The Veto Power

With allied victories achieved in the skies over London and on the seas of the Atlantic, the principal statesman of the allied coalition assembled to discuss the postwar order. Having played a preeminent role in the destruction of the Wehrmacht, they would reserve for themselves the primary responsibility for preserving the peace. As the architects of the United Nations, they institutionalized their great power status, as it existed in 1945, into its organs and machinery. The primacy of the great powers within the UN was clearly established with the creation of the veto power within the Security Council, the body principally responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security. The veto power, as vested in the hands of the U.S., Great Britain, France, the then Soviet Union, and China, all permanent members of the Security Council, gave the great powers tremendous privileges in the conduct and administration of international diplomacy. Each was given the authority to veto any resolution of a "substantive" (nonprocedural) matter taken by the 11 member Security Council (later enlarged to 15 members) including the power to veto questions which may arise as to wether a matter is substantive or procedural in nature.

The veto power was the byproduct of a series of discussions held throughout the war by the allies. During these conferences, great differences existed as to the nature of the security arrangements of the postwar world. Both Prime Minister Churchill of Britain and Marshall Stalin of the Soviet Union sought to reconstruct the traditional balance of power or sphere of interest arrangement in the aftermath of the war. FDR, who had hoped to dismantle the balance of power in favor of international harmony, devised a compromise between himself, Churchill and Stalin in the creation of the Four Policeman. Modeled after Metternich's Concert of Europe, the Four Policeman, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, France and the U.S. would enforce the peace against any potential "miscreant". The Four Policeman arrangement was formally institutionalized at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in 1944 with the establishment of the Security Council and, at the time, the unlimited veto power of the Four Policeman and China. At Yalta, a weary Roosevelt was able to gain a concession from Stalin who agreed to drop his demand for a veto on procedural matters. At San Francisco, the veto power and the permanent member status were codified into law with the signing of the UN Charter, despite a concerted effort on the part of some smaller member states to remove the veto status from the Charter. At one point in the debate, Senator Connally of the U.S. stood up and tore to pieces a copy of the Charter. He said "Without the veto, there would be no Charter".

The leaders of the allied coalition had either fought in or seen the destruction at Verdun, the Somme or Ypres from the First World War. Believing, as military historian John Keegan states, that "the First World War was a tragic and unnecessary conflict", a product of a localized feud turned into a World War by diplomatic and political entanglements, the great powers saw in the veto a way to avoid the next world war. The veto was a means to prevent the UN from "overreaching itself". The veto, it is argued, successfully averted a third world war over Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan. The veto power, also necessitates the building of consensus, which when achieved, by itself would do well in preventing aggression. Determined to avoid the failures of the League of Nations, the allied leaders, principally Roosevelt, saw in consensus the prospect for "needed enforcers".

Critics of the veto power argue that it has been abused at the expense of the smaller member states and the international community of nations. Far from using the veto in considerations of "vital importance, taking into account the interests and principles of the UN as a whole", the veto has been exercised arbitrarily by the great powers. Of the 246 vetoes cast in the Security Council (does not include the 43 vetoes cast to block the nomination of the Secretary General), over 75 percent were cast by the U.S. and the Soviet Union simply to curtail the influence of the other superpower. Between 1946 and 1969, the Soviet Union cast 51 vetoes denying membership to Western nations in the UN. Between 1976 and 1997, the U.S. cast 60 vetoes to only 8 by the USSR/Russia. Of the 246 vetoes cast from 1945 to 1997, the U.S. cast 72 or 29 percent, the USSR/Russia cast 120 or 49 percent, Britain cast 32 or 13 percent, France 18 or 7 percent and China cast 4 or 2 percent. While only casting 4 vetoes, China recently cast perhaps one of the more dangerous, when while asserting Article II Section 7, they cast a veto to prevent the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force from intervening in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. Far from a consideration of the principles of the UN Charter, the China veto, like those taken by the U.S. and USSR, was exercised to protect their own interests at the expense of the international community. Likewise, vetoes by Great Britain preventing a cessation of hostilities in the Falklands, vetoes by the U.S. and Great Britain over UN sanctions against South Africa and U.S. vetoes over Panama and Israel were exercised largely to protect the interests of the great powers.  As mentioned above, 43 vetoes were used to prevent nominations for the office of Secretary General.