Democracy & Governance

Though the UN Security Council can appear defunct, it remains a crucial feature in the architecture of international governance. It is in British, and global, interests to reform it. But if Britain wants to transform its rhetoric on this issue into reality then it must take steps to expedite the process.

US Presidential confidante Daisy Suckley recalls that Franklin Roosevelt was in bed when it hit him. Next morning, as soon as he had finished breakfast, he climbed into his chair to be wheeled to Winston Churchill’s room. He knocked on the door. Hearing no answer, he went in and called for his guest. Churchill had just appeared, nude, in the bathroom door, when the President exploded: “The United Nations!”. “Good!”, the Prime Minister replied.

The UN was born in a Washington bedroom as the name for a wartime alliance. Yet in the face of newer, non-conventional threats such as cybercrime, terrorism, climate change, and now COVID-19, its executive body can appear deadlocked, even defunct.

Of course, the UN Security Council is not the only organisation confronting these challenges. NGOs and regulators worldwide are also working to tackle them, as are private corporations. But allowing our response to the 21st century’s most pressing problems to be outsourced to external actors is perilous.

NGOs are able to energise the public and policymakers on particular issues, but are often unable to take the kind of open, holistic approach that governing bodies are built for. Unelected advisors and businesses suffer from a similar paucity of democratic accountability.

For all their flaws, bodies like the Security Council remain a crucial feature in the architecture of international governance. It is in global interests that they are reformed rather than rejected.

It is also in British interests. By expanding the Council to redress its regional imbalances – there are 54 African UN member states but none are permanent members – the UK can help relocate important debates to a chamber where it enjoys disproportionate influence. Britain is a veto-wielding permanent member with a strong diplomatic reputation, and ‘penholder’ on 11 of the 41 issues regularly considered by the Council, meaning it leads negotiations and resolution writing on them. Leading Council expansion could also help signal that Whitehall is serious when it claims that the UK will be “more active in shaping the international order of the future”, as the Integrated Review reads.

The Government appears to recognise these arguments. Britain has been committed to securing permanent seats for a G4 of Japan, Brazil, India, and Germany as well as permanent African representation since 2008. It is also in favour of a moderate expansion in the number of non-permanent members, taking total membership to around 25.

This looks like bad tactics. Indeed it entails the dilution of Britain’s power in an important international body. Yet it is good long-term strategy, challenging efforts by the UK’s systemic rivals to claim that they are the sole supporters of developing nations.

Still, good strategy suffers without implementation. As the German Permanent Representative to the UN argued in a 2020 debate, citing one of Grimm’s fairy tales, if the UK wants to “kiss sleeping beauty” it must find the courage to “cut through the rose bushes” and act.

Cutting through the rose bushes might cause some scratches. Two-thirds of the General Assembly would have to approve any reform proposal, and Britain’s is opposed by G7 allies Italy and Canada.

Yet change has been achieved before – in 1963, when the number of non-permanent members was increased from six to 10 – and there are some steps the UK can take to expedite the process.

First, the UK should seek appointment by the President of the General Assembly as Chair of the next round of Intergovernmental Negotiations on Security Council reform.

Second, and preferably from that position, the UK should push for consultations on the basis of a single text. This text could be developed from the ‘commonality’ and ‘convergence’ documents produced over past years as well as an updated version of 2015’s Framework, which provided attributed positions on particular reform ‘clusters’. It could then be amended and rolled over into successive sessions, with the aim of drawing it steadily closer to a formal resolution.

This will likely be divisive. There is no consensus on moving to text-based negotiations, and building the text itself will require member states to pick sides as they give public opinions. Yet members have moved pressing issues to text without prior consensus before – on COVID-19 for example – and this could preclude another restatement of views, moving parties immediately into negotiations and, hopefully, compromise.

Britain can make its commitment to Security Council reform more than rhetoric. But it has to act.

Dylan Rogers is a Fellow at UN Watch. He writes in a personal capacity.

The fragmentation of Britain’s COVID-19 ‘lockdown’ strategy has been apparent since the virus first hit the country. The start of social isolation and economic shutdown may have been uniformly implemented across the UK on 23 March but, as different countries within the union start to emerge from lockdown, each region seems to have chosen a strikingly individual route out. It may turn out that this global disease normalises more policy decisions being made at the regional level in Britain.

Do I stay at home or stay alert? Over the last few months, varying demands such as these from the UK’s different political bodies have supplied the nation with a generous helping of confusion (and, in some instances, hysteria). Yet a united response to the pandemic may not necessarily be the best way to defeat it. Centralised government control should roll back, in order for local areas to better assess the threat of the virus there and administer the necessary steps to stop it from spreading.

The fluctuation of the R number across Britain

Westminster granted sub-national bodies greater independence as it became clear that the coronavirus R rate – the rate at which the disease is spreading – varied greatly in different communities. London’s mid-May infection rate, between 0.6 and 0.9, put it at slightly safer levels than Scotland’s estimations which lay somewhere between 0.7 and 1.

Scientific evidence suggests that if the R number is consistently below 1, slower transmission levels of the virus would eventually eradicate it from the nation. However, cases would inevitably exponentially grow if the number crept above 1. In this instance, the removal of a harsh lockdown would only allow the disease to embed itself deeper into the lives of the population. Consequently, Scotland’s predicament demanded a later lifting of its lockdown due to the teetering position of its R number of around 1.

The biological effect of COVID-19 only accounts for a fraction of the havoc it has wreaked on humanity. Education, finance, and social interaction have all been affected. This is fundamentally why Boris Johnson has had to cede so many of his Cabinet’s powers to separate governments in the devolved nations of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Prioritising the reopening of certain regions first

London accounts for 23% of the entire UK economy and a 2018 City of London study found that the capital employed 1 in 59 British workers. It would have been economically unproductive for London, and the rest of England, to wait for Scotland’s transmission rate to be suppressed and for the two countries to come out of lockdown at a unified date. A financial and employment hub like London could not dawdle lifting measures when scientists announced that it was safe for England to begin the gradual reopening of its economy, especially when it was revealed that Rishi Sunak’s furlough scheme was costing upwards of £14bn each month.

When combined, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland account for just 15% of UK GDP. Scotland may have contributed £1.2bn in oil revenue to the nation’s economy in 2018, but that same year a nearly a fifth of its population were economically inactive.

Devolved bodies do contribute billions to the UK’s economy and their economies need to be reopened, but their politicians have erred on the side of caution. From a health perspective, Scotland was unable to follow England’s timetable of easing lockdown, but England’s economic output into the nation’s economy perhaps emphasised its need to open sooner. Ultimately, autonomy was granted for local leaders to better scrutinise the scope of their region’s infection rate and do what was best for either the public health or the economy.

However, it is also tempting to subscribe to a more cynical perspective that delegation of power has allowed central government to escape a degree of accountability. With figures such as Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford holding down separate forts, any failures in their lockdown strategies will leave a clear direction for their electorates to point the finger .

The threat posed by the virus is not an easily dismissed issue. Public safety and higher levels of government scrutiny are deeply intertwined. Ultimately, a centralised approach from Westminster would undermine the varying needs of different communities across the UK. It may well be that the pandemic convinces more people of this.

Emily Wilson studies Politics and International Relations at the University of Manchester.

COVID-19 is precipitating the emergence of a new world order, characterised by waning American leadership and a shift of power towards China. In this context, Western democracies will be challenged on cooperation and unity.

Nobody was expecting this decade to begin with such domestic and international disruption. Currently, three billion people wait to be released from their homes, hoping for a short-lived quarantine. Regardless, the socio-political impact will be much longer lasting. COVID-19 has uncovered deficiencies of the post-industrial world order, showing that globalisation constantly hangs by a thread. In particular, the doubtful response from some international institutions has pushed certain economies and governments towards more isolationism. As countries envision their role in the post-COVID-19 world, the international stage is readjusting.

Multilateral world order

For the past fifty years, much of the world has tended towards a Western model of multilateralism and integration. International organisations and laws have become an integral part of the governance system, limiting warfare and improving living standards in many parts of the world. The economic and military dominance of the United States has made it a suitable example to follow in the pursuit of growing trade networks, intensive farming, nuclear dissuasion, and political liberalisation.

Withering leadership

Even before the current crisis, there were already signs of this world order dwindling. The digital revolution has challenged institutions’ legitimacy and distributed power into the hands of new actors. It has changed the way we work, trade, and learn. Such economic transformation has complemented the rise of China-centred Asia into a powerhouse of innovation and investment, which comes as the primary challenge to American leadership.

US President Donald Trump has tended towards an isolationist strategy rather than cooperation, pulling out of international alliances and institutions, most notably the Iran Nuclear Deal and Trans-Pacific Partnership, creating a vacuum for other nations to exert influence in strategic regions. Even if the upcoming American election were to turn the tide, four years of refusing multilateralism has deteriorated American leadership.

Opportunity for influence

These changes look set to be exacerbated by COVID-19. Trump’s EU travel ban and failed acquisition of vaccine patents will not be forgotten in Europe anytime soon. Political scientist Joseph Nye has been amongst those to criticise the Trump administration’s ‘America First’ position, which appears to focus more on competition with China than addressing the spread of the disease.

Alongside this, others have played a leadership-like role. In March this year, Europe emerged as the pandemic’s epicentre. In response, China sent aid and Russia deployed personnel to Italy before any EU member state. China has also made an effort to present itself as a reliable partner, increasing its involvement in international institutions and exporting masks and medical kits around the world.

China sees the pandemic as an opportunity to extend its influence and power. President Xi Jinping’s visit to Wuhan drew eyes to the efficiency of his state governance in fighting the virus. The CPC has found an opening to diffuse its propaganda, in the hope that its political system will come out strong. Nonetheless, China is already facing a resurgence in cases, and the resulting economic blow will be tough. Lack of certain medicines in Europe has sparked debate on Chinese overreliance. Industries are relocating closer to home or to other parts of Asia. It remains to be seen whether China can continue to dominate supply chains.

The place of Europe

In Europe, individual member state action and a sluggish initial response from Brussels prompted leaders such as Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and former European Commission President Jacques Delors to warn that lack of solidarity would have profound effects on the European project after the end of the crisis.

‘Westlessness’ was the slogan at the Munich Security Conference this year, or the decades long shift of power balance away from the old continent. The EU must use the period after the COVID-19 pandemic to provide momentum for finding a new purpose on the global stage, taking leadership on matters of climate change and data regulation. This can only be done as a united bloc. Current emergency measures should be used to reduce internal fragility.

A more independent Europe should increase collaboration with countries traditionally alienated by the US. In particular, French President Emmanuel Macron has called for more alignment with Russia and Turkey, who are reemerging as neighbouring poles of influence in their own right. The UK would also be best placed aligning with European allies, given Trump increasingly views Britain, much like the rest of the old continent, as a battleground against his Chinese rival.

Barnabé Colin is a graduate student at the LSE’s Department of Government.