Maura Hegarty Assignment #3 _________________________________________________________________________________      After the United Nations was established in 1945 many member nations expressed dissatisfaction with the power possessed by the permanent members of the Security Council.  Specifically, they felt the veto power was an undemocratic tool.  Fifty-five years later, the veto is still fiercely debated.  Various reforms for Security Council membership and voting procedures have been proposed, yet the veto remains.       At the time of the formation of the UN the victors of WWII, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China and the Soviet Union were considered the “great powers.”  During the planning of the UN these great powers felt that their special responsibility for maintaining peace and security should be recognized in the voting procedures of the Security Council.  This belief led to the establishment of the veto.  In their view, the veto was justified and necessary because without the cooperation and support of all of these powers, the UN could find itself in the position of being unable to fulfill its mandate.  The powers of the Security Council and voting procedures are detailed in Chapter 5 of the Charter, which states that the veto is to be used on non-procedural matters only.  However, the Charter does not define what procedural and non-procedural matters are.  This leads to the problem of the double veto, which occurs when a permanent member vetoes any matter simply by voting against a motion to declare it procedural.  Non-procedural matters would include anything relating to international peace and security, which is the primary responsibility of the Security Council. Yet, between 1946 and 1997, 59 vetoes were cast to block admission of states and 43 were used to prevent the nominations for the office of Security General.  These were obviously not issues, which deal with the world’s peace and security; rather they were byproducts of the ideological war between the US and the USSR.  Certain times the veto did threaten the UN’s ability to deal with vital international concerns but the General Assembly was able to circumvent this problem.  The General Assembly asserted its powers during the Korean War, the Suez Crisis, and the UN Operation in the Congo in 1960.  Some vetoes have succeeded in preventing UN action such as the British and US vetoes of sanctions against South Africa and Britain’s veto of a call for cessation of hostilities in the Falklands. While many of the 247 vetoes cast between 1946 and today were done to protect the interests of the P-5 members, a veto in 1999, against the use of preventative forces in Macedonia, severely threatened the ability of the UN to effectively act.  The UN was unable to prevent the outbreak of conflict, which led to an even greater crisis in the region.  The original justification for the veto was that there was a need for great power consensus for the UN to effectively ensure international peace and security.  However, China’s veto against preventive peacekeeping exemplifies how the veto is rarely used for the purposes it was established for.  China vetoed the resolution because Macedonia had formally recognized Taiwan.  This demonstrates how the veto has been used for the political and ideological purposes of individual countries and not for the general welfare of the UN or international peace and security.        The “great powers” on the Security Council have obviously used the veto for their own purposes and not for its original intent.  There have been numerous proposal for reform, however the fact remains that the veto is a powerful tool that is important to the one remaining “great power,” the United States.  Without the veto, there is no United States participation, and consequently, no United Nations.