Reform of the United Nations Security Council, mooted several times over the years but with little progress to show on ground, has returned to the international agenda with the call of UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly to find places for India, Japan, Brazil, Germany and a country from the African continent at the high table. In his speech at the Chatham House London conference over the weekend, Mr. Cleverly listed this reform at the top of his list of transnational priorities saying it would usher the UNSC into the 2020s. He reminded his audience that the Security Council had been expanded before in 1965, and there was no reason it could not happen again. The United Kingdom has supported the expansion of the Security Council in the past, but its pitch for the reform at this time is important because there are sharp schisms in the world order, and there is increasing if grudging realisation that countries of the Global South led by India may be the ones to address many of these challenges.

India carries considerable heft in the world, not just because of its rotational leadership of important bodies such as the G20 but more because of its ability and willingness to champion ideas that find resonance. For instance, Mr. Cleverly readily acknowledged ~ and supported ~ India’s proposal for the African Union to have permanent representation at the G20, while noting that the economic centre of gravity is shifting from the Euro-Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific. Further, he pointed out, Europe’s population would have shrunk from 10 per cent of the world’s total to 5 per cent by 2100, while Africa’s, for instance, would grow from 18 to 37 per cent. These realities must be acknowledged by the permanent members of the Security Council, whose veto powers could frustrate any moves for expansion that the General Assembly may endorse. A serious move for UNSC reform was mooted by former Secretary-General Kofi Annan nearly two decades ago, but it failed to make headway. He had suggested two plans ~ one of which called for the addition of six new permanent members and the other for a new class of non-permanent members who would serve for four years each.

American economist Jeffrey Sachs had in a speech delivered some years ago stressed the need for at least four Asian seats, one held permanently by India, another shared by Japan and South Korea, one for Asean, and a fourth that would rotate among other Asian countries. These and several other proposals have appeared to gather steam at different points of time, and then fizzled away. New Delhi will, of course, hope that notwithstanding the UK’s reduced role in world affairs, Mr. Cleverly’s words find resonance in the world’s capitals. In the ultimate analysis though, and because there is widespread agreement that among the claimants India has the strongest case, it will all depend on a certain gentleman perched in Beijing.