Following the success of the G20 summit hosted by India and the all-round praise for its just concluded leadership of the intergovernmental forum, the chorus for India to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council has only become louder. In the sidelights of the G20 Summit, US President Joe Biden reaffirmed his support for India's permanent membership of the UNSC.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan among others, is also reported to have promised support for India's bid for a permanent UNSC seat.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi too made a renewed push for expansion of the UN Security Council and reforms in all global institutions to reflect the world's "new realities" at the closing of the G20 summit. Earlier this year, India’s external affairs minister S Jaishankar seemed to say that India would soon become a permanent member of the UNSC. Stating that UNSC will be compelled to provide the membership as India is emerging as an “economic superpower”, he reiterated, “Westerners cannot keep their door closed for India for long.”
UNSC reforms and India’s bid for a permanent seat at the high table is a focal point for New Delhi’s foreign policy, he said, adding it won’t happen tomorrow but it will happen one day.
In this backdrop, The Federal explains India’s long-standing bid to get a permanent seat at the world’s most powerful table:
The origin of UNSC’s permanent members
At present UNSC comprises five permanent members and 10 elected non-permanent member countries. The latter are elected for a two-year term by the UN General Assembly. The five permanent members are Russia, the UK, China, France and the United States who were the victorious powers in World War 11 and have maintained the world's most powerful military forces ever since. These five have the highest military expenditures along with Germany and India and are officially recognised as nuclear weapon states though there are other states known or believed to be in possession of nuclear weapons.
What makes UNSC’s permanent members so powerful?
While the 15-member UN Security Council is meant to address threats to international security, foster negotiations, impose sanctions, and authorise the use of force, including the deployment of peacekeeping missions, its five permanent members have a special veto power. The permanent members have been accused of often misusing their veto to suit their national agendas at the detriment of global security. For instance, Russia vetoed many resolutions condemning its actions in Ukraine, USA has used it 42 times to protect Israel in its conflict with Palestine, China has deployed it as a diplomatic weapon against India on the issue of designating terrorists etc.
Why India should get the UNSC permanent seat?
According to India, the current membership is not inclusive and divorced from geopolitical realities. At a forum, Jaishankar emphasising the need to 'refresh' the 77-year-old UNSC structures, noted that 'large parts of the world do not believe anymore that the UN system speaks fairly for them’. Ruchira Kamboj, India's permanent representative to the UN, emphasised the need for an updated UNSC to align with “contemporary geopolitical realities”.
As the Indo-Pacific takes centrestage in global geopolitics, the forum’s composition, which still reflects the realities of the 1945 post-World War II era, is under the scanner. Moreover, no African or Latin American country has been given representation, while Europe enjoys ‘over-representation’ among the P5. Even UN chief Antonio Gueterras has said that he fully understands India's aspirations in this regard, saying that the composition of the Security Council need to be adjusted to the "realities of today's world” and felt multi-lateral institutions reflect a “bygoneage".
India’s other reasons for its bid at the top decision-making table
India has sent more than 2.5 lakh soldiers to the UN Peacekeeping forces and as of early 2022, Indian soldiers have served in 49 of the 71 global peacekeeping missions since 1948. Home to nearly one-sixth of the global population representing 1.4 billion people, India feels it deserves a spot at the top-decision making table.
Moreover, India feels it has demonstrated its skills as a responsible world leader, (most recently in its role as G20 President) and has slowly emerged as a recognisable force in the developing world. It also holds the distinction of being a Nuclear WeaponState.
Furthermore, India states that it is among the world’s fastest growing economies and is the third largest globally in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. Besides, India is also acknowledged for its soft power which gives it a moral high ground, in being the world’s largest democracy.
What's blocking India’s chances?
Expanding the number of UNSC members is a difficult feat to achieve owing to the watertight rules of the UN Charter. Any amendment requires approval from two-thirds of all members and has to get around the veto power of any of the five permanent members.
Moreover, China has been at the forefront against India’s entry into the elite club. Some other nations too have vociferously opposed India’s bid and questioned the basis for its claim. They also argued that despite being a nuclear state, India has refused to sign the Non-proliferation Treaty and the ComprehensiveNuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Also, they argue that India still heavily relies on military imports from the US and Russia and is yet to display its military might beyond the Indo-Pacific.
Notably, as per a 2022 assessment by the UN’s Committee on Contributions, India’s fund contributions to the organisation was $29.9 million, which is significantly lower than the contributions made by the P5 or even Germany, which contributed $175 million.
India’s soft power influence has also come under criticism as despite economic growth, India continues to perform poorly on human development indicators and is even behind its immediate neighbours, which are smaller economies, in the Human Development Index. Its poor performance on socio-economic and other relevant indicators including press freedom, happiness index etc., have been brought up.
What are India's chances of attaining this Holy Grail?
India's push for reform in the UNSC is its only hope of getting a permanent seat. In January this year, according to news reports, experts forecast that India had the strongest chance of getting a permanent seat in the UNSC if the number of members grows in the next decade.
According to the survey by think-tank AtlanticCouncil, there is a strong presumption that India will be one of the beneficiaries if new seats are added to the coveted group in the next few years. India has a 26 per cent chance of getting a UNSC permanent seat followed by Japan (11 per cent) and Brazil (9 per cent), it said. However, 64 per cent of the respondents expect no new permanent seats to be added to the UN’s most powerful body.
Slowly, over the years, several multi-lateral groupings of nations voicing their concerns for reforming the global body have emerged. India also joined Brazil, Japan, and Germany to form the G4 group of countries, who collectively stake claim for a permanent seat and even support each other’s quest for one. The silver lining for India lies in the fact that the UN General Assembly has adopted a draft oral decision to continue Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN) to "reform" the Security Council, which means there are chances of the number of permanent seats to go up.
Did Jawarharlal Nehru really reject the offer for a permanent seat?
Critics of former prime minister Jawarharlal Nehru have slammed him for rejecting offers in his time to join the coveted P5 club. However, replying to a short notice question in the Lok Sabha on September 27, 1955 by Dr JN Parekh whether India had refused a seat informally offered, Nehru had said: “There has been no offer, formal or informal, of this kind. Some vague references have appeared in the press about it which have no foundation in fact. The composition of the Security Council is prescribed by the UN Charter, according to which certain specified nations have permanent seats. No change or addition can be made to this without an amendment of the Charter. There is, therefore, no question of a seat being offered and India declining it. Our declared policy is to support the admission of all nations qualified for UN membership.”
However, historians have recorded two informal offers made to Nehru by the US in 1950 and by Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin in 1955 for India to join the P5. In the US case, Nehru felt it was suggested to create trouble between India and China, and refused it, while in the Soviet’s case, it was merely a "feeler" to test India, said news reports.