UN Veto rights, yes or no?

I tripped over this upon hearing that the US are/will be vetoing the Palestine attempt to get their own state, and have apparently decided to do so without even listening to the Palestines.

Is it fair for a single country to be able to overrule the entire rest of the world?

Discuss.

I veto this debate.

Veto is not really fair, but acceptable. other method of deciding UN decision have its own drawback.

UN General Assembly one country one vote, will enormously benefit small nation (Palau, Nauru) compared to big country (India, China). And there are time when the majority of country is not democratic. Plus since christian and muslim have many countries, it will be unfair to Israel or India.

Also veto power did correspond to postWW2 world where five country have enormous power compared to other.

i think currently in need of modification but abolishing it entirely is no good.

On a more serious note, not just trolling to point out the frustating nature of veto, the Finnish parliamentary system has its own version: the president has a veto on all laws passed in the parliament, but if she wishes to veto it, the parliament can vote again, and if they pass the law again unchanged, the veto is overriden.

Now that sounds a whole lot more fair than the current system in the UN. If i get it right, the prseident's veto right is little more than "Think this over one more time before you go with it, okay?", right?

Well, the problem with the current system is that permanent members can just say "F you" to the rest when something comes up that they don't like. Seeing as there is such a big difference between the goals of some of the members (US - Russia, for example), nothing important ever gets done. It would be far better to just make it a basic "Most votes go" democracy system.

Besides, it's not like 9/10 of the 10 temporary seats will all be filled with Muslim nations, so it's not like the UN can be abused anyways.

Group of Four (Brazil, India, Germany, Japan) wants to expand it to include themselves (they support each other's bids), probably at the cost of elected seats so it didn't become too unwieldy. Each has their supporters and detractors.

I can envision a way to reform the Security Council, but it'd have to be redone entirely.

• 3 seats: EU. (Add one for Germany)
• 2 seats: US, PRC, Russian Federation. (Double their seats to prevent an EU hijack)
• 1 seat(countries): India, Japan, Brazil, Canada, Turkey. (They're major regional and military powers)
• 1 seat (Regional Bodies) Ibero-American Organization, African Union, Arab League, ASEAN, Nordic Council, Pacific Islands Forum. (Give significant alliances representation)

Veto might be scrapped safely: the Security Council would more or less reflect the balance of world power. Either a simple majority or a three-fifths vote might be required to decide on stuff.

edited 26th Sep '11 5:58:56 AM by SavageHeathen

I find that idea to be really good.

I find it too inflexible. It lasts another 10-15 years and we're back at the same problem of the wrong countries at the table.

I second that. I was thinking of something like that myself; have bigger countrys/areas get more than one seat, while preventing them from swamping everyone else.

The very concept of permanent members bugs me. As has been said before, it prevents flexibility and adaptation to current political balance and gives far to much power to certain countries. Sure, 1 voice for all might be unfair as well, but if one country can overturn the whole UN, i'd say that's just as ugly. So not only should the whole "permanent seat" thing be reconsidered, but a veto right as powerful as this one should have never existed in the first place. Biggest problem: now you've given that power away, taking it back is impossible unless they unanimously decide to relinquish it themselves. Yeah, totally gonna happen.

edited 26th Sep '11 8:18:06 AM by karasu91

The obvious problem with nonpermanent members is they have to be continuously replaced, and does the security council even make sense without certain countries on it?

Having all non-permanent members doesn't necessarily mean the security council represents the balance of power in the world. One could argue it even makes such a result less likely.

I kind of agree, but I think the problem occurred because almost all the nations wanted to join the UN. Its original goal was to make League of Nations more effective. Back then having a collective strength of specific nations made more sense. The direct UN treaty was supposed to only apply to them so that they can be an effective peacekeeping force within the world, and not be the world itself.

Nowadays UN membership has become almost a given for any nation of the world, and thus its powers in security have been devalued.

Now why should the UN stop you when you want to form a country with your land? That doesn't make sense. This itself should not be taken to imply I support Israel or Palestine over the other.

edited 26th Sep '11 12:25:31 PM by abstractematics

The other option is to elect individuals instead of nations.

Which really doesn't work since individual is easier to corrupt than a diplomat representing anation and everyone holds bias to some degree. If a person from US is selected to join Security Council, of course US is going to influence him to hell and back.

I... guess. Compared to the guy just being already in the US pocket. Maybe nothing much would change.

Right now, it seems like the GA is quickly becoming the only place where only useful legislation is ever passed.

Well... it's not particularly fair that we can overrule the world. I don't know whether Savage's proposed solution would work (it seems to work fine on paper), but...

Savage Plan > * 3 seats: EU. (Add one for Germany)

• 2 seats: US, PRC, Russian Federation. (Double their seats to prevent an EU hijack)
• 1 seat(countries): India, Japan, Brazil, Canada, Turkey. (They're major regional and military powers)
• 1 seat (Regional Bodies) Ibero-American Organization, African Union, Arab League, ASEAN, Nordic Council, Pacific Islands Forum. (Give significant alliances representation)

• Europe : 6 (3EU, Nordic, 2Russia)
• NA : 3 (US, Canada)
• SA : 2 (Brazil, Ibero-American Organization)
• Asia : 5 (2China, India, Japan, ASEAN)
• Mid East : 2 (Turkey, Arab League)
• Africa : 1
• Oceania : 1
• Total : 20

Its quite good arrangement, Problem i see is :

• Pakistan and Iran, they big countries and will feel excluded
• Pakistan will jealous to India
• India will demand two vote to make equal to China
• Europe and NA still have a lot of vote compared to population

Changing to Simple majority or 3/5 rule will be good

Another way to change veto rule is that veto must have support of 2 Permanent Security Council or 1 Permanent plus 2 non Permanent will help stop a lot of unnecessary veto.

edited 26th Sep '11 10:43:55 PM by PhilippeO

I'm okay with the permanent seats thing, but I omniloathe the veto. It frankly defeats the entire point of having a vote in the first place. I say, either abolish it entirely, or make the veto mutable (As an example, if three or more permanent members vote 'yes', the veto is overruled. Just a thought.). In any event, the current veto system needs to die in a fire.

• Nobody likes Pakistan or Iran anyway: Excluding them isn't politically problematic. They'll bitch and moan, but they'll be in the same situation as before: No seat. It's not like we're taking theirs away.
• China was there before India, and the PRC would never consent to an equal number of seats. India getting a seat is long overdue, but I doubt they'd be able to get the same seats as China straight away. A later reform would be needed: It wouldn't be too hard for India to gain the support of the Security Council for an extra seat in the future. India would have the play the long game, but it'd pay off for them in the long run.
• Not quite. Europe and the US currently have three-fifths. Their overall weight diminishes, but mostly in the favor of other allies of theirs (Pacific Islands Forum, Brazil, Japan, Canada)

edited 27th Sep '11 1:45:19 PM by SavageHeathen

I think the current system of Vetos is unfair. The permanent SC members can effectively obstruct anything progressive that they don't like. To that end, one country's veto should not be enough. There should be a minimum of two vetoing members.

Or maybe the nations shouldn't depend so much on UN, since after all, there are alternatives. The UN veto, as I've said before, was there with the intention of UN being a specific group and not a global group of about 200 member-nations.

The unanimous consent was a problem in the founding days of the United States, where the states had the similar problem of unanimous consent, so they did a overhaul with a new system. So maybe that's what we needed; a complete overhaul that is not restricted by the existing UN treaty.

That'd probably just mean dissolution of the UNSC and we'd stick with the UNGA. Or that the UNSC attempts to make quick decisions but if that is not possible then it goes to the UNGA.