MINIMUM ORDER: The Role of the UN Security Council in an Era of Major Power Competition

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Amid the uncertainty surrounding the future of international relations, what role can the United Nations Security Council play?
In exploring what the body can do in managing geopolitical tensions in the future, RICHARD GOWAN frames the problems the United Nations is facing differently.
In a new report published by the United Nations University Center for Policy Research, GOWAN aims to identify the minimum level of P5 cooperation necessary for the Security Council to play a significant role in managing major power competition, and how to preserve this minimum.
The United Nations has never suffered from a shortage of proposals for how to improve the Security Council, he writes. Experts began tabling ideas to overcome P5 divisions in the early 1950s. “History has shown that technical roadmaps for resolving the council’s problems normally disappear into diplomatic oblivion.”
In the report, titled ‘MINIMUM ORDER: The role of the Security Council in an era of major power competition’, offers a diagnosis of how poorly the Council is faring as well as a warning about where this may lead. “There is little political point in outlining overly precise terms of a solution to these problems, given the intensity and complexity of the divisions and the crises currently in play,” he writes. “Rather than conclude with specific recommendations, therefore, it may be better to end with a challenge.”
It is clear from current Council dynamics that the forum is drifting towards a situation in which it fails to maintain its basic post-Cold War roles, GOWAN contends. “It is equally evident that this bears significant risks for the P5, even if their behavior does not reflect this.”
The basic challenge for the P5 is to recognize the fragility of their position and to address the need to restore some stability within the council before matters deteriorate much further. It would be useful if P5 members were to initiate – quietly or publicly – some sort of strategic dialogue about how to maintain the basic functions of the council in policing non-proliferation, easing crises and dealing with terrorists. Such a dialogue might be linked to handling specific problems, like the aftermath of the Syrian war, or promoting specific P5-branded initiatives to restore faith in aspects of the non-proliferation regime. “Exactly what such a process should look like is something for all members of the P5 to discuss. This report is a prompt for them to do so.”
If P5 governments are not open to a worthwhile formal strategic dialogue at this time – and their actions suggest that they are not – it may be necessary for security institutes from the five to start probing these questions in a preparatory fashion, GOWAN states. “This may be a long, painful and perhaps quixotic process. The decline of Security Council diplomacy is real, and the need for some sort of vision of what can be salvaged from the mess is growing ever more urgent.”