U.N.: Washington's Lucky Break

October 16, 2006
Stratfor
Original Source: http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?id=278155


Summary

Oct. 16 marked the beginning of the voting process that will determine the makeup of the new U.N. Security Council. It went about as well as Washington could have possibly hoped. 

Analysis

Voting to select the membership of the next U.N. Security Council has begun. Far from a maddening experience for U.S. diplomats, the votes so far have provided some pleasant surprises from the American point of view. 

The council comprises five permanent members (the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France) as well as two batches of nonpermanent members selected for two-year terms. Of those 10 nonpermanent seats, three must come from Africa, two from Asia, two from Latin America and the Caribbean, one from the transitional states of Eastern Europe and two from a group called Western European and Others.

The first five of the 10 nonpermanent members began on the council at the beginning of 2006. These states -- the Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Peru, Qatar and Slovakia -- will begin the second year of their terms Jan. 1, 2007. From Washington's point of view, this group comprises an extremely workable quintet. Ghana, Slovakia and Peru, particularly after Peruvian presidential elections this summer, are openly pro-American. Qatar provides a few complications because of its concerns over Iran, but so long as Qatar remains the single largest destination for U.S. investment in the region, as well as the headquarters for U.S. Central Command, Qatar can certainly be considered a firm ally, albeit not a mindless pawn. That leaves only the Republic of the Congo as a wild card because of the populist (but not knee-jerk anti-American) policies of President Denis Sassou-Nguesso. 

As these five stay on, five others -- with terms that began in 2005 -- will be leaving. They consist of Argentina, Denmark, Greece, Japan and Tanzania. Four of their replacements were selected Oct. 16: Belgium, Indonesia, Italy and South Africa.

Like the five members that took up positions on the U.N. Security Council at the beginning of 2006, Washington considers the four replacements named Oct. 16 functional partners. Belgium and Italy, though currently led by governments that are certainly not pro-Bush, are still NATO allies, and rarely break with Washington on anything truly important. Indonesia and the United States are once again moving toward a formal alliance; relations are now warmer than they have been at any time since the Cold War. And in general, Washington gets along with South Africa so long as the United States broadly defers to Pretoria in issues in the South African neighborhood. (Considering the oftentimes sketchy nature of that neighborhood, Washington almost always prefers to support whatever Pretoria is doing.)

Washington's big fear going into the Oct. 16 vote has not materialized. These fears centered on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has made world tour after world tour for the past several months, splashing around oil money in an attempt to occupy outgoing Argentina's seat for use as a bully pulpit with which to fulminate against the Bush administration for the next two years. Luckily for Washington, an informal coalition of Central American and European states has blocked Venezuela. The Central Americans support U.S.-backed candidate Guatemala (a country that belongs to their own geographic club), while the Europeans do not want to see the U.N. Security Council degenerate into little more than an arena for a two-year-long Venezuelan-American grudge match. In the four votes held Oct. 16, Venezuela garnered no more than 76 votes, whereas it needed a two-thirds majority of 128. (Guatemala, by contrast, peaked at 116 votes.)

Though Guatemala is certainly not destined to win, at this point Venezuela is destined to lose. Venezuela's checkbook diplomacy at the United Nations really only works when the checks are large and front-loaded. Caracas had its shot, and its tactics simply were not good enough. With the voting deadlocked, compromise candidates will now begin to make their own bids, and the race will become one between Guatemala and whoever else in Latin America is feeling lucky.