In several stories, I've advocated ways the United States can navigate the current Cold War, avoid a hot war, and establish forms of international law to move in the right direction both now and after Cold War II, whenever it ends.
I've written about power blocks working together to establish norms and have talked about reforming the United Nations or moving to a successor organization. The UN General Assembly recently engaged in intense negotiations around the UN's Summit of the Future. A key question for world leaders was reforming the UN Security Council, arguably the UN's most influential forum.
Writers Ovigwe Eguegu, Hannah Ryder, and Trevor Lwere, in their story "Africa's Design for a Reform UN Security Council", let us know how much has changed since the UN Security Council started in 1945: "The UNSC was put together by the major powers following World War II in 1945, a period when most African nations were still under colonial rule with no representation in international affairs. Today, Africa is highly overrepresented in the problems the UNSC addresses: as recently as 2018, over 50 percent of council meetings and 70 percent of its resolutions concerned Africa's peace and security, but the makeup of the UNSC remains as it was in 1945. The UNSC maintains a structure of five 'permanent' members who also have a veto each, plus 10 rotating members elected for two-year terms by the General Assembly and have no veto. Of the total 15, there are always three African seats; however, they are always within the 'rotating' group and have no veto."
In 2005, a group of African leaders called the African Union Committee of Ten was established to push for a common African position on reform of the UNSC. In the same year, the African Union adopted two documents to serve as the framework for its common position on UN reforms; the first was the Ezulwini Consensus, and the second was the Sirte Declaration, adopted this summer. The consensus contained reform points for the UN, such as boosting its capacity to address development challenges and governance, increasing African participation by expanding the UN secretariat, and calling for Africa "to be fully represented in all the decision-making organs of the UN, particularly in the Security Council, where the continent should have no less than two permanent seats."
In 2023, during the UNGA's annual debate, the then-president, Dennis Francis, admitted that without reform, the effectiveness and legitimacy of the UNSC would only be further compromised. In 2024, during a UN debate on Africa's participation in the UNSC, Sierra Leonean president Julius Maada Bio demanded that Africa have two permanent and non-permanent seats on the UNSC. In international politics, we can see a movement in a specific direction.
In the summer of 2024, the United Kingdom used its rotating presidency of the UNSC to call for the expansion of the UNSC's permanent seats to include Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan, as well as African representation. This fall, the US declared that it will support adding two African countries as permanent members of the UNSC if these countries have no veto power.
When discussing the UNSC and the balance of power in the world, it's also essential to look at the history of international relations since the breakup of the Soviet Union. The first Cold War brought us a bipolar world with two superpowers - the US and Soviet Russia. The US remained the only superpower after the Soviet Union's breakup. Other competing powers, China and Russia - leaders in a totalitarian/authoritarian orbit that includes other states - are challenging the US-led order both ideologically and militarily; this orbit's influence in Africa is a problem.
However, one can't deny that Africa makes up a more significant percentage of the world's economic output than it did in the past. For this reason, the AU deserves a spot on the UN Security Council or perhaps a successor organization, as the UN might be unsalvageable, as I've previously stated. In the future, the AU could be responsible for maintaining African peace. Other powers like the US, EU (with the UK), China, and Russia could maintain peace in their neighborhoods. This is a long-term plan, of course. The authoritarian orbit's excursion into other hemispheres makes it difficult. Still, something like Franklin Roosevelt's Four Policemen could emerge if this orbit's influence fades away in time, but that's a matter for another story.
Jason Sibert is the Lead Writer of the Peace Economy Project
