited with Secretary-General of the League of Nations. The reason for this is that it never made it to Geneva. It was sent by sea a few years later, but, with World War Two having broken out, the ship it was on was sunk by German U-boats. And so because of a seemingly unrelated act of economic warfare some fifty years prior, the jurisdiction of the ICJ was called into question.

In the end, the Court ruled that Nicaragua’s declaration did fall within the scope the succession provisions and had entered into force when Nicaragua joined the UN, but it really does make me echo Jed Bartlet’s sentiments: “The law cracks me up sometimes.”

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.