THERE has been no dearth of feeling
around the horseshoe table of the
Security Council in recent days.
The American ambassador, Samantha
Power, choked up as she spoke of
infants who perished in the Malaysia
Airlines crash in Ukraine. The Dutch
foreign minister, Frans Timmermans,
could barely contain his anger as he
recalled seeing pictures of “thugs”
snatching wedding bands off the
fingers of the victims. The Palestinian
envoy, Riyad Mansour, grew quiet in
the middle of a long recitation of
names and ages — all belonging to
children killed in the latest Israeli
offensive in Gaza.
The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, not
to mention the war in Syria, have
presented diplomats with emotional
testimonies of civilian suffering, even
alleged crimes against humanity. Yet
the 15-member Council has been
unable to end these conflicts.
The problem is not that the major
world powers don’t care. It is that
they care too much.
Russia and the United States have a
great deal at stake in each conflict,
and the rules of diplomacy enable
them, as well as the other three
permanent members — Britain,
China and France — to veto any
Security Council action. Since the end
of the Cold War, the United States has
vetoed 14 draft resolutions, most of
them involving the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict; Russia has vetoed 11
concerning its allies, like the
government of Syria.
“When you have a crisis where a
major power has a national interest
involved they will try to block
interference by the Security Council,”
said Gérard Araud, the French
ambassador to the United Nations,
who finished his term here on Friday.
“The U.N.,” he said, ends up being “in
charge of crises that are of no
interest to anybody.”
Or, occasionally, mainly of interest to
France, such as the conflict in the
Central African Republic, where
France corralled the world powers to
authorize a United Nations
peacekeeping mission.
Not so in the case of Gaza. As the
death toll in the fighting climbed past
800, no swift movement was
expected on a draft resolution
circulated to Council members last
week on behalf of Arab countries
calling for the protection of civilians.
Late last week, Council members said
they were waiting for Secretary of
State John Kerry’s cease-fire efforts
to bear fruit before taking action. In
the case of Ukraine, the Council
seems equally incapable of devising a
political solution to the crisis, which
has become what Richard Gowan, an
analyst at the Center on International
Cooperation at New York University,
calls a proxy war between Russia and
the West. And with Syria, Russian
support for President Bashar al-
Assad’s government has led to four
successive vetoes of resolutions on
the conflict.
The right of veto has long enabled the
permanent members to reject
anything that threatens their
strategic interests, despite the
organization’s lofty principles,
notably its mandate to protect
civilians when their own state
authorities cannot.
France and Britain both support the
idea of limiting veto power in cases of
mass atrocities. The proposal, first
floated several years ago by several
small countries, has been ignored by
China, Russia and the United States.
The Council’s most vociferous critics
wasted no time last week reminding
the permanent members of their
responsibility.
“The commendable emphasis placed
by the Security Council on the
protection of civilians in other items
of its agenda cannot be sidestepped
when it comes to the responsibility to
protect Palestinians, who bear the
brunt of the violence,” said Brazil’s
deputy permanent representative,
Guilherme de Aguiar Patriota, in an
open debate in the Council on
Tuesday.
The Council has in recent months
proved to be more effective in
cooling tempers than stopping
warfare, Mr. Gowan pointed out.
After the downing of Malaysia
Airlines Flight 17 , and accusations of
Russian support for the separatist
rebels whom the West considers
responsible, the Council managed to
pass a modest resolution to send
international investigators to the
crash site. Likewise, the Council
passed a measure that authorized
humanitarian aid delivery to rebel-
held areas in Syria; the first convoys
began moving Thursday.
Mr. Gowan called such gestures “a
pressure valve” that postponed a
broader political solution to the
conflicts.
“Sometimes you go to the Council to
show how angry you are,” Mr. Gowan
said. “Sometimes you go to the
Council because it buys time to get a
deal.”
The Ukraine resolution to send
investigators did not contain any
threat of enforcement, though — nor,
crucially, any path to peace. On
Wednesday, two days after the
measure passed, two Ukrainian jets
were shot down. The Ukrainian
government quickly accused Russia.