Brazil, India and the Security Council (continued)
On Friday, I asked whether the prickly diplomacy of India and Brazil (at least viewed from the West) hasn’t undercut their chances of winning permanent Security Council seats. I argued that these countries are likely playing a complicated double-game that involves appealing to the broad UN membership without permanently alienating the existing Council permanent members. ...
On Friday, I asked whether the prickly diplomacy of India and Brazil (at least viewed from the West) hasn't undercut their chances of winning permanent Security Council seats. I argued that these countries are likely playing a complicated double-game that involves appealing to the broad UN membership without permanently alienating the existing Council permanent members. Probably the most important question is whether the United States will now go sour on their aspirations to join the Council. Bruce Jones of NYU's Center on International Cooperation and the Brookings Institution emailed with this smart take:
On Friday, I asked whether the prickly diplomacy of India and Brazil (at least viewed from the West) hasn’t undercut their chances of winning permanent Security Council seats. I argued that these countries are likely playing a complicated double-game that involves appealing to the broad UN membership without permanently alienating the existing Council permanent members. Probably the most important question is whether the United States will now go sour on their aspirations to join the Council. Bruce Jones of NYU’s Center on International Cooperation and the Brookings Institution emailed with this smart take:
In the long term, the US has a deep strategic interest in bringing India and Brazil into the Security Council, but there are short term costs – and they’re rising. Differences over Iran and Libya – and more generally, the role of force in international politics – create doubts about how an expanded Security Council would handle crises in the Middle East. The challenge is to find a way to bridge the short and long term.
Probably the best place to start is by creating informal mechanisms where the US, Europe and the rising powers can learn about each other’s security perspectives, and get used to tough debates over strategy. It’s not like we always agree with the UK and France in the Council – we’ve just learned to hammer out those differences privately and maintain some degree of unity in the UN. We need to learn similar habits with the new powers.
I agree. One of the great advantages of an institution like the Security Council is that it compels certain of the major powers to develop the habit of consultation and cooperation, even if the forum produces friction of its own at times. India, Brazil and other emerging powers are still shaping their profiles as global powers. For all the complications their presence can bring, it will be better to have them form their worldview as part of this key institution–and therefore as powers with a sense of global responsibility–rather than outside it. Whether the United States will be able to see beyond its short-term irritation and appreciate the long-term benefits of having major emerging powers in the Council will be a key question.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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