How veto powers stymied UN memberships
Thalif DEEN
UNITED NATIONS: The exercise of veto powers to bar countries
from UN membership — a relic of the Cold War — is threatening to make a
comeback in the politics of the world body.
The United States is expected to introduce a resolution in the
Security Council, perhaps next week or before the end of July, seeking
UN membership for Kosovo, the breakaway former province of the
now-defunct Yugoslavia. But Russia, the successor state to the former
Soviet Union, is threatening to use its veto to bar Serbia’s UN
administered Kosovo from the world body.
The United Nations Headquarters in New York
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The United States is insisting that the 15-member Security Council
act on Kosovo as soon as possible, but Russia, a close ally of Serbia,
wants the proposal stalled. Moscow is opposed to the Albanian-inhabited
Kosovo seceding from Serbia. But a political compromise is currently
under closed-door negotiations.
A similar deadlock could arise if and when there is an eventual
break-up of Iraq into three nation states — Shia, Sunni and Kurds —
while there are other potential nation states in the political horizon,
including Western Sahara and the breakaway Moldovan province of Trans-Dniester
and the Georgian province of South Ossetia, according to UN diplomats.
All of these could sooner or later trigger U.S.-Russian political
confrontation in the world body — primarily over UN recognition. Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has dismissed US attempts to resolve the
Kosovo problem by posing the question: “Why don’t we solve the case of
Western Sahara first?” — a longstanding dispute where the United States
is backing its ally Morocco against the Polisario seeking an independent
nation state in North Africa.
At the height of the Cold War in the 1960s and 70s, the two
superpowers wielded their Security Council vetoes arrogantly — and most
of the time unjustifiably — barring countries from UN membership
primarily for political reasons or to protect their own national
interests.
The United States shut out countries considered Soviet “allies” and
the Russians barred countries either “friendly” to the U.S. or political
buddies of other Western nations such as Britain and France, the other
two members with veto powers in the Security Council.
Whether or not an independent nation state had the legitimate right
to be a member of the world body hardly mattered. The Soviets used Cold
War political logic to bar Italy from the United Nations by casting
their vetoes at least six times and against Japan four times.
The United States, on the other hand, used its veto seven times
barring Vietnam from the world body, and cast it once against
post-independent Angola (both countries with political or military ties
to the Soviet Union).
Asked if the threat against Kosovo is a throwback to the days of the
Cold War, Stephen Zunes, a professor of politics at the University of
San Francisco, sounded sceptical. “There are some unique circumstances
which apply to Kosovo which set it apart from the U.S. and Soviet vetoes
from the era of East-West rivalry,” he told IPS.
Unlike most countries which have applied for membership in the United
Nations, he pointed out that few countries, if any, currently recognise
Kosovo as an independent nation.
“Despite the will of the vast majority of that nation for
independence and their recent history of persecution by the Serbs,
Kosovo has long been recognised by the international community as part
of Serbia,” Zunes said.
The Russians and Chinese — which have their own restless national
minorities — are concerned at the precedent it would set for the United
Nations to recognize a secessionist movement, said Zunes, who closely
monitors Security Council voting.
Finally, he added, even those who are broadly sympathetic with the
Kosovar Albanians’ nationalist ambitions fear that full independence
could lead to a resurgence of ultra-nationalism in Serbia just as that
country’s democratic forces are struggling to consolidate power and
thereby risk once again destabilising the region.
Ernest Corea, a former Sri Lankan ambassador to the United States and
a newspaper editor who covered the U.N. General Assembly sessions in the
1950s, says the admission of his home country (then Ceylon) to the
United Nations was vetoed by the Soviet Union four times.
He said this was one the highest number of vetoes suffered by an
independent nation seeking UN admission. What was at issue, primarily,
was a Ceylon-British defence agreement under which, for instance,
Britain had control of an airport and a naval base in the island nation.
Still, when the country was eventually admitted to the United Nations
on Dec. 14, 1955 — as part of a “package deal” accepted by both
superpowers — the Constitution remained unchanged, and the
Ceylon-British defence agreement remained intact, He said 16 countries
were admitted to the United Nations under the “package deal.” They
included Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania — and Italy. “These cold
war quirks are now best forgotten,” Corea told IPS.
The misuse of the veto both by the United States and the Soviet Union
has had a long Cold War history since the United Nations was created
over 61 years ago.
The last veto barring U.N. membership to any country was cast against
Vietnam by the Unites States back in November 1976. But Vietnam and the
U.S. are now in such friendly terms that U.S. President George W. Bush
made a formal visit to Vietnam recently.
“In international politics, the wheel of fortune keeps on turning as
yesterday’s mortal enemies become today’s dearest friends,” says one
Asian diplomat.
Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the
Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, says the threat of a
Russian (and possibly Chinese) veto over Kosovo is not the beginning of
a new cold war.
Rather, it is “a statement from Moscow that while they will acquiesce
to the assertion of U.S. power in the United Nations in most arenas of
the world (Iraq, Israel-Palestine, even Iran), there are some issues
just too close to Russian self-interest to allow unchallenged U.S.
domination.”
“While the tiny province of Kosovo itself holds far more symbolic
than strategic significance for Russia, Putin will also have to take
Russian public opinion into account,” Bennis told IPS.
Many in the U.S. and Europe may see U.N. membership as decreasingly
important, viewing it rather as a not-very-meaty bone to throw to the
Kosovars, but it should not be forgotten that for the 117-member
Non-Aligned Movement, and countries of the Global South in general, U.N.
membership remained the most powerful validating symbol of independence,
said Bennis, author of “Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and
the U.N. Defy U.S. Power”.
After years of struggle — wars, mobilizations, enormous sacrifice —
the first thing most newly independent governments did throughout the
history of decolonisation was to send a delegation to take their seats
in the General Assembly hall, she added. “While Russia and China may
well be responding to narrow nationalist interests, the legacy of that
relationship between U.N. membership and real independence remains
potent,” Bennis said.
Inter Press Service |