Canada’s loss to Portugal in its bid for a seat on the UN Security Council caused quite an uproar in the Canadian media. Some deemed it a historical defeat for Canada, recalling that since the founding of the Security Council in 1945, this is the first time Canada has lost its bid for a seat amongst the non-permanent members. Speculations and arguments were thrown around as to explain the decisive reason behind the loss, and the Toronto Star even published a top 10 list of possible explanations for the rebuff.
Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon laid the blame for Canada’s defeat on Liberal Party Leader Michael Ignatieff, who had previously questioned whether Canada deserved the seat considering the Conservative government’s international policies throughout the past four years. The Prime Minister’s Office has offered similar reasoning. According to this account, Ignatieff had presented a disunited view of Canada, therefore undermining the credibility of its bid and its chances to be elected.
This reasoning, not surprisingly, implies that Canada does indeed deserve a seat on the UN Security Council. If it were not for the untimely and imprudent remarks made by the Liberal Leader, we would have been spared the international embarrassment of losing to Portugal.
The attempt to reduce the issue to a matter of treachery on Ignatieff’s part is a deliberate strategy to shift the focus away from a debate on whether or not Canada truly deserves to be called a model democracy and a peace-loving country at all. Regardless of whether or not Ignatieff’s comments had the damaging effects that Harper’s government would have us believe, there are innumerable reasons to suggest Canada did not deserve a seat on the Council. Canada’s general foreign policy, including a rigidly pro-Israel stance in the Middle East, involvement in the mission in Afghanistan, and its cuts to foreign aid to Africa are a few of such reasons. Canada’s position on climate change and its complete disregard for aboriginal rights should also be mentioned. And while we’re at it, let us not forget the G20 and the attack on civil rights and democracy that occurred this summer.
But before worrying about whether or not Canada deserved a seat on the UN Security Council, we need to ask ourselves: is the UN Security Council really the justice-loving and peace-spreading body that it is represented as? Furthermore, are the member countries truly chosen on the basis of their contribution to and genuine desire to bring about world peace and justice?
The UN Security Council was founded in 1945, after the end of World War II, to maintain “international security and peace.” There are five permanent members (the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China) and 10 non-permanent members on the Council with two year terms. Who elected the permanent members? you might ask. No one, really. Being the superpowers they were (and still are), they sort of elected themselves.
The permanent members, who are all nuclear powers, possess the notorious and exclusive veto power, which enables any of them to prevent the adoption of any substantive draft council resolution by casting a negative vote. What this means is that any one of them has the power of preventing any major decisions in the Council from being made. To put it more bluntly, no major resolution can pass unless all five members are for it.
To top off the mockery of democracy that this veto power makes of the whole decision-making process in the Council, we need only to remember a few well-known instances of the its intervention — or, in most cases, non-intervention — in international affairs for our remaining illusions about its humanitarian nature to shatter.
In 1994, when Rwanda was in desperate need of help amidst the genocide that resulted in the death of close to a million civilians, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 912, by which it reduced the number of assistance forces to Rwanda from 2,000 to 270 before reluctantly increasing it again just before the genocide ended. Oil-rich Kuwait, on the other hand, was protected following the Iraqi occupation. The United States is quick to veto any resolutions critical of Israel, and has done so 32 times in the past 20 years. The list goes on.
Canada didn’t get a seat on the UN Security Council, whether for Ignatieff’s comments or its government’s hardly concealed disregard for international welfare and democracy. But even if it had received a seat, this by itself wouldn’t have redeemed Canada’s reputation as a peace-loving nation. This would not have meant that Canada would be involved in promoting justice and eliminating discrimination throughout the world (which, let’s face it, is not the Harper government’s number one concern at the moment). It would only have made Canada another member of a largely undemocratic decision-making body which is, for the most part, controlled by the five biggest arms-dealing countries in the world, and which has frequently made decisions based on purely strategic — and not humanitarian-interests. So let us not shed any tears over Canada’s humiliated pride. We have bigger things to worry about.
