Petition for permanent membership on UNSC nearing final form
Atsushi arrives for the weekend any minute, so one last bit of news from the Nikkei: Japan, Germany, India, and Brazil have come to an agreement on their joint proposal that permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council be expanded to include them. Some of you may take comfort in the knowledge that airy diplomatic clichés sound just as trite in Japanese as in English, even if they contain truth:
日本は「現在の安保理は国際社会の多様化に対応していない」として常任理事国の拡大を主張。
Japan argued for the expansion of permanent UNSC membership this way: “The current UNSC does not address the diversification of our global society.”
Japan and Germany have more specific issues than that, of course. Japan itself is involved in a more general debate over the recognition that the Self-Defense Force is no longer as strictly reactive as it used to be, and the UNSC petition is connected. A permanent member of the Security Council that can’t get involved in international disputes would be in a strange position.
Added after lunch: Man, I’d forget my head if it weren’t attached. In my haste to edit this down for clarity–yes, I do that sometimes; just imagine what my posts look like when I draft them!–I cut out the interesting part of today’s story. The interesting part of today’s story is that the four petitioning countries agreed that the reforms should be decided by vote (including all UN member countries, not just those on the UNSC, and certainly not just the permanent members of the UNSC); Germany and India had been balking.
Nice blog.
It seems to me that some people confuse “diversification” with “multipolarization.” The world has been full of diversity in the first place. (Or rather, it’s getting less diverse because of globalization.)
Good point, although I don’t think you have to distinguish between the two so much in practice. That is, it used to be that the world was diverse, but most cultures weren’t involved in international trade and communication. The global society [gag] really is diversifying because people are participating who weren’t before.
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Sorry for being trite, but Japan asking for social diversification seems a bit rich. If it was India I’d be a bit more receptive, but Japan? Erm, no.
True enough, but I don’t think Japan is talking about social diversification within member countries. Perish the thought!
Now that you mention it, though, it would be interesting if someone naughtily suggested that permanent members of the UNSC should be countries that either have diverse ethnic populations or have shown an openness to refugees. Japan would have fun responding to that.