The United Nations Security Council "power of
veto" refers to the veto power wielded solely by the five permanent
members of the United Nations Security Council (China, France, Russia, United
Kingdom, and United States), enabling them to prevent the adoption of any
"substantive" draft Council resolution, regardless of the level of
international support for the draft.
The veto does not apply to procedural
votes, which is significant in that the Security Council's permanent membership
can vote against a "procedural" draft resolution, without necessarily
blocking its adoption by the Council. The veto is exercised when any permanent member—the
so-called "P5"—casts a "negative" vote on a
"substantive" draft resolution. Abstention or absence from the vote
by a permanent member does not prevent a draft resolution from being adopted.
The idea of states having a veto over the actions of
international organizations was not new in 1945. From the foundation of the
League of Nations in 1920, each member of the League Council, whether permanent
or non-permanent, had a veto on any non-procedural issue. From 1920 there were
4 permanent and 4 non-permanent members, but by 1936 the number of
non-permanent members had increased to 11. Thus there were in effect 15 vetoes.
This was one of several defects of the League that made action on many issues
impossible.
The UN Charter provision for unanimity among the Permanent
Members of the Security Council (the veto) was the result of extensive
discussion, including at Dumbarton Oaks (August–October 1944) and Yalta
(February 1945). The evidence is that the UK, US, USSR, and France all favoured
the principle of unanimity, and that they were motivated in this not only by a
belief in the desirability of the major powers acting together, but also by a
hard-headed concern to protect their own sovereign rights and national
interest.Truman, who became President of the US in April 1945, went so far as
to write in his memoirs: "All our experts, civil and military, favored it,
and without such a veto no arrangement would have passed the Senate."
The UNSC veto system was established in order to prohibit
the UN from taking any future action directly against its principal founding
members. One of the lessons of the League of Nations (1919–46) had been that an
international organization cannot work if all the major powers are not members.
The expulsion of the Soviet Union from the League of Nations in December 1939,
following its November 1939 attack on Finland soon after the outbreak of World
War II, was just one of many events in the League's long history of incomplete
membership.
It had already been decided at the UN's founding conference
in 1944, that Britain, China, the Soviet Union, the United States and, "in
due course" France, should be the permanent members of any newly formed
Council. France had been defeated and occupied by Germany (1940–44), but its
role as a permanent member of the League of Nations, its status as a colonial
power and the activities of the Free French forces on the allied side allowed
it a place at the table with the other four The actual use of the veto, and the constant possibility of
its use, have been central features of the functioning of the Security Council
throughout the UN's history.
In the period from 1945 to the end of 2009, 215
resolutions on substantive issues were vetoed, sometimes by more than one of
the Permanent Five. The average number of vetoes cast each year to 1989 was
over five: since then the average annual number has been just above one The figures reflect the fact that a Permanent Member of the
Security Council can avoid casting a veto if the proposal in question does not
in any event obtain the requisite majority. In the first two decades of the UN,
the Western states were frequently able to defeat resolutions without actually
using the veto; and the Soviet Union was in this position in the 1970s and 1980.
Use of the veto has reflected a degree of diplomatic
isolation of the vetoing state on the particular issue. Because of the use or
threat of the veto, the Security Council could at best have a limited role in
certain wars and interventions in which its Permanent Members were involved –
for example in Algeria (1954–62); Suez (1956), Hungary (1956), Vietnam (1946–75),
the Sino-Vietnamese war (1979), Afghanistan (1979–88), Panama (1989), Iraq
(2003), and Georgia (2008).
Not all cases of UN inaction in crises have been due to
actual use of the veto. For example, re the Iran–Iraq war of 1980–88 there was
no use of the veto, but the UN role was minimal except in its concluding phase.
Likewise the limited involvement of the UN in the crisis in the Darfur region
of Sudan from 2003 onwards was not due to any actual use of the veto. A general
lack of willingness to act was the main problem.
Since 1990 the veto has been used sparingly. The period from
31 May 1990 to 11 May 1993 was the longest without use of the veto in the
history of the UN. Up until the end of 1989 the number of resolutions passed by
the Security Council had been 646 – an average of about 15 per annum. The
figures for the years since then show a peak of Security Council activism in
1993, followed by a modest degree of retrenchment.
In 1950 the Soviet Union missed one important opportunity to
exercise its veto power. The Soviet government had adopted an "empty
chair" policy at the Security Council from January 1950, owing to its
discontent over the UN's refusal to recognize the People's Republic of China's
representatives as the legitimate representatives of China, and with the hope
of preventing any future decisions by the Council on substantive matters.
Despite the wording of the Charter (which makes no
provisions for passing resolutions with the abstention or absence of a
veto-bearing member), this was treated as a non-blocking abstention. This had
in fact already become Council practice by that time, the Council having
already adopted numerous draft resolutions despite the lack of an affirmative
vote by each of its permanent members.
The result of the Soviet Union's absence from the Security
Council was that it was not in a position to veto the UN Security Council
resolutions 83 (27 June 1950) and 84 (7 July 1950) authorising the US-led
military coalition in Korea which assisted South Korea in repelling the North
Korean attack.
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