Why we cant get on the Security Council

last updated 8 January 2015

Germany

Pierre Simonitsch

Bickering and backbiting have triumphed once again at the U.N., said Pierre Simonitsch in the Frankfurt Frankfurter Rundschau. Just a few weeks ago, “everything looked rosy” for Germany’s plan to add more permanent members to the U.N. Security Council. Everyone agreed expansion was needed. When the current veto-wielding members—France, Britain, China, Russia, and the U.S.—were appointed just after World War II, the U.N. had a mere 52 members; now it has 191. A consensus was building that Germany, Brazil, India, and Japan should also have permanent seats, and possibly an African and a Middle Eastern country as well. “But arithmetic is one thing and politics another.” Longtime rivals to each of the aspirant countries mounted aggressive lobbying campaigns to derail the candidacies: Italy against Germany, Argentina against Brazil, Pakistan against India, and China against Japan. Then the U.S. and Russia piped up, saying they wanted at most two more members, so as not to “dilute” their vetoes. Power, it seems, is much easier to grab than to give up. Germany’s hope of a seat “is on its deathbed.”