Maintenance Of The Main Opponents Of The Decision-making Power And Balance: The United States, The Un Security Council Composed Of Policy Analysis

The composition issue is one of the key issues in the UN Security Council reform. The current mainstream argument on the U.S. position towards the Security Council expansion is that the United States always hope to maintain the status quo. However, from my point of view, this opinion does not pay enough attention to the complex national interests of the United States. I argue that the United States do not object all of the expansion proposals, on the contrary, its policy depends on two kinds of its interests, one is protecting the decision-making power in the Security Council, the other is balancing the main adversaries through supporting or accepting the Security Council member candidates. Among the candidates, from the decision-making power perspective, the United States will support the states which share the similar voting preference in the United Nations, and from the perspective of balancing the main adversaries, the United States will support the competitors of its main adversaries and accept the ones that have great impacts on the balance of power between itself and the adversaries. I focus on the U.S. policy in the situation that the two kinds of interests contradict. I believe that balancing the main adversaries will be its prime consideration, while protecting the decision-making power will be the secondary consideration.This article analyzes four pieces of events on the composition of the Security Council. The first one is the U.S. policy to the permanent member status of China and France during the founding of the United Nations, the second one is the U.S. policy to the Security Council expansion pushed by the Afro-Asia states in the early 1960s, the third one is the Nixon administration's policy on the Chinese Representation issue, and the fourth one is the U.S. policy on the post-Cold War Security Council expansion issue.Through these cases, I find that:In the first case, the United States took different policies to China and France. The reason that the United States actively supported China was that China was viewed as a follower and an important balancing power after the World War II by the American leaders. And the change of the U.S. position to France showed that when the United States believed its hegemony was challenged by the USSR, balancing became the prime consideration, and protecting the decision-making power became the secondary consideration. In the second case, The policy of the United States to the Security Council expansion pushed by the Afro-Asia states experienced a process from trying to delay and block it to finally accepting it. On the one hand, the United States feared that accepting the expansion would damage its decision-making power, so hoped to maintain the status quo, or to limit the size of expansion. However, on the other hand, the United States realized that if it denied the demand of the Afro-Asia states, these states would probably took the retaliatory actions, and would cause great damages to US on the Cold War issues. Under this consideration, the United States accepted the Security Council expansion finally.The Nixon administration took a policy I called acquiescence on People's Republic of China restoring the seat at the United Nations, including the permanent membership of the Security Council. This policy can be understood from three aspects: on the intention aspect, the US government had in fact accepted the demand of the PRC, on the behavior aspect, the US government gave up the active preparations to block the restoration, and on the result aspect, the actions of the US government objectively cleared an important obstacle for China's restoration eventually. I believe the reason was President Nixon tried to carry out a strategy to balance the Soviet Union through improving its relationship with the PRC.After the Cold War, the United States have supported Japan and Germany (Japan only after 2003) to be the new permanent members of the Security Council. At the same time, it has tried to limit the number of the new members of the developing countries. For the United States, there are no specific main adversaries since the end of the Cold War, so protecting the decision-making power has become the prime consideration. And from this point, the US government makes decisions on this issue depending on whether the candidates share the similar voting preferences with the United States.