UNITED NATIONS/ UNITED STATES: The long-simmering debate over UN reform -- and particularly over the role of the Security Council, which does not represent today's world and which failed to prevent Russia's invasion of Ukraine -- has suddenly become acute.
Recently Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a blistering call for the UN to exclude Russia from the Security Council, asked bluntly, "Are you ready to close the UN" and abandon international law. "If your answer is no, then you need to act immediately."
And after the Security Council failed to prevent the brutal invasion of his country, he said in a separate address to Japanese lawmakers, "We have to develop a new tool" capable of doing so.
Created in 1945 with a vision of guaranteeing world peace and preventing a World War III, the United Nations conferred disproportionate power on the five permanent, veto-wielding members of the Security Council -- the US, Russia, China, Britain and France -- in a way that allows them to protect their own interests while keeping a heavy hand in world affairs.
Thus, since 2011, Moscow has exercised its Security Council veto some 15 times in votes regarding its ally Syria.
But the veto power also guarantees that Moscow can never be removed from the Council, since the UN Charter's Article 6 allows the General Assembly to exclude a member only ... upon the recommendation of the Security Council.
In that vein, the US and Britain invaded Iraq in 2003 without UN approval -- and without suffering any consequences for their permanent seats on the Security Council.
Beyond the veto question, and the lack of international balance among Security Council members -- no African or Latin American country holds a permanent seat -- the Council grants a near-monopoly on some issues to Washington, London and Paris.
The division of roles among the 15 Security Council members is uneven, according to the ambassador of one of the current 10 non-permanent members. The latter group, elected for two-year terms, is "given the bureaucratic jobs."
"We don't think it's a fair division of labor," the ambassador said, speaking on grounds of anonymity.
The Council has been widely denounced for its current -- and recurrent -- paralysis, with even UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres deploring its failures.
"There's a pretty fundamental problem there," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted, a day after Zelensky's futile call for Russia to be expelled.