Make It Count This Time

Context: UN Security Council (UNSC) membership is a card India must play to its advantage, where an aspiring superpower (China) is not just trying to unseat other powers, but also laying the basis for new rule-making.

 Analysing China’s power play United Nations: While the UN functions in some sort of a New York-Geneva bubble, autonomous of the realpolitik among nations, China provides a new approach.

• Infiltration of UN resolution: on extending the UN mandate in Afghanistan with a Communist Party of China (CPC) phrase ‘[to] create a community of shared future for mankind.’
  • Later, laid the foundations for Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
  • China is backing Pakistan’s efforts to re-engineer a negative narrative on Kashmir in New York.
• Increased contribution to the UN budget: from 1% in 1999 to about 12% today.
• Chinese are either president or secretary-general in at least six UN organisations, including UN Industrial Development Organisation (Unido), International Telecommunication Union (ITU), International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
• Peacekeeping: China has upped its contribution both financially (3% to 14% in the last seven years) and militarily (in the top 10 countries).
  • In 2019, China bagged its first UN special envoy post for the Great Lakes region in Africa.
  • China has created an 8,000-strong dedicated ‘UN peacekeeping standby force’.

Way Forward: India should focus on furthering its core national interests at the high table.

• India needs to maintain congruency between its overall strategic priorities and UNSC decision matrix.
• India has to be politically nimble, rather than wage some lonely ideological battle.
• Indian shouldn’t be in denial that UNSC is about the bilateral power play, like any other conversation.