Now that the United Nations Secretary-General has presented to the General Assembly his program for managerial and fiscal reform, attention is being refocused on the even more controversial proposals for UN Charter reform. In his September 22 address to the General Assembly, President Clinton expressed strong "support for expanding the Security Council to give more countries a voice in the most important work of the UN." Before embracing any nebulous proposal for enlarging the Security Council, many tough questions will have to be faced.

Underlying is the question of whether the current UN system responds to the realities of the twenty-first century. Even if not, and with all of its faults and weaknesses, there is no existing alternative.

Of course the Security Council is a relic of the past. It enables the Permanent Five to retain the power they enjoyed in the aftermath of their World War II victory. But time marched on, and the size and composition of World Organization changed. UN membership has ballooned from 51 to 185 states.

However, this "relic" has been of some use in maintaining a sense of world order, particularly since the end of the Cold War. In recent years, the Security Council has mobilized forces in many regions. It has also acted as a sort of UN executive committee in some of its most vital decisions and operations.

Moreover, under the current system, every region has at least one representative on the Security Council at any given time. To fill the ten non-permanent seats, each regional group puts forward its candidates, from which the General Assembly elects the representatives. Non-permanent members serve on the Council for a two-year period.

If enlargement is necessary, then reformers will be face to face with some controversial questions. The Clinton administration had originally suggested expanding the permanent membership to include Germany and Japan. While this would extend permanent status to two former enemy states, it would only increase the Council’s "developed" membership. Accordingly, shop talk has turned to the notion of a Council composed of permanent members from all continents and regions, not just as present-–from North America, Europe, and (Chinese) Asia.

Such proposals raise questions of which state or states from each region should be given permanent status. From South America, should the representative be Portuguese-speaking Brazil, the largest and most populous nation in the region and a top-ten contributor to the UN’s regular budget, or Spanish-speaking Argentina? From Africa, should the representative be the most populous state, Nigeria, multiracial South Africa, or Egypt, the oldest and a Muslim state. From (non-Chinese) Asia, should the representative be India, a democracy of nearly one billion people, or Pakistan? Should Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim state, represent Southeast Asia? And should proposals to extend membership to Germany and Japan be shelved? Should the memberships of Great Britain, France, and Germany be merged into a single European Union seat? The process of allocating new seats may actually exacerbate tensions within the UN.

A diminution of Western power will be the result of any significant enlargement of the Council and certainly of its permanent membership. Of course, the Council, in its present form, is inconsistent with the Charter principle of the "equality of nations." Still, if its membership is increased to some 25 or more states, the Council may become a smaller version of the unwieldy and quarrelsome General Assembly. Although the General Assembly is sometimes described as "humanity’s parliament," it fails the ultimate test of democracy when states such as San Marino have the same voting power as the United States and China.

The issue of the veto inevitably arises in any discussion of UN Charter reform involving the Security Council. This power, demanded by the Permanent Five in 1945, will be relentlessly defended in the year 2000, not only by the United States and not only in the American Congress. The veto of the Permanent Five is for now set in concrete, which raises the question of whether there is any equitable basis for denying new permanent members the most cherished right attached to such a seat. Yet to extend the veto privilege would be a voyage into the unknown.

President Clinton has been shrewd in expressing his enthusiasm for Security Council enlargement without identifying a concrete reform proposal. He has given expression to a concern troubling many UN Member States, without advancing prospects for reform. Enlarging the Security Council may be meritorious. But the devil lurks in the details.