A declining United Nations is not good news for a rising India

Why in the News

India’s standing is rising while the authority of the United Nations (UN) falls, and the second movement works against the first. Rivalry among major powers opens room for manoeuvre and makes agreements harder to trust at the same time, which is a poor bargain for a power that needs commitments to hold when relations sour. This year’s General Assembly session will not resolve that, because the governments whose consent the UN needs are often pursuing the very objectives it was established to restrain. Indian diplomacy therefore carries two tasks at once. It must win more influence over UN decisions, and it must help make those decisions matter, and the two pull against each other when the organisation’s own members are the ones weakening it.

Why does a weakening United Nations hurt a rising India rather than free it?

1. Durability of agreements: India needs arrangements that hold when relations sour, and an organisation that cannot enforce its own decisions cannot supply them.
2. Sovereignty and rule making: New Delhi has long defended sovereignty and resisted intrusive international rule making. Constraints imposed by powerful countries can leave it with even less say than a negotiated rule would.
3. Who writes the rules: The operative question is not India’s size but its influence over who sets the rules it will have to live under.
4. Multilateral arrangements as leverage: They give India a voice in those negotiations and room to cooperate with countries it disagrees with elsewhere.
5. Limits of economic weight: A larger economy will not by itself remove the vulnerability. In a world split into rival financial and technological systems, access to a market or a technology could increasingly require accepting the conditions of one camp.

What has left the Security Council unable to restrain its strongest members?

1. The design assumption: The Council was built to work when the major powers could agree, and the veto gives each permanent member the means to block action when they cannot.
2. Live conflicts: Ukraine, Gaza and the war involving Iran and the Gulf expose the Council’s inability to restrain its strongest members and their clients.
3. The cost of neglect: Sudan demonstrates what follows where the Council does not engage at all.
4. Charter enforcement: Appeals to the UN Charter have little effect when the states expected to uphold it can prevent its enforcement.

How does economic coercion reach Indian businesses without a Council decision?

1. Unilateral coercive measures: Restrictions imposed by one state extend the problem out of the diplomatic arena and into everyday commerce.
2. The commercial chokepoint: An Indian company may be free to trade under Indian law and still find that a foreign bank will not process its payment or an insurer will not cover its cargo.
3. Weaponised interdependence: Control over financial, insurance and technology networks lets powerful states project national restrictions far beyond their borders without authorisation from the Security Council, which leaves Indian businesses exposed to rules their government had no part in writing.

What does the United Nations still deliver, and who is hollowing it out?

1. Universal membership: It gives smaller countries a claim to be heard without a major power’s invitation, which no plurilateral grouping replicates.
2. Agency work: UN agencies deliver relief, document the human cost of crises and organise the scientific assessments used in climate negotiations.
3. A forum for the strained: As climate shocks and widening inequalities press on developing countries, the UN gives them a place to press claims on climate finance and sustainable development.
4. Secretariat inefficiency: The organisation still falls short too often, and the Secretariat must simplify procedures, cut duplication and spend carefully.
5. Member state behaviour: Governments weaken the organisation they invoke when convenient. They assign tasks they do not fund, delay payments they owe and cut assistance while expecting the UN to absorb the damage.
6. Mandate against resources: A peace operation given an ambitious mandate and inadequate resources is being set up to fail.

Why is artificial intelligence a test of who writes the rules that matter?

1. Warning from the scientific panel: The UN’s independent scientific panel has warned that Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents could become harder for humans to control.
2. Industry at the Council table: Technology executives briefed the Security Council on the risks of AI on 23 September, and the Council has a role wherever AI threatens international security.
3. Limits of that table: Companies bring essential expertise and commercial interests together, and the reach of AI into employment, education and development needs wider consideration than a security body can give it.
4. India’s stated position: Safety standards and access to technology should be negotiated where developing countries have a voice, because permanent members and a few technology firms cannot represent everyone whose future those rules will shape.

How can India widen its influence before Council reform arrives?

1. Partners for Multilateralism: India helped launch this coalition, known as P4M, with Brazil, Canada, Kenya, the European Union, Australia and Barbados, a group that deliberately spans different diplomatic camps.
2. The coalition’s declaration: It records that economic interdependence is being used to exert pressure, disrupting trade, supply chains and development finance.
3. Value of mixed partners: Each partner holds relationships that could help India persuade countries it might not otherwise persuade. Joint proposals on climate finance or on protection against economic coercion could attract wider support without waiting for agreement on the more contentious questions of reform.
4. The permanent membership claim: India rests its case on being the world’s most populous democracy and a major economy, and Africa’s exclusion from permanent membership makes the case for Council reform harder to ignore.
5. Why the claim stalls: Regional rivalries obstruct agreement on expansion, and Charter amendments require ratification by all five permanent members.
6. The elected seat: India is seeking support at this Assembly for an elected Security Council seat for the 2028 to 2029 term, against Tajikistan, which has never served on the Council, in the June 2027 election.
7. The peacekeeping record: A founding member in 1945, India has contributed more than 275,000 personnel to UN peacekeeping, and can use that record to argue for mandates troops can carry out and for affected countries to be heard before the Council acts.

Challenges to India’s bid for a larger role at the Security Council

1. China’s withheld endorsement: China is the only permanent member that has not backed India’s candidature for a permanent seat with a clear commitment. Eg. It has also blocked India’s entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
   The Fix: Pursue issue specific bargains where Indian and Chinese positions already converge, so the reform bid is not the only channel through which the relationship is tested.
2. Organised opposition from the Uniting for Consensus group: A bloc of middle powers lobbies for expansion in the non permanent category alone, which keeps regional competitors out of a permanent seat. Eg. Pakistan, Italy and Mexico have consistently pressed that position.
   The Fix: Build the General Assembly numbers first, since any expansion needs a two thirds majority there before ratification is even reached.
3. Negotiations without a text: The Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN) on Council reform have run for over a decade without producing a single negotiating text to amend. Eg. The 2026 session ended without consensus even on the framework for expansion.
   The Fix: Press for one consolidated negotiating text carrying a fixed review date, so the process yields a document rather than another round of statements.
4. Standing outside the non proliferation treaties: Critics cite India’s position outside the two central nuclear treaties as a disqualifier for permanent membership. Eg. India has stayed out of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) while maintaining a voluntary moratorium on further nuclear explosive testing.
   The Fix: Anchor the bid in the non proliferation record and the peacekeeping record rather than in treaty signatures, and press for criteria based rather than membership based tests.

Conclusion

India’s stake in the United Nations is not sentimental, it is contractual. A rising power that cannot make its agreements hold gains freedom of manoeuvre and loses predictability, and predictability is the scarcer of the two. The unresolved question is whether India’s growing weight can be converted into influence over who writes the rules, or whether it will keep being governed by rules made where it has no vote. The test will come when a rule India helped write obstructs the choices of a state powerful enough to ignore it.

About United Nations Reform

1. Expansion of the Security Council: Reform proposals seek to increase both permanent and non permanent seats to bring in India, Brazil, Japan, Germany and African representation.
2. Veto restructuring: A voluntary code of conduct would limit use of the veto in cases of mass atrocities or genocide.
3. Empowering the General Assembly: The Assembly’s role in security matters would be strengthened for occasions when the Council is deadlocked.
4. Inclusive multilateralism: Regional blocs such as the African Union would be formally institutionalised within the UN Charter.

Government Initiatives for United Nations Reform

1. The G4 grouping: India, Brazil, Germany and Japan support each other’s bids for permanent seats and press a common reform model.
2. The L.69 Group: A cross regional grouping of developing countries from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, including small island developing states, which India leads in pressing for expansion in both membership categories.
3. Voice of Global South Summit: Convened by India since 2023 to aggregate developing country positions and carry them into the G20 and other bodies. It is a consultation mechanism rather than an institution.

Back2Basics: Elected Seats on the UN Security Council

1. Composition: The Council has 15 members, five permanent and ten elected.
2. Election and term: Elected members serve two year terms and are chosen by the General Assembly by a two thirds majority, with the ten seats distributed across regional groups.
3. Voting weight: An elected member votes on every resolution but holds no veto, and a substantive resolution needs nine votes in favour with no permanent member voting against.
4. India’s record: India has served eight terms as an elected member, most recently in 2021 and 2022.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2025, GS2, 15 marks] “The reform process in the United Nations remains unresolved, because of the delicate imbalance of East and West and entanglement of the USA vs. Russo-Chinese alliance.” Examine and critically evaluate the East-West policy confrontations in this regard.”