UN and Security Council: how the power that decides wars works

With each international crisis — a war, a pandemic, a humanitarian catastrophe — the world's eyes turn to a building on the East River, in New York. There, the headquarters of the United Nations Organization operates, created with an explicit mission: to prevent humanity from repeating the tragedy of World War II. Decades later, the UN is, at the same time, indispensable and frustrating. It saves lives every day through its agencies, coordinates vaccination campaigns, feeds refugees, and regulates air traffic to international mail — but it often gets stuck exactly in the most serious moments, when the great powers face off. Understanding how the organization works in practice, and why the Security Council concentrates so much power, is the key to reading international news without getting lost.

An organization born of war trauma

The UN was founded in 1945, at the San Francisco Conference, when dozens of countries signed the United Nations Charter. It replaced the League of Nations, an experience created after World War I that failed precisely because it did not have instruments to contain aggressive powers. The founders of the UN learned the lesson in their own way: they created an assembly where all countries have a voice — and a restricted council where few have, in fact, the last word.

Brazil has been present since its origin: it is a founding member and maintains a well-known diplomatic tradition, that of delivering the first speech in the general debate of the General Assembly, which brings together heads of state and government every year in New York.

How the UN is organized internally

The Charter provides for six main organs. The most relevant ones in everyday life are four:

• General Assembly: brings together all member countries — today more than 190 —, each with the right to one vote, from superpower to microstate. Its resolutions have enormous political and symbolic weight, but, as a rule, are not binding.
• Security Council: the only organ whose decisions are binding on all members. It is from here that sanctions, embargoes, and authorizations for the use of force come.
• Secretariat: the administrative machine, headed by the Secretary-General, who acts as a mediator, spokesperson, and manager of thousands of employees spread around the world.
• International Court of Justice: based in The Hague, Netherlands, judges disputes between States — borders, treaties, international responsibility.

Completing the design are the Economic and Social Council and the Trusteeship Council, the latter with no practical function since the former territories under trusteeship became independent. Around this core, the constellation of agencies and funds that the public knows best revolves: World Health Organization, Unicef, Unesco, UNHCR (the refugee agency), and FAO (food and agriculture), among many others. It is this network that executes the silent and effective part of the system: vaccination campaigns, disaster relief, technical standards that make planes, ships, and letters cross borders.

The Security Council: where the real power lies

The Council has fifteen members. Ten are elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms, distributed by regions of the world. The other five are permanent: the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom — the main winners of World War II. These five, known as the P5, have the most powerful instrument of diplomacy: the veto. It only takes one opposing vote from a permanent member to defeat any resolution, even if the other fourteen are in favor.

In practice, the veto works as insurance: no great power accepts being subject to decisions contrary to its vital interests. It was the political price for all to enter — and remain — in the system. The side effect is well known: when the conflict directly involves a permanent member or a close ally, the Council tends to paralysis. It was like this during the decades of the Cold War and continues to be so in crises where the interests of the great powers collide head-on.

What the Council can do when it works

When there is consensus, the Council has teeth. It can impose economic sanctions and arms embargoes, create international tribunals, authorize military operations, and send peacekeeping missions — the famous blue helmets, troops provided by member countries to stabilize conflict zones. Brazil has a long tradition in this area: it has participated in dozens of missions and led for years the military component of the UN mission in Haiti, the Minustah, one of the most notable operations in the recent history of Brazilian military diplomacy.

The reform that never comes

Few topics generate as much rhetorical consensus and so little result as the reform of the Council. The argument is simple: the world has changed since 1945, but the photograph of power remains the same. Brazil is part of the so-called G4, a group that defends the expansion of the number of permanent seats — and pleads for one. African countries also claim permanent representation, recalling that much of the Council's agenda deals precisely with conflicts on the African continent.

The obstacle is structural: changing the UN Charter requires approval by two-thirds of the General Assembly and ratification by all five permanent members. In other words, the greatest beneficiaries of the current design have the key to the lock. Meanwhile, the discussion advances in tiny steps, and Brazil's permanent seat remains a historical aspiration of national foreign policy.

Why this matters to those living in Brazil

It may seem distant, but the UN system affects the life of the average Brazilian in very concrete points:

• Health: the norms and alerts of the World Health Organization guide health surveillance, vaccination campaigns, and responses to epidemics in the country.
• Trade and prices: sanctions approved by the Council alter global flows of oil, fertilizers, and grains — and this reaches the pocket, from fuel to bread, because the Brazilian agribusiness depends on imported inputs.
• Travel and connections: civil aviation standards, navigation, and telecommunications negotiated in UN agencies are what allow international flights, ships, and calls to function between different countries.
• Country projection: Brazil is one of the countries most elected to the rotating seat on the Security Council, which gives Brazilian diplomacy a recurring voice in decisions of war and peace.

In the end, the UN is less a world government and more a condominium: the rules apply to everyone, but the strongest residents have the power to block the assembly. Still, it is the only condominium where almost all countries on the planet agree to sit at the same table. Knowing its rules — who votes, who vetoes, what obliges, and what is merely symbolic — is the first step to understanding why some crises end in blue helmets and others in deadlock. And to understand what Brazil is seeking, for decades, when it insists on having a permanent seat at the table where the world decides its conflicts.