--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Noel King: The United Nations General Assembly is meeting in New York this week. There will be a lot of talk about Ukraine, about stopping the war there. And with all those world leaders gathered, it might seem like this is the place and now is the time. But probably nothing will change. Vladimir Putin isn't coming. Russia will likely keep on doing exactly what it is doing. Because the United Nations Security Council, the 15-nation body with five permanent members, including Russia, that's meant to stop wars of all kinds, to be the world's policeman and peacemaker, has a really bad track record.
--:-- [Music transitions to a gentle background]
--:-- Noel King: Ukraine has been all but begging the Security Council since February to do something. It is the responsibility of this body to stop the war. So I call on every one of you to do everything possible to stop the war.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Noel King: Coming up on Today Explained, why the world's peacemakers cannot get anything done.
--:-- [Music transitions to a commercial break]
--:-- Announcer (Voiceover): Support for Today Explained comes from Saks Fifth Avenue. Fall is here. Might be time to find some nice new pieces you can wear again and again. With Saks Fifth Avenue, it can be a breeze to shop for your personal style, like maybe a relaxed Prada blazer or Gucci loafers that are great for both work and the weekend.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Announcer (Voiceover): Saks says Saks makes shopping feel totally customized to you, whether that's from an in-store stylist or a visit to Saks.com. where they can show you just what you want to see. They say they'll even let you know when arrivals from your favorite designers are in or when something you've been eyeing is back in stock.
--:-- [Music transitions to a commercial break]
--:-- Announcer (Voiceover): You can find inspiration for your personal style every day at Saks Fifth Avenue.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Noel King: Support for this show comes from Strawberry.me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Or are you stuck in one you've outgrown? Or never wanted in the first place? Sure, you can probably list the reasons for staying, But are they actually just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from strawberry.me help you get unstuck.
--:-- [Music transitions to a commercial break]
--:-- Announcer (Voiceover): Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner. Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Noel King: It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Ori Friedman is managing editor at the Atlantic Council and a contributing writer to the Atlantic. And after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Ori wrote about how to reform the U.N. Security Council because the U.N. Security Council tried and failed at the start of the war to prevent Russia from doing what it was doing.
--:-- Ori Friedman: Yeah, this was a defining moment for the U.N. Security Council. For me, it was really a tale of two spectacles. The first was the Russian ambassador to the UN happened to have the rotating presidency for the UN Security Council. And we witnessed the spectacle of that ambassador presiding over a Security Council session as Russia invaded Ukraine in flagrant violation of the UN's founding principles.
--:-- Ori Friedman: Russia's clear attack on Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity is unprovoked. It is an attack on Ukraine's status as a U.N. member state. It violates a basic principle of international law, and it defies our charter.
--:-- Ori Friedman: Then shortly after that, Russia vetoed a resolution, a condemnation of Russia's action and full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a violation of U.N. principles and the U.N. charter. And the demand, a call for Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukraine.
--:-- Ori Friedman: There is no purgatory for war criminals. They go straight to hell, Ambassador. And you saw very, very vividly just how much when a permanent member of the UN Security Council decides to be an aggressor, how they can use the body as a shield and wield the Security Council in a way that becomes totally ineffectual as a means of stopping war.
--:-- Ori Friedman: So that was the first stark illustration of the fact that it just was not up to the job of stopping the war. But the second was that Ukraine's president went around and did a world tour. He spoke to Congress. He spoke to many other legislative bodies and world leaders. And he actually said the U.N. Security Council and organizations like it are not able to solve the problems that we're facing today.
--:-- Ori Friedman: The war of the past has prompted our predecessors to create institutions that should protect us from war. But they, unfortunately, don't work. We see it. You see it. So we need new ones, new institutions, new alliances.
--:-- Ori Friedman: He proposed this idea of a U24 coalition of countries that come to the aid of other nations within 24 hours of a crisis breaking out. a union of responsible countries that have the strength and consciousness to stop conflicts immediately.
--:-- Ori Friedman: I couldn't believe he was proposing this. It was like someone whose house is on fire proposing changes to fire regulations. You know, how do you think about UN Security Council reform in a moment like this?
--:-- Ori Friedman: But I think he felt that way because he and his country had been failed by international institutions like the UN Security Council, and the need for something new, the urgent need for something new was so obvious to him.
--:-- Ori Friedman: Was there really a chance that the UN Security Council could have prevented Russia's invasion? Or was that always kind of damned from the beginning?
--:-- Ori Friedman: You'd think an institution named the UN Security Council should be able to stop an invasion like this, but the answer, right? But the answer is no. The Security Council is really struggling right now to respond to contemporary challenges.
--:-- Ori Friedman: But this is really important and almost counterintuitive to keep in mind. Some of it is by design. You know, when the UN Security Council was created, it was not designed to turn its sights inward on its own members.
--:-- Ori Friedman: And so where it's most vulnerable is when a permanent member of the Security Council, the most powerful members, when they decide to violate international law, when they decide to be aggressive it can do very little to stop its own permanent members from acting that way.
--:-- Ori Friedman: And so in some ways this is it a feature not a bug of the Security Council. And we saw that all too vividly in the war in Ukraine.
--:-- Ori Friedman: What is the purpose of the UN Security Council? What is their job?
--:-- Ori Friedman: The job description plainly is to be the world's main and most powerful body for addressing threats to international peace and security.
--:-- Ori Friedman: And one thing to keep in mind is the UN Security Council has powers and no other entity in the United Nations has. So it can initiate military action. It can institute peacekeeping operations. It can implement international sanctions. Its resolutions are binding on all UN members.
--:-- Ori Friedman: So if the United Nations as a whole is like the world's most principal international body, the UN Security Council is its teeth.
--:-- Ori Friedman: If the point of the UN Security Council is to prevent threats to peace, then I'm imagining who should be on it. And it's like definitely Switzerland, definitely Sweden, who just stays out of stuff. Costa Rica does a great job of staying out of stuff.
--:-- Ori Friedman: Who is on the UN Security Council and how is it set up in terms of who holds power?
--:-- Ori Friedman: So the way it works is there are five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom.
--:-- Ori Friedman: It's basically a snapshot in time of the powers that defeated the Nazis and Japan after World War II. And that is why it is those countries.
--:-- Ori Friedman: If we had had this charter a few years ago, and above all the will to use it, millions now dead would be alive. And then they have a kind of hallowed place within the Security Council because they can wield a veto.
--:-- Ori Friedman: So nothing can pass a Security Council without their acquiescence or affirmative assent. Then there are 10 members that rotate and they're elected to two-year terms. And so here you get more geographic representation.
--:-- Ori Friedman: So, you know, there are countries from every region of the world. You could have a country, like you mentioned, like Switzerland or Costa Rica be a part of that. But these change all the time and they do not have a veto power like the five permanent members do.
--:-- Ori Friedman: Okay, why was the Security Council set up this way with the U.S., France, the United Kingdom, China and Russia, all famous troublemakers put in positions of veto power?
--:-- Ori Friedman: So I mentioned World War II, but the story really begins in the 1920s. The draft covenant was adopted by 42 states. On the 15th of November 1920, the first assembly of the League of Nations was held in Geneva.
--:-- Ori Friedman: Many people will be familiar with the League of Nations, which was established in an effort to try to prevent a world war, a conflict like that from ever happening again. Geneva was to become the clearinghouse for the agreements and disagreements of the world.
--:-- Ori Friedman: But the League of Nations failed catastrophically in the lead up to World War II. And the idea here was, can we build something better than what the League of Nations was in order to prevent a third world war from ever happening?
--:-- Ori Friedman: A history-making moment as Lord Halifax calls for a standing vote on the approval of the Charter of International Organization. And the heads of the 50 United Nations delegations rise to be counted. The vote is unanimous.
--:-- Ori Friedman: One of the goals they had after World War II is how do we get the buy-in of the world's major powers? And of course, Germany had just been defeated. Japan had just been defeated. Italy as well.
--:-- Ori Friedman: So when they thought about world powers, they thought about the ones who prevailed in the conflict. And really, the price of admission to get these powers to buy in, including most particularly the United States and the Soviet Union, was to give them veto power, to say, nothing big can happen without your support.
--:-- Ori Friedman: And that got all the powers on board. But once that kind of power is given, it's very hard to change anything. And so that frozen in time decision has stayed this way really up to the present day.
--:-- Ori Friedman: Tell me about the years after World War II. We never did end up having a World War III. So something went right. Was it the influence of the UN Security Council that has gotten us this far?
--:-- Ori Friedman: Not fully. I wouldn't credit the United Nations with fully stopping a World War III, but I think it has played a role in that.
--:-- Ori Friedman: Part of the design of having these countries have a veto power is an effort to stop World War III in the sense that they can all work together to try to be the world's policemen. But they are prevented because of the veto power from using the Security Council to go after each other.
--:-- Ori Friedman: And some people argue that even though that is really frustrating in the case of something like the war on Ukraine, what it does do is it prevents these countries from using the UN Security Council to pass resolutions that could spark a World War III.
--:-- Ori Friedman: So that is one argument in the favor of this very frustrating system. But another was that the designers at the end of World War II had a misperception about the trajectory of international relations.
--:-- Ori Friedman: You know, they thought these were the powers that have worked well together during World War II. And they thought, well, they can work together to act as the world's policemen. But very quickly, that was undermined.
--:-- Ori Friedman: The Cold War started months after the system was set up. And these countries really stopped being able to work productively together very shortly after the inception of the council.
--:-- Ori Friedman: So, for example, in 1959, the UN Security Council passed just one resolution the entire year. There were months where they didn't meet at all. During the 70s and 80s, the Security Council really drifted, all because of Cold War tensions.
--:-- Ori Friedman: And more recently, there have also been a lot of struggles. Everything from the U.N. Security Council's failure to stop the Rwandan genocide. The international community, together with nations in Africa, must bear its share of responsibility for this tragedy as well.
--:-- Ori Friedman: To his failures to really meaningfully intervene in the Syrian civil war. We need some solidarity and unity of purpose, particularly among the permanent members of the Security Council.
--:-- Ori Friedman: When they are divided, it's extremely difficult for the United Nations to deliver. To stop the second Iraq war. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq.
--:-- Ori Friedman: And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies. To stop Russia invasion of Crimea before this latest invasion Russia actions in Ukraine since 2014 have led to approximately 13 conflict deaths.
--:-- Ori Friedman: And the Security Council has also really struggled to address and respond effectively to security threats that are not traditional, but really affect human security these days. Things like climate change and pandemics. It's been really a bit player there, too.
--:-- Ori Friedman: When was the golden age of the UN Security Council?
--:-- Ori Friedman: Yeah, so the UN Security Council's darkest days have been long, and its moments in the sun have been very short-lived. I would identify probably as the golden age, this period after the Cold War, when the United States was the world's preeminent power.
--:-- Ori Friedman: In 2018, I went to go meet the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, and he had this glint in his eyes as he talked about that period. He was remembering a time where there was violence in the former Portuguese colony of East Timor after there was a vote for independence from Indonesia.
--:-- Ori Friedman: And he was recalling how as soon as the U.S. president, who at the time was Bill Clinton, decided that an intervention, a peacekeeping intervention there was necessary, everything happened. The U.N. Security Council acted. It sent in a peacekeeping operation. It stabilized the situation.
--:-- Ori Friedman: And Antonio Guterres kind of wrung his hands and looked visibly upset. And he said, that kind of thing, it just doesn't happen anymore. It can't happen anymore.
--:-- Ori Friedman: The reason that was a golden age was because the United States was the unrivaled power and Russia and China were not yet at a point of power or tension with the United States where they would really push back against everything that the United States wanted to do.
--:-- Ori Friedman: It certainly was the period in which it probably acted most effectively for the longest period of time.
--:-- Ori Friedman: Is there any country out there saying, guys, we got to reform this. We got to figure out a way to do this differently?
--:-- Ori Friedman: Oh, yeah, there are a bunch. And I would put the reforms into three buckets. One bucket is global representation. So as I mentioned, especially the permanent members on the U.N. Security Council are really a frozen snapshot in time from 1945 and power dynamics then.
--:-- Ori Friedman: So there's a lot of reforms that go about, you know, trying to increase the representation, whether permanent members or non-permanent members of the Security Council. For example, there's no Latin American representation, no African representation, no representation from South Asia.
--:-- Ori Friedman: No reform of the UN will be complete without the reform of the Security Council. And often you hear countries that really feel they have a real reason to be better represented in the Security Council proposing changes.
--:-- Ori Friedman: So, for example, India or Brazil or Japan. We seek the expansion of both the permanent and non-permanent categories of membership to enhance the council's legitimacy, effectiveness and representativeness.
--:-- Ori Friedman: The second bucket of reforms is more leadership changes. So, you know, we should change the way the U.N. Secretary General is selected. We should empower the president of the U.N. General Assembly more.
--:-- Ori Friedman: And the third bucket of reforms is more about the veto. So one really intriguing proposal that has gotten a lot of support from UN member states is something proposed by France and Mexico, which is that in the case of mass atrocities, mass human rights violations, the permanent members should voluntarily relinquish their veto and say, we're not going to use it.
--:-- Ori Friedman: The thing is, the key word there is voluntarily. And it's very hard to actually convince these countries to voluntarily give up their veto. It sounds good in theory, but in practice, I'm kind of skeptical that it can actually get traction and that the UN Security Council permanent members would actually voluntarily give up the power they wield.
--:-- [Music transitions to a commercial break]
--:-- Announcer (Voiceover): Support for Today Explained comes from Built Rewards. These days, it seems like everybody has a rewards program. You swipe your card and you get one cent on the hundred dollars. But with your rent, frequently, you just pay month after month. You never get anything from it other than that roof over your head.
--:-- Announcer (Voiceover): Not anymore, says Built Rewards. Built Rewards says it lets you earn points on your rent. By paying rent through Bilt, they say you can earn flexible points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines, perhaps a future rent payment, your next Lyft ride, and so much more.
--:-- Announcer (Voiceover): Your home isn't just where you sleep, it's your community, and Bilt wants you to go out and do things in the community. You can eat at your favorite local restaurants, then earn more points. You can get VIP treatment at certain fitness studios. You can enjoy exclusive experiences just for Bilt members every month.
--:-- Announcer (Voiceover): When you're ready to travel, they say Bilt points can be converted to miles or hotel points all around the world. You can earn points on rent and around your neighborhood wherever you call home by joining Bilt.com slash Explained.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Announcer (Voiceover): That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash Explained.
--:-- [Music transitions to a commercial break]
--:-- Announcer (Voiceover): Support for the show comes from Charles Schwab. At Schwab, how you invest is your choice, not theirs. That's why when it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices.
--:-- Announcer (Voiceover): You can invest and trade on your own. Plus, get advice and more comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs. With award-winning service, low costs, and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab.
--:-- Announcer (Voiceover): Visit schwab.com to learn more.
--:-- [Music transitions back to the show]
--:-- Noel King: It's Today Explained. We're back with Ori Friedman who recently wrote for the Atlantic about how to fix the U.N. Security Council. Ori, I wonder has the U.N. ever successfully committed reform in these ways that people have been asking for?
--:-- Ori Friedman: Yes, there have been reforms in its history but I want to manage expectations here. These are not spectacular scintillating reforms.
--:-- Ori Friedman: Okay. So there have only been five changes to the UN charter in its entire history, and none has happened since 1973. So it's been a long time since we actually changed the UN charter.
--:-- Ori Friedman: I will point to one change that happened as a result of the war in Ukraine which is that the tiny nation of Liechtenstein championed an effort to make it so that if a permanent member of the UN Security Council vetoes a resolution, like Russia did in response to the war in Ukraine, now it is mandatory that the UN General Assembly hold a debate and discussion about the veto within 10 days of it happening.
--:-- Ori Friedman: The resolution is non-binding and nothing prevents the veto-building power from declining to comment on its decision and explain itself to the General Assembly.
--:-- Ori Friedman: I think it's significant in the sense that it shows that there's ferment in the U.N., that there's a desire for change. If you think about shining a spotlight on the veto casting member, it does kind of enhance the brightness of the spotlight.
--:-- Ori Friedman: But this is not some elusive cure for the U.N. Security Council's maladies. This is a important step, but a relatively small one.
--:-- Noel King: Without being snarky, Ori, because you've said it's important, although relatively small, there is already a fairly bright spotlight on Russia, reflecting 12 million people who have fled their homes in Ukraine. There are many reporters documenting atrocities. Vladimir Putin is running around inventing history. We would already be paying attention to Russia.
--:-- Noel King: Why does it matter that we turn up the spotlight a tick? We know what Russia's doing. The UN knows what Russia's doing.
--:-- Ori Friedman: Totally a fair critique. And I agree that it is probably an incremental change, a marginal change, rather than a major one.
--:-- Ori Friedman: I think one distinction I'd make is that a lot of the critiques you're hearing about Russia's actions are done by Ukraine, certainly, and the United States and its allies.
--:-- Ori Friedman: And a debate in the UN General Assembly would at least expand the range of countries that are discussing the veto, you know, in a case like this.
--:-- Ori Friedman: If nothing else, it sends a message to these permanent members that you can't veto with total impunity.
--:-- Ori Friedman: It at least extends the period of time that there is scrutiny on this decision so people don't feel they can cast a veto, block a huge, really important initiative, and just walk away and quietly have it happen and no one pays any attention.
--:-- Ori Friedman: And if you were in charge and you could make a simple reform, what would it be if you had all the power and said, all right, guys, from now on, we're doing it differently? What would your fix be?
--:-- Ori Friedman: So as I was looking into this, I didn't want to present like a laundry list of reforms. I really wanted to zero in on one big idea that felt ambitious and bold, but theoretically doable, even if it would be very hard to actually accomplish.
--:-- Ori Friedman: What I ended up feeling was the most intriguing proposal was an idea that the U.N. General Assembly should be able to override the veto of a permanent member in the Security Council if there is sufficient support for the override.
--:-- Ori Friedman: So this should be familiar to many Americans, for example, because it's a bit similar to what happens in Congress. If there is exceptional support for an initiative, Congress can override the veto of a U.S. president.
--:-- Ori Friedman: The bill on reconsideration is passed. the objection to the president of the United States to the contrary notwithstanding.
--:-- Ori Friedman: The idea would be that if there's a veto cast, the U.N. General Assembly then can have a vote and could potentially override the veto if they have sufficient exceptional support in ways that would allow it to then pass the U.N. Security Council.
--:-- Ori Friedman: And how might your reform happen? How does this get done?
--:-- Ori Friedman: Yeah, that's the hard part, but not the, I think, not the impossible part. So the big roadblock here is that this would require a change to the UN Charter.
--:-- Ori Friedman: And the way that happens is that two-thirds of UN member states need to approve of the change through their respective constitutional processes.
--:-- Ori Friedman: So, you know, in the U.S., that would mean going through Congress, for example. And it also needs to be approved by all the permanent members.
--:-- Ori Friedman: My experience of looking into UN reforms is a bit like walking down a promising path and breaking from like a jog into a run and then slamming into the wall of the permanent members.
--:-- Ori Friedman: Because all roads to fundamental reform at the UN lead through the permanent members. Because they wield so much power, they kind of control whether the UN charter is amended or not.
--:-- Ori Friedman: There's another problem or challenge that there's 193 members of the UN Security Council. There are at least 193 ideas out there for how the UN and the UN Security Council should be changed.
--:-- Ori Friedman: All that said, I do think there is a potential way that the United States could get on board with this.
--:-- Ori Friedman: First of all, the United States is the biggest contributor financially to the UN. It has a stake in the international order that it created after World War II, which one of the major elements of that international order is the United Nations.
--:-- Ori Friedman: One way I could imagine this working is that the United States says we live in a time where we are facing existential threats that affect the whole world. increasingly, so things like climate change, pandemics, nuclear weapons, that means it is a moment where we need to cede some power from the permanent members to the broader consensus of the UN's membership.
--:-- Ori Friedman: And they could even say, you know, we're not afraid of the consensus of the world's nations on these big issues. We believe our enlightened national self-interest is in line with the interests of the vast majority of nations.
--:-- Ori Friedman: And Russia and China, if you're not supporting this, what does that say about you having the interests of the rest of the world in mind?
--:-- [Music transitions to the end of the show]
--:-- Noel King: Today's show was produced by Jillian Weinberger with help from Tori Dominguez. It was engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey. It was fact-checked by Serena Solon and Laura Bullard. and it was edited by Matthew Collette. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained.
