The Case for Africa’s Permanent Presence on the UN Security Council and G-20 Membership

Others have made the case for Africa’s G-20 membership elsewhere. I think those same arguments extend to UNSC seats, so my goal here is to be additive and complementary, not to make a comprehensive case.   

It was supposedly Winston Churchill who observed that “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.” I will say the same about multilateralism. A rules-based international system with clear norms on state behavior has clear drawbacks, but it is still the best compared with other systems. As the scale of global crises expands – especially the fallout from climate – it is difficult to imagine how we can provide global public goods outside a “rules-based order”. But as powerful states undermine the existing order, while claiming to protect it, there is an opportunity for Africa to embrace the mantle of “guardian of multilateralism”. Africa’s support for multilateralism is driven by necessity. Multilateralism has allowed economic integration that has yielded benefits for Africa. As the IMF notes, “…trade deepening has helped catalyze catch-up in per capita incomes across countries and a large reduction in global poverty…Conversely, the unraveling of trade links would most adversely impact low-income countries and less well-off consumers in advanced economies…Reduced capital flows would hinder financial deepening in destination countries, especially through foreign direct investment which can be an important source of technological diffusion. And a decline in international cooperation would put at risk the provision of vital global public goods.” As multilateralism wilts, other fora like the G7 and G-20 have become proxies for high level decisions on global issues. Africa’s presence on the G-20 would extend its role as guardian of multilateralism.

Power as currency of the International System:

Hendrik Spruyt’s excellent book, “the Nation State and its Competitors” tracks the rise of the nation state, as the optimal organizational structure for domestic life and external affairs. After the collapse of European feudalism, various political entities emerged: empires, kingdoms, urban leagues, independent communes, city states etc. There was thus nothing inevitable about the rise of the nation state, it is the survivor of a centuries long process to determine the goldilocks polity whose institutional arrangements proved superior to rivals’. The nation state will remain, for the foreseeable future, the basic, organizing unit of the international system and power will remain its currency.

Throughout this entire process, success and failure was inextricably tied to power – usually military power (undergirded by economic power). Power was and remains the language of organizing domestic and external affairs. Today a state is considered failed if it loses monopoly over the legitimate use of violence within its borders.  It is thus a constant of history that territorial units capable of organizing and wielding violence effectively, succeeded in dominating their neighbors. In a world where violence was the main currency of exchange, geographical political actors pursued pacts, alliances, and other such coalitions to maximize strength and shore up weaknesses. But even these proved ineffective at stanching warmongering. They were, however, precursors to the kind of multilateralism that emerged at the end of World War II. That multilateralism was built on the failure of the League of Nations and designed to tame the naked exercise of power as the primary mechanism of foreign policy. By establishing norms, customs and rules to govern state behavior, that order has reduced the risk of war and encouraged collective interdependence in the hope of shared prosperity.

Multilateralism at Risk:

That multilateralism with the United Nations as its centerpiece, is failing. The exercise of unbridled power remains too tempting an option, especially as relative power among nations shift. This is an abiding weakness of multilateralism – that the powerful periodically resort to “doing what they can and letting the weak suffer what they must”. But as noted above, multilateralism has clear benefits. Its long peace gave us globalization. And as globalization integrated our economies, it introduced new risks and opportunities. Central nodes of global integration remain under the control of a small number of players giving them another option for unilateral action against rivals and perceived offenders. As Farell and Newman note in Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Share State Coercion “Flows of finance, information, and physical goods across borders create both new risks for states and new tools to alternatively exploit or mitigate those risks.”

For the powerful, there is a compelling incentive to convert the multilateral system into a tool of their foreign policy or they consider it failed. The greater the distance between the context of the system’s beginnings and our current reality, the more multilateralism seem like an anachronistic vestige of a bygone era – especially to powerful state like the United States, Russia or China. The continent closest to the conditions that necessitated multilateralism – if not in the wars, but extreme deprivation, is Africa. Africa’s relative weakness means it can only thrive in a world that is more stable and state behavior more predictable. As noted above, over the last two decades multilateralism has been undermined by its erstwhile guardians, the most powerful nations. The ongoing geo-economic fragmentation, replete with trade restrictions and increasing weaponization of interconnectedness needs an actor committed to a robust international system. Africa’s extreme exposure to the breakdown of the system means it has the most to lose from its collapse. It is the continent most vulnerable to the devastating effects of climate change, but least responsible for the crisis. There is no response or solution outside a multilateral arrangement. Africa’s skin in the game makes it the ideal guardian.

Betrayal of Multilateralism by the Powerful:

When the Bush administration failed to convince the UN to authorize a war in Iraq, it cobbled together a “coalition of the willing” to lend credibility to naked exercise of power. The UN was relevant only so far as it was a rubber stamp for American adventurism. America’s extra-territorial targeted killings with drones under President Obama and his successors asked the world to “trust” that the targets were justified and the collateral proportional. And while American scholars and policymakers went to great length justifying the program, the global community will subsequently reap the whirlwind as more countries acquire and utilize drones. A world in which countries conduct targeted killings by drones is significantly less safe and the United States will be responsible for having set that precedent.

President Trump notified the WHO of his intent to withdraw from the global health body in the peak of a pandemic. Both the Bush administration’s war in Iraq and the Russian invasion of Ukraine undermined a core principle of multilateralism:  that national borders and territorial integrity should remain inviolable. Under the Trump administration, the US repeatedly argued that the WTO was not fit for purpose and incapable of dealing with China’s alleged violations of international trade rules, but then the Trump administration blocked appointment of judges to the WTO’s court of appeals. Absent multilateral rules to adjudicate trade disputes, everything degenerates. But China too is not without fault. Corporate espionage is widespread and acknowledged as such, but China is reported to have repeatedly gone beyond this to compel transfer of proprietary technology and knowhow for access to its markets. In the current debt resolution talks concerning Zambia’s debt, China’s insistence on rescinding or renegotiating the seniority of multilateral development lenders amounts to changing the rules in the middle of the game. This has implications for the solvency of MDBs at exactly the moment there is a push to expand the scope of their activities. As Amanda Glassman and I argue here, a “better” World Bank is a “bigger” World Bank. A world in which powerful countries constantly flout multilateralism has pushed us down the path where we arrived today: Hours after the US shot down the Chinese balloon, the US Defense Secretary reached out to his Chinese counterpart on an established crisis hotline. No one answered. China said it refused the call because the US had “not created the proper atmosphere”. In a world where France, the US and the UK are allies to Ukraine in its war against Russia, what actor will break the impasse in a US-China crisis.

Along Came a Guardian:

There is no better case for both permanent representation for Africa on the UNSC and G-20 membership for the African Union. The multilateral system requires a moral guardian committed to its core principles and Africa’s commitment to multilateralism is non-negotiable. Only in an orderly, rules-based system can it escape crippling poverty and respond to the worsening effects of a changing climate, effects it is inordinately exposed to. As the fabric of multilateralism frays from repeated assaults by the powerful, the continent can become its chief defender, but that defense has to be institutionalized beginning with Security Council seats. Africa can then leverage its credibility with the world’s most powerful actors to preserve a rules-based order. All the current members of the Security Council have expressed their commitment to an Africa they engage as equals. Every Chinese Foreign Minister has asked Africans to consider China a brother through “weal and woe”. Biden, Blinken and Yellen’s insistence on readiness to engage Africa as equal partners is meant to signal a change in US policy to Africa and Foreign Minister Lavrov just ended his trip to Africa to shore up support for Russia. It would appear to me that the continent has the backing of these actors and the credibility to engage them in defense of the international order. It’s time to test these pledges of friendship and equal partnership, no?