Power

Following my shock horror at reference 1, I read an allegation today that the reason we keep Trident is to keep our permanent place on the UN Security Council - a rather bad reason to my mind. So I offer my thoughts on that august body.

Given that the General Assembly is a one country one vote outfit, without regard to size, rather like the US Senate, we need some balance, rather like the US House of Representatives.

So I suggest a Security Council of roughly twenty, five more than now and about as big as a meeting can get and still do real work. By way of comparison, roughly the size of the UK cabinet fifty years ago, when we were a more important country than we are now. Contrariwise, this number has now crept up to around 30, a number thought by many to be too many.

Members appointed for three year terms.

A country is a member if it is in the top ten by size of either population or economy. As well as capturing the traditional big boys, this also ropes in a good number of the larger, newer economies, presently excluded. Using the 'Economist' book of useful facts & figures for 2014, we get: China, India, United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, Japan, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy. Note that the purchasing power parity business is not an issue today, but that it may well become one in the future; an opportunity for the statisticians.

The number is made up to twenty by election from and by the General Assembly, which is encouraged to be sympathetic about near misses on rule 1 and to be sensible about realpolitik. It would not be helpful, for example, to drop Russia. A tricky one would be Saudi Arabia: how could you let them in without letting in Iran? Perhaps they could be persuaded to take it in turns.

The overall effect of this is that the small countries wind up with a rather reduced chance of an occasional appearance. To my mind their loss is more than made up for by getting all the big boys around the table. And perhaps the presentational change is as important as the change of membership; that is to say the abolition of the distinction between permanent members and temporary members, a distinction which retains the odour of the old world bossing the new one about, an odour the new one has probably had enough of.

All disputes about membership of the table to be settled by simple majority vote of the General Assembly.

The General Assembly is also given some latitude to tune the rules.

An arrangement which would let those Brits who want to play at power politics down gently. We would keep our seat for now, but probably not for ever. How long will it take Mexico, for example, to double its economy and overtake us? Canada does not have the population and seems much less likely.

An arrangement which would no doubt result in some unseemly rough & tumble at first, but hopefully things would settle down.

PS: an arrangement which forgets the second world war and lets the Axis powers in from the cold, on the grounds of the sizes of their economies. Realpolitik again.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/shock-horrors.html.

Reference 2: http://www.un.org/en/sc.