The U.N. Security Council, the organization’s most important body on matters of peace and international security, could use a heavy dose of reform. International politics have changed markedly since the Council’s first session in January 1946; states that were minor players in the international system at that time, like India and Brazil, are now significant powers in their respective regions. Going back to 1990, U.S. presidents have advocated for enlarging the Security Council: Bill Clinton wanted to grant Japan and Germany permanent seats; George W. Bush wanted Japan to join; and Barack Obama put his support for India’s membership in writing. President Joe Biden has picked up on the tradition, tasking his ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, to lead an initiative that would add six permanent seats to the chamber (albeit without veto power).
The last three U.N. secretary-generals have not only echoed those calls but pegged changing the composition of the Security Council as a critical test of the U.N. system’s ability to adapt to evolving circumstances. Kofi Annan said in 2006 that “so long as the Council remains unreformed, the whole process of transforming governance in other parts of the system is handicapped by the perception of an inequitable distribution of power.” Ban Ki-moon, Annan’s successor, made a similar point in 2015, arguing that the Security Council should become more democratic, transparent, and accountable. The current secretary general, António Guterres, is no different.
Wants and desires, however, don’t mean much in the realm of great power politics. They mean even less in the gargantuan U.N. bureaucracy, governed by rules and regulations deliberately designed to ensure consensus on major issues that would impact its member states and the organization writ-large. And therein lies the big problem for reform advocates: The U.N.’s founding charter makes it practically impossible to achieve the change they’re seeking.
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