The United Nations Security Council was designed to, in a phrase, keep the peace. Life didn’t have to be brutish and short; if the great powers got into a room, they could wield their collective might and solve any problem. The Security Council’s top priority—“the maintenance of international peace and security”—would prevent a third Great War from killing millions of people.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a utopian fantasy land. It turns out that the Security Council, populated by fifteen different countries with their own set of interests, can be just as dog-eat-dog as the world in which it represents. And in the age of Donald Trump, the top UN body is an even more divisive place.
In general, Security Council debates largely put the western bloc (the US, the UK, and France) against the Russians and Chinese. While Moscow and Beijing aren’t perfectly aligned on every issue that lands on the Security Council’s desk, the two have increasingly teamed up in a kind of Russo-Sino tactical alliance to frustrate Western-led attempts at regime change and pro-democracy promotion.
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