UN must give middle powers greater say or risk losing relevance

As the new 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly opened last week, its member states faced a dark and gloomy global context amid the UN’s own waning credibility. When the UN was set up towards the end of World War II, its key purpose was to prevent global wars. Its member states were supposed to achieve this through both peaceful dialogue as well as coercive measures against renegade states. Decades later, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza, there are concerns the UN has lost its ability to prevent or even deter states from invading each other. In the past few days, both wars have escalated and broadened. Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a warning that his country would use nuclear weapons if it was struck by conventional missiles. Meanwhile, fears of a region-wide war in the Middle East were sparked when an Israeli air strike killed Hassan Nasrallah, chief of the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah. Amid the fighting, the UN’s own personnel have also become targets. Last year marked the deadliest year on record for humanitarian workers worldwide. Since last October, more than 280 aid workers have been killed in Gaza alone, many of them staff members of the UN agency helping Palestinian refugees in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East. Similar violence has been directed against humanitarian workers in Ukraine. Yet despite the mounting casualties, world powers have been unable to come together to take action. In the aftermath of the Cold War, US influence often helped cobble together consensus at the UN Security Council. That era came to an end following the US-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, which left the leadership of the UN heavily diluted. Consequently, the use of the veto by members of the Security Council has risen in the past 10 years as world powers have prioritised their narrow geopolitical interests over international norms. Between January 2022 and April 2024, permanent council members used their veto 18 times. For context, the veto has been used 320 times since the UN’s inception. Emerging middle powers have added to this complex interplay of narrow national interests. Countries such as India, Brazil and South Africa have argued for years that multilateral institutions have failed the world by excluding large parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America from decision-making. In recent years, cut off from diplomatic negotiations over global wars, these countries have ended up undermining those efforts while trying to protect their own narrow interests in a volatile world. In Ukraine, for instance, middle powers from the Global South have undercut the West’s efforts to bring Russia to the negotiating table by bypassing sanctions. India’s imports of oil from Russia have ballooned since the start of the invasion, and in July it overtook China to become the world’s biggest importer of Russian oil. South Africa has similarly maintained military and economic ties with Russia despite an initial condemnation of Moscow’s invasion. In the Middle East, Washington’s efforts to press Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to strike a deal have been thwarted. This is another sign of diluted leverage. While the United States remains Israel’s most important ally, reports in recent months suggest that India has stepped in to help Israel diversify its military supplies by shipping explosives, missiles and drones. Some of these policies are a result of cold, hard economic and strategic calculations. Middle powers are increasingly trying to maintain their strategic autonomy in a deeply fractious world by engaging with a diversity of partners. But some of it is also the result of a diluted stake in the success of the international order. Given the relatively weaker status accorded to them by post-World War II multilateral institutions, middle powers increasingly find themselves at odds with those institutions. Feeling locked out of those councils, they instead have promoted and relied on minilateral alternatives where they hope to find more of a voice. The Brics forum, for instance, has seen increased interest in recent years from a range of countries, even Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. As the experience in Ukraine and Gaza has shown thus far, no consensus solution can be found or enforced in an increasingly multipolar world without the involvement of the world’s emerging middle powers. In the absence of buy-in from those countries or transparent communication with them, neither side in any of the world’s conflicts is likely to find a resolution which is credible enough to last. Some traditionalists might balk at the idea of expanding membership in forums such as the UN Security Council. They might argue that if the world’s existing great powers are unable to come to an agreement among themselves, the presence of more countries is only likely to add to the diplomatic deadlock. On the contrary, though, the involvement of middle powers could make common ground more possible given their diversified relationships with the warring great powers. Countries such as India, South Africa, Brazil, Turkey and others each maintain varying degrees of partnership and cooperation with the US, China and Russia. As a result, they also enjoy varying degrees of leverage over both sides. To that extent, their presence in the world’s decision-making councils could facilitate communication and diplomacy between the great powers. The post-World War II global architecture appears to be no longer capable of building diplomatic consensus, preventing wars or imposing costs on aggressors without the involvement and buy-in of the world’s middle powers. The sooner the UN reforms, the better it will function.

UN must give middle powers greater say or risk losing relevance

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The post-World War II global system cannot build consensus, prevent wars or impose costs on aggressors without involving the middle powers

The post-World War II global system cannot build consensus, prevent wars or impose costs on aggressors without involving the middle powers