UN was put into place for peacekeeping efforts and yet there r 5 major countries having veto power.
I don’t understand its use, isn’t a proper voting over issues a better way to go about problems than this ?
Does this veto system actually help in peacekeeping efforts positively ?
In: Other
The 5 permanent veto holding members were the great allied powers at the end of ww2. The seat for China was transferred to the communists, and the soviet seat was sort of transferred to Russia (though the Russian government replaced and renamed the soviet government as opposed to the PRC/ROC which were and are separate entities).
They get a veto partially because they were the greatest powers in the world, but also because up until about 2000 any of the 4 (not China) could cause chaos against any of the others if they wanted to. The growing power gap between the US and Europe due to decolonization and population growth does mean that the UK and France are sort of the odd ones out, but they are still globally more influential than anyone not on the list. Now any of the 5 could cause chaos for anyone else.
By chaos what I mean is essentially that if the US say, decided to invade Mexico or Iran or something and the British or French didn’t like that. They could supply the attacked power with advanced weapons, they could cause European sanctions on us officials, deny the US use of a number of bases etc
As to why: because great powers will not be dictated to by small ones. One country one vote does not reflect that China has a about twice the labour force of the US and EU combined, and none of them are going to be told what they can or can’t do by some small Caribbean island or other small states.
You could of course envision a world where veto power is distributed differently. It will be tough to argue India should not have that power by the end of the century when they have twice the population of China and an economy probably twice that of anyone else, assuming it gets there. Nigeria, Brazil, some sort of Muslim representation, all have some merits.
Latest Answers