[MUSIC] Going back to how the UN was formed I think there was a very conscious attempt to avoid some of the mistakes that led to the failure of the League of Nations, the UN's predecessor body. So one of the problems with that body was that the big powers of the day could simply just ignore it. And the UN's designers, as it were, made a real attempt to give them an incentive to stay, and that incentive was permanent membership of the Security Council and the power of veto. They also kept the Council quite small. Anyone who's tried to make a decision with say, 15 friends or 30 friends will know that it's much easier, the smaller the number, to get a decision. So there was some design elements that were supposed to avoid deadlock and hopefully lead to good solutions. In practice how the UN Security Council's working day, I think I would look at in three different ways. The first is how it is perceived. The second would be, whether it's actually able to make a decision, And the third is the impact on the ground. So in terms of how it's perceived, I think there is no question that it feels outdated, it doesn't reflect the power structures that we have today. Can we really say that France is a bigger power than India, or the UK is a bigger power than Japan, Germany? I think there's a lot of, Good reasons to reform the Council to make sure that it's still seen as legitimate. But I worry that a bigger Council or a changed Council, I worry whether that's actually the answer to making it work better. If you look at the states that are supposed to be given seats, that feel like they were to be given seats, India, Japan, Germany, Pakistan, and so on. If you look at how they actually vote when they are on the Council, I'm not sure they're always the most progressive, and they're not always in favor of action. >> Most people typically think of UN Security Council as vetoes, a la Russia vetoing resolutions against Assad. Or there's a long history of vetoes being used, and if they are implemented then they can directly effect how things happen, whether there's a cease fire, whether there is a withdrawal of belligerent forces. >> Well, I think it worked just the way it was designed to work, in a way, that, although Roosevelt's early vision was not a bipolar world, not a cold war, but keeping in being the grand alliance and the four policemen, they wouldn't have had all these detailed discussions about veto power if they thought it was going to work all that smoothly. So veto power was meant so that the great powers, and the great powers of that time, and it's been frozen in time since then, could protect their extended interest, their sphere of influence from international intervention, which was Quid Pro Quo for their accepting an international body with Chapter VII enforcement powers at all. If people felt, if American leaders, but this could apply as well to Russian leaders or Chinese leaders, felt that there were advantages to a solution which achieved international consensus and support over unilateral or coalition of the willing solutions, that would make them go in another direction. But their perception now is that there are very few offsetting advantages. And this has to do with the legitimacy, or lack thereof, of the UN system in the eyes of their political publics. >> On the Security Council, yes, it needs to pass, maybe up its game, there's need for reform. The argument of reform is still ongoing in relation to, and I think perhaps you find out that the Commission on Human Rights was reformed to the Human Rights Council. I mean, UNDP in relation to development, also perhaps maybe needs a little bit of pepping up. But the Human Rights Council, because of the major role in relation to peace and security. Now for example, I mean it's a very, it's a political body. And in relation to human rights and things like that, they don't want to do human rights a lot. >> Yes. >> Because of the sensitivity. I mean, if themselves don't want to give the Security Council the, I mean, the freedom to really engage itself into, I mean, human rights issues in 1945. >> Mm-hm. >> When the United Nations was established. It was based on that the Security Council was established. I think there's a need for particular relation to defer to, I mean and relation and the power dynamics of the world have changed. I mean the developing world, I mean African countries, Asian countries, play a very big role in world affairs now, so there's a need for, I mean, a big reform in that regard. To create much more inclusive model altruism, which will actually help in making the US Security Council much more effective in it's rule, as I mean, as a council that looks after I mean world peace and security. >> Security Council is in many ways a mirror of the world it seeks to govern. When that world is broadly harmonious, the Security Council is able to act with some forcefulness against the world's more minor conflicts. When the big powers are rampaging against each other, one casualty is the Security Council. And so up until 1989 the Security Council was a fairly powerless place. There were few exceptional moments when Russia just chose as the Soviet Union not to participate and where China was briefly represented by Taiwan. In those times there was occasionally a decisive action by minority of permanent members such as in the Korean War, but more usually, there was gridlock. There was then a period from 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, through to the early years of this century, when there was a relatively harmonious time in the Council. And they were able to turn their minds to solving conflicts in Africa or taking on some of the more difficult long-term conflicts in the Middle East. And, anything seemed possible, and the Security Council began to aggregate power under itself. It started involving itself in humanitarian work, which it had not done before. It even had debates on public health issues like AIDS, HIV/AIDS, and it was a golden age in a sense. But as American-Russian relations have soured, and as China has started to be feared by others on the council, as a potential global rival, we've seen that brief decade or so of harmony be replaced by, in many ways, in Security Council terms, a new Cold War. >> It was based on the situation after the last war. And the world has changed dramatically. So we must have better representation, and for the international community to have confidence in these decisions. [MUSIC]
