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The writer, a distinguished fellow at the National University of Singapore, is the author of ‘The Asian 21st Century‘
Fifteen years have passed since Martin Wolf wrote“A decade from now, a world in which the UK is on the UN Security Council and India is not will seem beyond ridiculous.” The ridiculous situation continues.
The founding fathers of the United Nations were wise to encourage the great powers of the day to remain in the organization by granting them privileged positions as permanent members with veto power. However, they were wise not to institute a mechanism to replace the great powers of yesterday with the great powers of tomorrow.
In 1945, the UK was a major world power with colonies all over the world, including India. By 1980, the UK’s GDP was three times that of India, from $564 billion to $186 billion. By 2045, when the UN celebrates its centenary, Goldman Sachs projects that India’s GDP will be around $18 trillion, almost four times larger than the $5 trillion projected for the UK. It would then be truly unsustainable for Britain to be a veto-wielding member while India was not.
The UN will lose all credibility if this situation persists. Even more dangerous, India would be strong enough to announce that it will not comply. United Nations Security Council decisions if he is not a permanent member of the board.
There is an obvious, if at the moment unlikely, solution to this: the UK should cede its seat to India, subject, of course, to the policy In theory, the UK would be giving up a lot by doing so, but in practice it would make no difference, as it has already given up its veto. British leaders have long known that if the UK were to exercise its veto alone, there would be global outrage, which is why they have not exercised a solo veto since 1972. In fact, they have not cast a veto since 1989.
What is even sadder is that the British have stopped taking independent positions in the UN Security Council. Even when they were uncomfortable with US positions in the Council, they never expressed their disagreement. For example, during the preparations for the Iraq war in 2003, they felt obliged to support the US position, even though France and Germany fiercely opposed it (and rightly so).
By leaving the Security Council, the UK would be freed from the obligation to support the American position no matter what its merits. Indeed, it could become a better friend by providing frank advice to a country that has not yet accepted that the world has radically changed. The unipolar world is over; a new multipolar world is emerging. British shrewdness can help the Americans make the transition to that different world.
This enormous shift in global power represents the most compelling reason to immediately and permanently bring India into the UN Security Council. The country has a unique ability to span the eastern and western world: it can work with the US in the Quad (which includes Australia and Japan) and with China and Russia in the broader BRICS grouping.
Importantly, it could represent the views of the majority of the world’s population as power shifts from the G7 to the global south. India understands the needs and aspirations of the global south in a way that few nations can. This explains how it successfully managed to get the African Union into the G20.
It would also be poetic justice if the UK gave up its seat on the UN Security Council in favour of India. While many in the UK believe that the era of the British Raj was benevolent to Indians, the opposite is true. As Shashi Tharoor eloquently put it: “Britain’s rise for 200 years was financed by its depredations in India. In fact, Britain’s industrial revolution was actually based on India’s deindustrialisation…[In this period]“Between 15 and 29 million Indians died of starvation in British-induced famines.”
The UK is still unable to return the Koh-i-noor diamond to India, even though it was stolen by British imperialists who seized it from a ten-year-old ruler after imprisoning his mother. But it could perhaps offer India something even more valuable: a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
Sir Keir Starmer’s government will need some time to settle before it can even contemplate such a radical move. The British establishment would fiercely resist giving up an advantage of the past, just as feudal lords resisted the transition to more democratic political arrangements.
However, as 2027 will mark the 80th anniversary of India’s liberation from British rule, it would be the perfect year for the UK to give India this great gift. It would finally close the chapter of British colonial rule over India and help cement another hundred years of friendship between the UK and India. At the same time, we will have a United Nations Security Council that represents the great powers of today, not the great powers of yesterday.