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... how the hegemon at the end of a hegemonic war gets a big influence in the form of the international order. The United Nations was something that quite clearly needed looking after, and the Security Council was established to prevent the General Assembly from being an arena where an effective political counterweight to the hegemon could be developed.

Allowing the objective of establishing the United Nations to be subverted is the whole point of the Security Council. China not ending up as a frontline containment state for the USSR was kind of an oops, but.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Apr 29th, 2008 at 02:47:44 PM EST
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Allowing the objective of establishing the United Nations to be subverted is the whole point of the Security Council.

How's that?  The primary objective of the establishment of the UN was to prevent direct armed conflict between the great powers. Allowing it to act against the will of one of those powers would have the reverse effect.  

In any case, I don't see the moral case for greater GA power. One country one vote is inherently undemocratic as is the representation of authoritarian governments.  But that's fine, justice, fairness, and democracy  aren't the point here.

I agree with Mig that the composition of the permanent members group is out of date and that you'd want a merger of the British and French seats into one EU one while giving India a seat.  But the original make up was sensible. The US, France, UK, and Soviet Union were clearly the most powerful countries in the world at the time. China was hobbled by civil war, but as the most populous state it also got in. Who else would you have wanted - Brazil? Canada?  (Germany and Japan were out for obvious reasons, India was still a colony)

by MarekNYC on Tue Apr 29th, 2008 at 03:20:05 PM EST
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... GA power ... I had not idea there was a moral case for greater GA power, but preventing the GA from having power was the point of the Security Council.

The issue at hand in the mid-40's was not, of course, the make-up of the Security Council ... the system of permanent members consisting of the main victorious allies in WWII was pretty much automatic as soon as someone came up with it, and the system of rotating memberships with watered down voting rights fairly obviously the most that the other members could hope for ... but the powers of the Security Council.

Whether the institution as actually established was more effective in its role than it would have been otherwise ... quite possibly. Just because the US got its way does not mean that it was an unalloyed disaster that it did.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Apr 29th, 2008 at 03:33:34 PM EST
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