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WaPo: US pushing for 6 new UN Security Council permanent members

African countries insist they were under colonial domination when the UN was established

According to The Washington Post, the United States is developing a proposal to add six permanent members to the UN Security Council who would nonetheless not have veto rights. “The evolving US proposal, which is expected to include the addition of up to six permanent seats to the Council without granting those nations veto power, ” the WaPo reported on Monday.

Withholding veto rights for new permanent members “ensures that if reform is achieved, it would grant additional countries the clout of permanent council seats without diluting current members' veto power,” the newspaper also pointed out.

The reform initiative would “reflects [President Joseph] Biden's desire to acknowledge the developing world's growing clout and to address widespread frustration with the council's current members and their inability to stanch global conflicts, particularly the war in Ukraine, ” the publication said.

The US initiative comes as the 54 African countries, whose continent has the most Council-mandated peacekeeping operations, argued that most of them were under the colonial yoke in 1945 when the UN was founded and now seek two permanent seats.

Biden said at the General Assembly last September that “to ensure that the Council remains credible and effective” the US “supports increasing the number of both permanent and non-permanent representatives.” He said that the US supports permanent seats for Latin America and Africa without mentioning any country.

US Permanent Representative Linda Thomas-Greenfield said before her speech that at the Assembly session Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and she “plan to consult broadly on our individual and collective responsibilities under the UN Charter, including critical questions around reform of the Security Council and other UN organs”.

“We should forge [a] consensus around sensible and credible proposals to expand the Security Council's membership,” she added.

The Post said that Thomas-Greenfield is consulting with diplomats from the organization's 193 member states to solicit feedback about a potential expansion of the powerful council ahead of world leaders' annual gathering in New York in September. Quoting an unnamed senior official, the Post said that she is trying to “forge some consensus on a sensible, credible proposal that could actually succeed and achieve reform”.

The reform process in the Assembly known as Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN) has been trapped in a morass of procedural wrangling and it ended its work for the current session without any progress and kicked it down to the next session that starts in September.

The Biden administration supports Germany and Japan in addition to India for permanent seats, and also as yet undetermined representatives of Latin American and African nations. France and Britain also support permanent seats for the three countries and for Brazil, while Russia backs India publicly but not the others. China has been silent on additional permanent members while offering vague support for reforms and will be the main roadblock to reforms.

The reform which would amend the UN Charter would ultimately need the approval of all the five permanent members of the Council as well as the votes of 128 nations of the 193 UN members to make up the required two-thirds majority in the Assembly.

“Biden is pushing for reform despite established powers' reluctance to cede their traditional sway and although Washington faces acute challenges in forging any consensus in an increasingly fractured world,” The Post also noted. “The stakes are high as his administration seeks to ensure that the UN remains a central tool for preventing wars, even as doubt grows about its ability to do so, ” it added.

Three of the five permanent seats are held by Western countries and adding to them could dilute their dominance as only Germany and Japan would be in their ranks while India and other developing countries would act more independently.

“Any reform of the Security Council may well reduce the weight of the West. So this is a reality. And the question is, are we really pushing for that now? Is it just nice rhetoric that we want to do this, or are we really serious when we say we want to do it now?,” an unnamed diplomat quoted by The Post said.