Eyes on the Prize: The Quest for Nonpermanent Seats on the UN Security Council

Abstract

With the era of euphoria spawned by Operation Desert Storm and the sense of empowerment it lent to the UN Security Council as of 1991 pretty well dispelled, excitement at the UN centers on small, often institutional events, barely discernible to the outside world. Although debate in the UN General Assembly rarely proves rousing, cer tain activities within its ambit do galvanize member states, none more so than elections to some critical nonuniversal UN bodies. These bodies in clude the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Ques tions (a fount of UN micromanagement by mostly unqualified delegates) and, of course, the UN Security Council.1 In spite of widespread complaints that the council's composition is un representative and in spite of the seemingly endless maneuvering among member states on its reform, membership in the council is seen at the UN in the late 1990s as more of a prize than ever. This view owes much to the increasingly active council agenda since the end of the Cold War. It also owes much to growing awareness of the council's role, through the UN Charter's Chapter VII provisions, in authorizing the use of coercive mea sures internationally (whatever may be thought of the council's perfor mance in recent years in exercising, or rather not exercising, these pow ers). Potential candidates for nonpermanent seats seem undiscouraged by the apparent stranglehold exerted on council business by its five perma nent members. They are undiscouraged by the special relationship the Permanent Five share with the Secretariat, although it often leaves other members in the dark. And they are undiscouraged by the daunting work load imposed by the council's formal agendas. They view with relative equanimity even the need to staff the many Sanctions Committees estab lished to monitor and decide on exemptions to sanctions instituted by the council in recent years. On the contrary, jockeying for seats is intense. Jockeying is nowhere more intense than within the Western European and Other Group (WEOG), which comprises members of the European Union (EU), Nor way, a number of small European nations (Liechtenstein, Malta, Andorra,