eli5..Why is it that the UN security council has 5 permanent members who can veto a resolution and what criteria did they use to choose those countries?
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The five nations are the founding members of the UN: USA, France, UK, Russian, and China (formerly ROC now PRC), as founding members they enjoy that privilege. They are the winning team of WW2.
When UN was being founded, who would be in the Security Council and how it would work was one of the key issues. The countries that set up these discussions and were going to be part of the SC were the four major allied countries – USSR, USA, UK, China – and these countries were generally speaking also central in the founding of the whole UN. Ultimately these four countries’ delegates decided who would be in the council. France was added, and some others that were proposed like Brazil were not.
It’s not really a democratic process in any sense. The four initial members were simply the biggest post-war powers, so it was really up to them how it would work. If they wouldn’t have gotten their way, or at least get a good enough compromise, they would simply have withdrawn. Nowadays, these countries want to keep the veto and without it, they would simply not participate.
The countries were chosen because they founded it. (Well, slightly more complicated, the Republic of China was sort of replaced by China in 1971, but that wasn’t changing the *country* but the *government recognised to rule that country*, and Russia replaced the USSR in 1991).
The funding countries were very keen to have a forum for world governments that could pass binding resolutions, but didn’t want to be bound by them (have your cake and eat it right?), so they gave themselves Veto powers.
Every other country has just gone along with this because nobody wanted to say no to the 5 most powerful countries on earth (at the time, but still 5 members of the top 10)
might makes right was the criteria. The 5 permanent members were either nuclear powers or the largest colonial powers at the time of the creation of the UN
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