End the U.S. Veto at United Nations
January 2, 2025
by William P. Meyers

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Security Council Vetoes are Undemocratic and Cripple the U.N.

Likely the most important obstacle to good world governance is the ability of the permanent Security Council members to veto proposals at the U.N. (United Nations).

As a result, it is possible for every member nation in the world to back a proposal, and a single nation is able to veto the proposal. There is no mechanism for overriding a veto. The nations with veto power are the United States of America (USA), United Kingdom (England or Britain), Russia, China, and France. Each of these nations has a nuclear weapons arsenal. However, there are several nations that have nuclear weapons that do not have veto power. [See UN Charter, Chapter V] The Security Council originally had 6 additional members, for a total of 11. Currently the Security Council has the 5 permanent members plus 10 ordinary members, for a total of 15. It takes 9 members to pass something, so a bit more than a majority of 8. So if the 5 permanent powers agree, they just need 4 more votes to get a resolution passed. But if any permanent member rejects a measure, too bad for the 10 ordinary member nations. Amendments to the U.N. Charter also require all permanent members of the Security Council to agree.

Note that the principle often proclaimed as sacred in the United States, One man, One vote [or a gender-neutral version of this], is not adhered to in the U.N. Of the permanent Security Council members, the two with the smallest current populations, United Kingdom and France, each have a population of near 68 million. Given that the world's population is near 8 billion, either one of these nations, with less that 1% of the world's population, can thwart the rest of the world.

One nation, India, that does not have a permanent seat on the Security Council, has a population of over 1.4 billion. It's population is greater than all of the nations with permanent security council seats, less China, combined.

The governance problems from this archaic, racist, undemocratic system are severe and are verging on the catastrophic in this age of global warming.

As discussed in The Earth Needs a Global EPA, a lack of a global government and global regulations for environmental protection has led to a significant increase in global temperatures since the pre-industrial baseline. The effects of this temperature increase include more severe storms, drought, crop failures and famine, deaths due to extreme heat, and melting of ice leading to rising sea levels. So far these impacts have hit less developed nations disproportionately. In the United States they have led to local crop failures, high insurance rates, and an increase in heat-related deaths.

If not for the veto power of the five permanent Security Council members, it would be a lot easier to reform the U.N. to make it function more like a genuine global government. Its most important function would be protecting the earth with a global EPA. There is no need for a U.N. with absolute power over everything. It would work somewhat like the federal system in the U.S., where local governments have some powers, state governments have some, and the national government has some.

In the United States, in the 1970s, people realized a national Environmental Protection Agency was necessary because localities and states were often controlled by interests that did not want to curb their pollution or ecologically-destructive behavior. The same is going on at an international scale. Many nations, including the United States, are refusing to do what is necessary to limit fossil fuel production and consumption. On the other hand many nations want the world to do more, but find no workable mechanism for doing that. Something needs to be done to force the powerful, whether nations or industries, to do what is right for the world.

Clearly environmentalists in the U.S. should force the U.S. to give up its veto power in the U.N. That will take some pressure from below, since politicians (even greenish ones) almost never want to relinquish power. If the U.S. were willing to make this reform, the other members of the Unjust Veto Club could be pressured to go along.

In arguing to end the veto power of the U.S., or at least allow the General Assembly to override it at times, it can be pointed out that President Harry Truman was against the permanent Security Council members having absolute vetoes. For details see his Memoirs, page 279. However, the other Powers insisted on this.

There are certainly other reforms of the U.N. that would improve global governance. They cannot be achieved without getting rid of the veto. So let's start with that.

Whatever else you do for the environment in 2025, let people know you support a global EPA. We all know reform is difficult within corrupt systems, but this achievable provided we push hard enough for it.

I know many environmenalists will say: that is too hard, won't work. But the history of environmental protection, so far, has been one step forward, three steps back. It may seem easier to work on protecting the local domain. But your 'protected' local domain can be scorched by global fossil fuel use. Would you have argued against a national EPA back in the 1970s? There was opposition to creating the U.S. EPA. Where would we be now, if it had not been created?