Have India and Brazil blown their chance at Security Council seats?

Brazil today made unhappy noises about a possible Security Council condemnation of the Syria crackdown. "The last thing we want to do is to contribute to exacerbating tensions in what could be considered one of the most tense regions in the world," said Brazil’s foreign minister. India also appears unconvinced of the need for Council action.  Since Russia and China are contemplating using their veto power to block a draft resolution in any case, the Brazilian and Indian stances may not determine this particular resolution’s fate.

But their stance does matter in terms of the overall profile of these countries on the Council. Unlike Russia and China, of course, Brazil, India, and South Africa are effectively auditioning for permanent seats on the Council. And in the past few months, a strange thing has happened. Prompted in part by the course of the Libya intervention, these countries have adopted a profile quite skeptical of the West. Their Syria stance appears to be both an extension of general skepticism about Western intervention and a more specific complaint that the West has abused the authority the Security Council gave it to intervene in Libya.

I’m guessing that the Obama administration feels pretty burned. The president himself had publicly backed India’s permanent membership bid, and Washington no doubt had hoped for a much more cooperative relationship on the Council with these rising powers. Taken together with the Turkish and Brazilian foray into Iran negotiations last year, seen as quite unhelpful by Washington, the positions of Brazil, India and South Africa on the Arab spring have important implications for reform of the UN Security Council. An American administration that came into office ideologically predisposed, though certainly not committed to including the emerging powers on the Council–and generally reworking the international governance architecture in their favor–must now be thinking twice. Britain and France, which have been quite supportive of Security Council reform, are clearly irritated by the BRICS diplomacy. 

Which might lead one to ask: what on earth are Brazil, India and South Africa thinking? Leaving aside for a moment the substance of the dispute, isn’t creating such frostiness withWashington and with Europe deeply damaging to their Security Council chances? Not necessarily. Campaigning for a permanent Security Council seat is a complex process that involves appealing to very different constituencies. You cannot have any permanent members unalterably opposed to your candidacy, but you also must have broad support in the General Assembly, two-thirds of which must support Council reform. And for the big players like Brazil, India, and South Africa, winning that support in the General Assembly is not easy. Most countries in the Assembly are small and mid-size states opposed to seeing the Council  become even more of a great-power clubhouse than it already this. Many of them would prefer no additional permanent members. Instead, they’d like to see more rotating or semi-permanent seats. 

So at a tactical level, the BRICS candidates may actually be helping their cause with the broader UN membership, much of which is skeptical of Western interventionism and pleased to see others stand up in defense of national sovereignty. If these aspiring permanent members can gather a critical mass of support in the General Assembly, they will have accomplished something remarkable. They may then gamble, probably correctly, that Washington, Paris, and London would swallow their growing discomfort rather than block their candidacies.