India on Tuesday asserted it had a “good case” to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a UNSC without it affected the United Nation’s credibility.
Amid India’s consistent growth as a potent power on global stage, the point was made by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar before an influential Washington audience after a major foreign policy speech at a top US think-tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
“If you have...a United Nations where the most populous country in the world--may be in 15 years--with the third largest economy is not in the decision-making of the United Nations, I grant you, it affects the country concerned.
“But I would also suggest it affects the United Nations’ credibility,” said Jaishankar in response to a question after his speech.
“Obviously, we are biased. We believe we have a good case,” he asserted.
“It’s not just the Security Council. Look, say how the peacekeeping operations (are being undertaken) around, who actually kind of decide. There are other angles. I mean, you could argue, who gives the budget and, therefore, that should be a factor. That’s a reasonable proposition,” he said.
“This is one of the key challenges facing the world today, which is all that we took as given over the last 70 years. I’m not suggesting they’re going to disappear or they’ll become irrelevant, but surely things are happening beyond them. And that is creating a new kind of international relations. It’s something which we all need to get real about,” Jaishankar asserted.
Noting that one didn’t have to look too far into the future, he said one actually needed to look back into the past.
“Just look back at the last five years, 10 years, 15 years. What we have seen is that many institutions have come under stress because they’ve lost legitimacy, vitality, (and) efficiency,” he said.
“If significant countries don’t get the substantial interests sorted out, they start looking elsewhere. If you look at the trade, the fact is that you have a proliferation of free trade agreements today and that is because there is the feeling that the global trading arrangement was not going to happen,” he said.
“We see that often in security situations (also) where, if you look at--may be the last decade or two--in the Middle East, you actually have coalitions of countries, partly because they are the only countries who have an interest or in some cases they couldn’t convince other countries or in some cases they went to the United Nations (but) didn’t get the way and so decided they’d do something else,” he said.
This is the reality, he said.
“I accept, I mean, it would not be my case that I would abandon an institution and say an ad hoc solution is preferable to an institution.
“Everybody’s first choice would be the normative choice. But what you have is the reality of countries, which look beyond or look around,” said Jaishankar.