Richard Gowan on the U.S. Push for UN Security Council Reform
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 22 June 2023
⏱️ 51 minutes
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Summary
At the United Nations, Russia's obstruction of efforts to respond to its invasion of Ukraine is finally sparking serious interest in an issue that has long simmered in the background of global politics: reform of the UN Security Council to make it a larger and more inclusive body. In contrast to prior U.S. administrations, the Biden administration is at the tip of the spear of this effort and may be preparing to release a reform proposal of its own in the coming weeks.
To better understand this forthcoming proposal and the context that has led to it, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Richard Gowan, an experienced UN watcher and current UN Director at the International Crisis Group. They discussed why the Ukraine conflict has sparked an interest in Security Council reform, what reform is likely to look like, and who stands to benefit the most.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
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| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | The threshold for security council reform is extraordinarily high, |
| 0:41.0 | because it requires reforms to the UN charter. |
| 0:45.0 | And under the terms of the charter itself, |
| 0:48.0 | you cannot make any edits to the document without ratifications |
| 0:53.0 | from two thirds of the UN membership, |
| 0:56.0 | including all of the existing permanent members of the Security Council. |
| 1:01.0 | So, at the end of the day, even if by some happy miracle, |
| 1:07.0 | the Biden administration was able to get consensus on some sort of package |
| 1:14.0 | for security council reform, or at least if it was able to get majority support |
| 1:20.0 | for security council reform, that still has to be ratified in Beijing, |
| 1:24.0 | it still has to be ratified in Moscow, and possibly most challenging of all, |
| 1:30.0 | it would have to be ratified in Washington by the Senate. |
| 1:35.0 | I'm Scott R. Anderson, and this is the LawFair podcast for June 22, 2023. |
| 1:41.0 | At the United Nations, Russia's obstruction of efforts to respond |
| 1:44.0 | with invasion of Ukraine is finally sparking serious interest |
| 1:47.0 | and an issue that has long simmered in the background of global politics, |
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