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Sparring Over A Seat

By Praful Bidwai

23 September , 2004
The News International

As we await the outcome of tomorrow's meeting between President Musharraf and Prime Minister Singh, a discordant note has crept into India-Pakistan exchanges. India's announcement of its plan to lobby concertedly, with Brazil, Germany and Japan, for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council has drawn a sharply negative Pakistani response. Pakistan's ambassador to the UN, Munir Akram, says Islamabad "would do everything possible to thwart India's attempts..."

Akram first reiterated Pakistan's long-standing opposition to any expansion of the Security Council's five-member permanent group (P-5), but then added: "If we have to choose, we will support Germany and Japan against India". Two factors seem to be at work: knee-jerk opposition to a larger global role for India, and diplomatic pressure from Germany and Japan, whose foreign ministers visited Pakistan in July and August.

Pakistan's stiff opposition to India's search for a larger world role appears to be rooted in instinctive rivalry and a "zero-sum" calculus: India and Pakistan should logically cut each other down to size.

The operational issue for the moment is: How valuable is a permanent Security Council seat? Is it in the interest of global security that the Council be expanded without being reformed? Is Tony Blair right in saying, as he did on Monday: "For India not to be represented on the Security
Council is, I think, something that is not in tune with ... modern times..."? Will India gain in stature and influence by acquiring a permanent seat?

Some sobering thoughts are in order. Take first an interesting contrast between India's new self-assertion and its just-announced reversal of its 2003 decision to refuse bilateral aid from most countries. It will now accept assistance from all G-8 countries, and the European Union,
including its non-G-8 members, provided they give an annual minimum of $25 million. The earlier hubris, enhanced by peevishness at the EU's demarches over the Gujarat pogrom, has given way to acknowledgement that India needs external assistance.

This is unsurprising. India has a rank of 127 in the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI). Its per-capita income is a mere $487, or less than one-tenth the global average. (Even in purchasing-power parity, it is one-third the world average.) India's lofty ambition is not matched by its poverty, general backwardness, and aggregate economic size, which in absolute terms equals the Netherlands' (pop 16 million). A Council seat won't redress this mismatch.

Nor is a Council seat the best index of international standing. Britain, France and Russia are declining powers despite being in the P-5. There is nearly as much disproportion between, say, Pakistan and India's nuclear-weapons status and their political weight, as between Council membership and leadership in politics, economy or culture.

In today's world, "soft power" probably matters than "hard" military power. Nations are often respected more for their moral leadership and for what they have done for their citizens than for their might. For instance, Sweden, South Africa and Ireland - because they have endorsed good
causes like peace. Norway (pop 4.5 million) commands prestige because of its steady Number One HDI rank and conflict-resolution role in Palestine-Israel and Sri Lanka.

Contrariwise, brute power is no guarantee of effective political authority. The United States' military superiority is unmatched in history. But the US is politically failing in Iraq, as it failed in Vietnam. During the critical February 2003 debate over the "Second Resolution" on Iraq, the US's powers of persuasion, coercion and bribery could not recruit it the support it needed. Not just Pakistan, Mexico and Chile, but even Guinea, Cameroon and Angola (all extremely weak) defied Washington!

This does not argue that the Security Council is irrelevant - it proved relevant precisely when the US threatened to consign it to the dustbin of history - but that there are limits to its most privileged members' power. Wisdom lies in working within those limits - not equating Council
membership with unbridled authority and legitimacy.

The Security Council, it bears recalling, failed to stop French and US interventions in Vietnam, the Korean War, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and many wars in Africa and Latin America. After the Cold War, it also failed in Bosnia and Rwanda. It is now disastrously failing in Sudan.
It has proved shamefully ineffectual in bringing justice to Palestine.

These failures are largely attributable to lack of will on the part of the major powers to enforce peace and security. This won't change unless the Council is thoroughly reformed. Some elements of reform are obvious. The Council must be democratised and enlarged by giving more representation to the Global South. Vetoes must be eventually abolished. Its decision-making powers must be restructured, so the General Assembly gets greater authority. It won't do just to include Germany and Japan (which won't enhance the Council's credibility), nor even large Southern countries like India, Brazil, Nigeria and Indonesia. It would be better to have permanent seats for different regions, which are rotated among their members.

Some interesting proposals have also come from a Ford Foundation-Yale University working group (whose members were drawn from both North and South). One calls for enlarging the number of permanent (non-veto) members, while restricting use of the veto by the P-5 "only to peacekeeping and enforcement measures...[This] ... could be arranged by agreement among the P-5 and without Charter amendment..."

One major merit of this transitional idea is that it reduces the danger that the North will altogether derail reform. It is an urgent necessity to expand the General Assembly's role in security-related decision-making and empower the Economic and Social Council to oversee the working of the World Bank, IMF and World Trade Organisation. Other proposals have also been made for creating a "Second Chamber" of civil society organisations.

India could play a valuable role in promoting a dialogue for UN reform along these lines. That would be a major contribution to global governance. But that means returning to a Nehruvian vision of a peaceful and just world order and seizing moral leadership, while abandoning a search for glory through military-political-economic power.

Pakistan, too, should promote UN reform. That would be in its own (and the world's) long-term interest. By obsessively opposing India's bid for a Council seat, Pakistan will have negated that possibility. The time has come for Pakistanis to ask whether their main global preoccupation should be to seek parity with India, or failing that cut India down. Size and location, as well as the existence of a stable democracy, may have put India in a different league. There is nothing wrong with accepting that in a spirit of generosity and friendship - in order to promote a common global democratic agenda.


 

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