On June 17, for the eighth time in the United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) history, India was elected as a non-permanent member. This comes as India and China relations have reached a point where the two countries are hell-bent in shunning each other’s advances at the LAC.
They say good fences make good neighbours. But, amid border tensions between India and China, the timing of India getting a seat as a non-permanent member of the UNSC, where China is already a permanent member, is more significant and in fact throws up a diplomatic challenge for both the countries.
Non-permanent members are elected by the UN General Assembly by way of voting and a country needs to attain two-third majority to get elected. This time India got 184 out of 193-member General Assembly.
India last donned this ‘non-permanent’ member’s cap at the UNSC in 2011-2012, this was when it was all hunky-dory between the two countries.
How important is it for India?
Policy-wise, across successive governments, India has laid special emphasis on getting a seat at the high table.
The non-permanent seat is allotted on rotation and, hence, India was to get a seat only in the 2030s after the 2011-2012 stint.
India threw in the hat once again as soon as her term as a non-permanent member of UNSC ended for another stint in 2021-2022 after Afghanistan, in a rare gesture, thanks to good bilateral relations, withdrew its candidature.
In 2019, a 55-member Asia-Pacific group that included China and Pakistan endorsed India for a seat in 2021-2022.
One can say there is intent, ambition and reason in India’s efforts. India knows about Pakistan’s challenge, a non-permanent seat at the UNSC helps raise India’s voice louder among the bigwigs.
The other reason is to tame the two-pronged attack by China in terms of its bonhomie with Pakistan on one end and recurring border disagreements on the other.
More pronounced now as China flexes its muscle in Ladakh.
Non-permanent members’ power
Ian Hurd, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Weinberg College Center for International and Area Studies at Northwestern University, suggests that non-permanent Council membership is a source of ‘symbolic power conferred through being on the Council’. For Hurd, the non-permanent membership is not about real power, but about the ‘apparent proximity to real power’.
He writes in his book, After Anarchy, that “the logic that drives states to seek non-permanent seats assumes that there is a payoff for the winning state, measured in terms of enhanced influence over Council decisions. However, the decision-making influence of non-permanent members is extremely low, and there are reasons to believe that it has been declining further in recent years. Therefore, the payoff to winning a non-permanent seat has been greatly reduced.”
The benefit of a non-permanent seat, hence, can be best defined as symbolic but effective if one looks at it in terms of building favourable opinions about a cause or garnering support of decision makers on issues of security.
Hence, for India facing a belligerent China, a non-permanent seat is a good opportunity to let her word known to the world.
Fight for permanent seat
Alternatively, India has long supported calls for expansion of UNSC for adequate global representation in its pitch for a permanent seat at the UNSC.
This also builds from the fact that non-permanent seat holders at the UNSC do not hold any power.
Kishore Mahbubani, the Permanent Representative of Singapore to the UN when Singapore served on the Council in 2001–2002, points out in The UN Security Council: From the Cold War to the 21st Century a book by David M. Malone, that this ‘structural weakness in the Council has resulted from a dichotomy the permanent five members have been given power without responsibility; the non-permanent members have been given responsibility without power.’
Read our complete coverage on the India-China border tension.
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