Russia and the United Nations
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Russia's membership in the United Nations after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, was the succession of the Soviet Union's seat, including its permanent membership on the UN Security Council. The succession was supported by the USSR's former members and was not objected to by the UN membership; Russia accounted for about half the Soviet Union's economy and most of its land mass; in addition, the history of the Soviet Union began in Russia. If there was to be a successor to the Soviet seat on the Security Council among the former Soviet republics, these factors made Russia seem like a logical choice. Nonetheless, due to the rather inflexible wording of the United Nations Charter and its lack of provision for succession, the succession's technical legality has been questioned by some international lawyers.
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[edit] History
Chapter V, Article 23 of the UN Charter, adopted in 1945, provides that "The Security Council shall consist of fifteen Members of the United Nations. The Republic of China, The French Republic, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America shall be permanent members of the Security Council."[1] (Actually, this is the amendend version. Originally there were only to be eleven members on the Security Council.)
The USSR collapsed in the early 1990s. Eleven of the twelve members of the Commonwealth of Independent States signed a declaration on December 21, 1991 agreeing that "Member states of the Commonwealth support Russia in taking over the USSR membership in the UN, including permanent membership in the Security Council." One day before the resignation of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Ambassador Y. Vorontsov transmitted to the UN Secretary-General a letter from President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin stating that:
- the membership of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the United Nations, including the Security Council and all other organs and organizations of the United Nations system, is being continued by the Russian Federation (RSFSR) with the support of the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States. In this connection, I request that the name 'Russian Federation' should be used in the United Nations in place of the name 'the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics'. The Russian Federation maintains full responsibility for all the rights and obligations of the USSR under the Charter of the United Nations, including the financial obligations. I request that you consider this letter as confirmation of the credentials to represent the Russian Federation in United Nations organs for all the persons currently holding the credentials of representatives of the USSR to the United Nations.
The Secretary-General circulated the request among the UN membership. There being no objection, the Russian Federation took the USSR's place, with Boris Yeltsin personally taking the Russian Federation's seat at the January 31, 1992 Security Council meeting.
[edit] Legality
The legality of the succession has been called into question by international lawyer Yehuda Z. Blum, who opined that "with the demise of the Soviet Union itself, its membership in the UN should have automatically lapsed and Russia should have been admitted to membership in the same way as the other newly-independent republics (except for Belarus and Ukraine)." The elimination of Soviet (and subsequently Russian) membership on the UN Security Council would have created a constitutional crisis for the UN, which may be why the UN Secretary-General and members did not object. This situation could have been avoided had all the other nations but Russia seceded from the USSR, allowing the USSR to continued existing as a legal entity.[2]
A mere change of name by itself, from the USSR to the Russian Federation, would not have barred Russia from succeeding the USSR. Zaire changed its name to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and retained its UN seat. A change in the USSR's system of government likewise would not have prevented the succession; Egypt and many other countries have made a transition from monarchy to republic without jeopardizing their positions in international organizations. However, Blum argues that a key difference between these situations is that the Soviet Union was terminated as a legal entity. The 11 former members nations that supported the transfer of the seat to Russia also declared that "with the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics ceases to exist." The poorly-defined rules on state succession make the legal situation murky.
Professor Rein Mullerson concluded that the succession was legitimate, identifying three reasons: "Firstly, after the dissolution, Russia is [sic] still remains one of the largest States in the world geographically and demographically. Secondly, Soviet Russia after 1917 and especially the Soviet Union after 1922 were treated as continuing the same State as existed under the Russian Empire. These are objective factors to show that Russia is the continuation of the Soviet Union. The third reason which forms the subjective factor is the State’s behaviour and the recognition of the continuity by the third States."[3]
The Vienna Convention on Succession of States in respect of Treaties was not a factor in the succession because that Convention did not enter into force until 1996.
[edit] Effect on the United Nations
The transition led to increased debate on the relevance of the 1945 system of a Security Council dominated by five permanent members to the present world situation. Russians abroad notes that Russia is "only half the size of the former Soviet economy"; the transition thus marked a significant change in the entity exercising this permanent seat.[4] Mohamed Sid-Ahmed noted that "one of the five powers enjoying veto prerogatives in the Security Council has undergone a fundamental identity change. When the Soviet Union became Russia, its status changed from that of a superpower at the head of the communist camp to that of a society aspiring to become part of the capitalist world. Russia's permanent membership in the Security Council is no longer taken for granted. The global ideological struggle that had for so long dominated the international scene is no more, and the new realities have to be translated into a different set of global institutions."[5]
The years following the breakup of the Soviet Union have seen a dramatic increase in the number of proposals for Security Council reform. In 2005, Kofi Annan's report In Larger Freedom proposed finalizing arrangement to add more permanent seats as soon as possible. Campaigns to abolish the veto have also gained support, although their adoption is unlikely in the near future, since it would require the consent of the Permanent Five.
Global Policy Forum has several statements from the Permanent Five on file giving arguments for why the current system should be maintained. Russia, for instance, states the veto is necessary for "balanced and sustainable decisions".[6]
[edit] Counter-Arguments
It may be argued that the strictly legalistic discussion and interpretation of Russia's assumption of the USSR's seat defies the more practical and important reasons for establishing the Security Council structure in the first place: to ensure consensus amongst the Great Powers, specifically, the Military Powers, so as to avoid the escalation of disputes into armed conflicts between them, and thus avoid World War III.
This structure is a continuation of the power theory that applied to the old Congress System of Europe, but which was abandoned in the League of Nations organization in favor of a more democratic international model, the consequences of which were disastrous due to the inescapable fact that Great Powers cannot be controlled by lesser ones through force of international law alone; instead, similarly powerful nations check and balance each other by virtue of their respective military might and potential for mutual intervention and/or destruction. More importantly, the Powers under this system agree never to act militarily on a large scale over each other's veto objections.
This is why the Security Council is only charged with matters of conflict and security, and why only the Council has the authority under the UN Charter to legally compel all member states to obey its resolutions, and to enforce complicance with those resolutions by military means. Even if enforcement is not always carried out by the Permanent Members themselves, but, as in the case of Peacekeeping, is often relegated to broader the international community, the de facto if not de jure authority to authorize force rests in these permanent members' theoretical capabilities, should they be defied or should they come into conflict with one another--the original theoretical purpose of the Charter as it is written, thus resolve the flaws of the League of Nations system. Those flaws which were evidenced by the fact that, in the absence of consensus and veto, and without much consideration for their de facto military power, the international community simply isolated Germany and Japan politically, whilst they in turn simply defied international resolutions because they could.
In this context, the succession of the Russian Federation is a logical matter of de facto military might.
This issue is complicated by nuclear weapons. Initially, it was envisioned that the nations who would hold permanent membership should be those that fulfilled the following two requirements: were historically recognized Great Powers, were victors in World War II. Former Great Powers like Germany and Japan would be thwarted in their military reconstruction, thus negating their Great Power status, while conquered nations such as France would be given aid and the opportunity to rebuilt to their traditional military significance, and held a seat in reserve.
But, with the proliferation of nuclear weapons amongst the "Big Five," the nuclear question, far more than conventional military size, came to be considered the dominant credential of Permanent membership for the majority of the UN's existence. Thus, when Russia became independent, and in view of the fact that it possessed 90% of the USSR's arsenal, and later repatriated all of the USSR's nuclear stockpile from other Former Soviet Republics, the argument for Russia's natural position of power within the Council became irrefutable. It must also be observed that certain statements regarding Russia's loss of "Superpower" status are misleading and exaggerated. Russia remained for all intents and purposes a nuclear Superpower, and to dispute its accession to the USSR's seat would entirely negate the Council's power consensus and power conflict-avoidance function.
This situation in essence made Russia the 800 pound gorilla that could sit wherever it pleased, weakened or not. Opposing Permanent membership to a country possessing thousands of nuclear warheads, dozens of fully operational ballistic missile submarines, attack submarines, mobile missile launchers, radically advanced space technology, fighter aircraft designs and many other cutting-edge military technologies matched in sophistication only by the United States, the remaining Superpower, would have been unthinkable, legal theories of member-succession utterly notwithstanding.
In addition, while Russia could not be said to possess the Superpower status of the former USSR, this should not be construed as equivalent to losing Great Power status. Russia continued and continues to operate one of the world's most powerful military forces, and by far the largest in Europe, even when taking into account hardware decommissioned due to age or economic necessity. That is the legacy of a Superpower-level military: it is so massive that it can sustain severe cutbacks and still remain incredibly powerful relative to other national force strengths.
While this suffices to explain why Russia's claim went unopposed, the issue of Security Council membership is further complicated by the rise of new nuclear states, such as India and Pakistan, and by historically isolated regimes that have now built-up Great Power-level armies and weapons, such as North Korea, in addition to the nuclear crises in N. Korea and Iran.
Also, there is now the issue of economic and industrial strength as a purveyor of Great Power status, specifically in the cases of Germany and Japan, which now possess both the funds and the technology to, conceivably, elevate themselves to Military Great Power status comparable to France or the UK, or perhaps more so, on a relatively short notice should they decide to do so. Only voluntary self-restraint based on political ideology, internal legal/constitutional question, or perceived diplomatic self-interest prevents them from doing so. On this basis some nations support expanding the Permanent Membership to include these to historical Powers.
But, there can be little pragmatic dispute that the Russian Federation's exclusion from the USSR's seat, with the veto power this entails, would have nullified the Security Council mission much as the marginalization of Germany and Japan in a non-veto-wielding system nullified the League of Nations mandate to prevent another "Great War."
[edit] Interchangeability of terms
Even while the Soviet Union was still in existence, outsiders used the term "Russia", when, strictly speaking they should have said "Soviet Union". Even Mikhail Gorbachev himself made this slip of the tongue on at least one occasion, only to immediately correct himself.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Blum, Yehuda Z.: Russia Takes Over the Soviet Union's Seat at the United Nations, European Journal of International Law.
- Mullerson, Rein: The Continuity and Succession of States, by Reference to the Former USSR and Yugoslavia, (1993) 42 AJIL, p 476
- Russia Vetoes the Abolition of the Veto, Statement by a Representative of the Russian Federation in the Open-Ended Working Group on Security Council Reform on Veto Issue, Mar. 24, 1999.
- Chapter 6. The Economy, Russianabroad.
- Sid-Ahmed, Mohamed: P-5 Veto Outdated, Cairo Al-Ahram, July 8-14, 1999.
- United Nations Charter.
- Vienna Convention on Succession of States in respect of Treaties.
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