The veto question

“The United Nations as now constructed is incapable of freeing mankind from the scourge of war.” (Larry L Leonard) The global community has once again found itself in a controversial debate over the limitless veto power and the impunity the Big Five enjoys in the United Nations Security Council at the expense of undermining the UN Charter.

Only this time, the UN is officially a part of this discourse that would force the Security Council's five permanent members – the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, and Russia – to justify exercising their veto rights. The Security Council reform has been proposed at the United Nations for years but has garnered new momentum in the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Currently, the five permanent members have the authority to reject any resolution proposed by the Security Council while the rotating ten more members do not possess such authority.

Institutional inequality and hegemonic politics are apparently in favour of these relatively powerful states, specifically the West, even though the Big Five is responsible for carrying out plenty of illegal interventions in relatively weak states including Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and now Ukraine. Perhaps that is what Larry Leonard meant when he associated the veto power with Frankenstein’s monster.

The debate, however, emerged after the Russian Federation blocked the draft resolution on the immediate cessation of Russia’s military offensive against Ukraine by using its veto power. Since 1992, the three major powers – Russia, the US, and China – have used their veto powers to preserve their national interests and security with no regard to the norms and legal frameworks of the UN.

Although the incorporation of the veto provision in the UN Charter was a mistake, its frequent application in Security Council voting sessions has been far worse. The Security Council and General Assembly voting procedures are far more liberal under the UN Charter than the League Covenant but voting in League organs has never been a problem. The League's organs did not obtain satisfying outcomes, but this was not entirely attributable to the voting system.

On the other hand, the Security Council's flawed voting system became a source of concern for the United Nations' sincere subscribers ever since its establishment. Leland Goodrich and Edvard Hambro argued that no article of the Charter has generated more controversy than Article 27. Larry Leonard in his seminal book, ‘International Organization’, contended that no issue at the United Nations has garnered as much public attention as the Security Council's voting system generally referred to as the veto.

In the same manner, Palmer and Perkins asserted that nothing has done more to erode popular faith in the United Nations than the Security Council's regular use, or misuse, of the veto. The bickering over the veto has slowed the process of drafting peace accords and stalled reconstruction efforts in war-torn areas of the world. The Big Five intended the veto provision to ensure the Council's efficacy, but it has effectively paralyzed the Council's operations; its frequent (mis)usage has impaired the Security Council's ability to act decisively in a number of critical matters.

One of the primary reasons many states and international relations scholars, especially in the Global South, despise the veto power is that permanent members occasionally use it to shield friendly states from condemnation or economic sanctions with whom they have close economic and diplomatic ties. This conveys the plainly incorrect signal that states in close proximity to one of the Big Five can get away with repeated human rights breaches and/or unlawful military incursions into neighboring states. Regrettably, instances of this type abound.

Malaysia, for example, complained to the Council in 1964 of Indonesian aggression when the latter country dropped armed paratroopers on its territory. However, the Soviet Union vetoed a draft resolution that "deplored" the incident and urged the parties to refrain from threatening or using force. Furthermore, the UNSC debates on the apartheid system in South Africa (and Southern Rhodesia) and Israel's human rights breaches are very well-known. No fewer than 56 vetoes were lodged against South Africa (26 by the United Kingdom, 20 by the United States, and 10 by France). In 1986, the United Kingdom and the United States blocked draft resolutions condemning South African attacks on Angola, Zambia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe. The same permanent members vetoed economic sanctions against the apartheid administration in 1987 and 1988, despite continuous human rights breaches.

On the other hand, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict accounts for approximately half of all US vetoes. The US has vetoed at least 52 resolutions critical of Israel since 1972. For five decades, the US has (mis)used its authority as a UNSC permanent member to support its ‘strategic ally’ in the UN. Even during the Gaza crisis of May 2021, the US vetoed three resolutions within a week calling for the immediate ceasefire between Israeli forces and Hamas. The US's unwavering support for Israel has enabled it to stymie resolutions condemning violence against protesters, illegal Israeli settlements established in the occupied West Bank since 1967, and even calls for an investigative process into the 1990 assassination of seven Palestinian workers by a former Israeli soldier.

Similarly, Russia, being the most frequent user of veto, is doing the same with the resolutions against it led by the US. The Russian abuse of power and the hypocrisy of the US is a cause of concern for the very structure of the UNSC under which it operates. However, it is rather difficult to abolish the veto power altogether. In a world dominated by power politics, some form of authority will remain in the hands of the hegemonic states in the Global North, and the fate of global peace and the Global South will continue to be at the expense of the decisions the North makes whenever feasible to them unless the South resists and de-schools itself from the imperial and hegemonic ideas disseminated by the North. The veto power, however, is another symptom, not a cause, of the diseased system dominated by the North.

The writer is a research associate at The Truth International Magazine and an MS research candidate at the Center for International Peace and Stability, NUST.