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THE WEIRS TIMES, Thursday, October 28, 2010
METZLER from 9
Portugal. But despair not. Jose Manuel Barroso, cur- rent European Union chief and former Portuguese Prime Minister, was going to play hardball and not let Lisbon’s chance fall by the wayside. Portugal last did a two year stint on the Council in the late 1990’s. Then came the ballot.
The full 192 member Gen- eral Assembly was voting and a candidate needed two-thirds support to win. Germany won in the first ballot—not surprising. Then the game got inter- esting. The second vote saw Portugal and Canada face-off—and Canada then graciously grit its teeth
and step aside to allow Portugal to win the seat which she did with 150 votes. The setback, the first
time Ottawa did not get a intended seat since 1945 was aptly described in the Economist of London as “humiliating.” Some dip- lomats described the slight as the result of Islamic states ganging up on Ot- tawa while others put the blame on comments by Liberal opposition leader in Ottawa claiming Can- ada does not deserve a place, given the policies of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s current Conser- vative government. Either way there was no good outcome for Ottawa a
NEW HAMPTON 3 BR CAPE 2.87 ACRES
classic multi-lateral player who was done in by multi- lateral machinations. So the winners are Ger-
many and Portugal for Europe, replacing Austria and Turkey. Turkey’s two-year tenure proved a stinging disap- pointment as it became in- creasingly entwined in the radical agenda of Middle East politics. The Islamic- lite Ankara government shunned its traditional secular and pro-West at- titude for a dubious dip- lomatic alignment with Iran and was wittingly pulled into the Gaza vor- tex. Austria, though of- ficially neutral, remains doggedly democratic and pro-Western and will be missed. Other regional seats for
the rotation were unop- posed with South Africa running and winning the African slot (see what a successful World Cup can do?), Columbia getting South America, and India the Asian seat. Here are a few largely
overlooked observations concerning the new mix. Come 2011 the fifteen
member Security Council will reflect the BRIC com- binations so many econo- mists are enchanted with. Namely Brazil, Russia, India and China are now among the members, along with other permanent players such as France, the United Kingdom and the United States. Inter- estingly all aspirants for permanent seats—Brazil, Germany and India will serve concurrently on the Council while Japan is just leaving. Now how does the new
alignment of forces argue for the USA? Germa- ny and Portugal are both NATO members. Though Germany’s last Council membership in 2003-2004 saw sparks fly between Berlin and Washington over the countdown to the Iraq operation, the leftist Social Democrat government is no longer in power, replaced instead by Angela Merkel’s Chris- tian Democrats. Ironically it’s the USA which now has a Social Democratic government to the left of Germany, France and the United Kingdom.
Portugal despite having
a socialist-lite government (exactly the opposite dur- ing the 2003 countdown to Iraq) remains instinctively pro-Atlantisist and will be in concert with Washing- ton on most issues. Thus Germany and Portugal, present a plus, plus. South Africa supplants Uganda, Colombia replac- es Mexico, India replaces Japan. South Africa can be ex-
pected to side with China on many human rights issues while Colombia presents a plus for the U.S. While Washington shall miss the clear and focused support from Ja- pan, significantly, India has evolved into a much closer political and trad- ing partner in the past decade. As of January 2011, the
Council’s deck is reshuf- fled, let the game begin anew.
John J. Metzler is a Unit-
ed Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues.
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