The Real Security Council: Princeton Chimes In

When I picked the top 15 countries and called them “the Real Security Council” (chart above), I wasn’t out to reform the UN. I was just making the point that we can identify the 15 most important nations, and should look at the world by starting with them.

Two people who are serious about reforming the UN, G. John Ikenberry and Anne-Marie Slaughter of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, have presented their plan for reforming the Security Council. Along the lines of my top 15, they argue that:

We need a Security Council that is both representative and effective. That means expanding its membership to include Germany, Japan, India, Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria and at least one Muslim nation such as Egypt or Indonesia. . .

Expanding the Security Council membership has been on the UN's agenda for more than 15 years, spawning countless working groups and task forces and rounds of diplomatic wrangling. Germany, Japan, India and Brazil have been the most vocal countries in seeking a Security Council seat . . .

My list would add Mexico, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Italy to their Germany, Japan, India, Brazil, Nigeria, and Indonesia, and would omit South Africa (with only 27 million people). Still, our lists are similar. And Ikenberry/Slaughter are also willing to go outside the UN to make this all work, proposing “a new organization for liberal democracies willing to commit themselves to a stringent set of obligations toward one another.”

Called a Concert of Democracies, this organization . . . would not be "the West versus the rest," but would instead include countries such as India, South Africa, Turkey, Indonesia, South Korea, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Its creation would also signal that the world is not stuck forever with old institutions if they cannot be reformed for a new world.

South Africa, Turkey, South Korea, and Argentina are all in my “Next 25,” which while I didn't advocate an organization, I see as part of a more sensible way of viewing the world than today's absurd UN, which treats 192 nations as equal.