PM hopes to extricate Canada from UN box

[Sarevok]

India deserves a place on the UNSC more than Canada, I'd say.

Indeed. The largest democracy in the world deserves a seat in the UNSC.

[Stuart Mackey]

Only problem with this idea is that it would end up just another talking shop that acheives nothing. You need a supra national body and limited national soverignty to acheive anything.

[Plekhanov]

The Veto was introduced for a reason which is that the major powers wouldn't join a club where they didn't get one, do you really expect the (not all that multilateral) Whitehouse would join a body with majority voting if it was to be bound by the results?

How does this change the fact that voting in the UNSC is a foregone conclusion? Either everyone agrees with the P5 (and they agree with each other) and a resolution gets passed, or one of the P5 throws down a veto and nothing gets done. Why? Because you need a 2/3rds majority (close enough - 9 out of 15) acceptance of a resolution AND concordance between each P5 member for a resolution to pass. Source

With restrictions like that how can anything get done? Especially through a democratic process?

It doesn’t change the fact that the UNSC is flawed but is does to some extent explain why it is and why countries such as Russia, China and above all USA won’t sign up to any body which isn’t equally hamstrung.

You chose France for your example of a threatened Veto bear in mind that after the USSR/Russia the US has used it’s veto more than any other country why would it give up a power it uses so often?

Even if the president (by which I mean any president in the near future) signed up to such a body can you really see the treaty being ratified by congress?

If a country was commited to the such a body? Fuck yes. Otherwise it's credibility suffers in the eyes of the international community. Besides such treaties always depend on good leadership to sell them. Take the veto out and the leader still has to sell it to his country.

The Bush administration has a record of unilateral action both withdrawing from treaties and refusing to sign them in the first place; Kytoto, whichever treaty it was banning “Star Wars”, the International Criminal Court or whatever it’s called are a few examples of this. Whilst Kerry isn’t as up front about unilateralism he is always careful not to seem weak (by which I mean paying attention to other nations) on foreign policy. Previously I seem to remember Clinton coming under pressure from congress to act in a more unilateral manner with it refusing to release the funds the US owed the UN and so forth.

If G20’s decisions had any weight and could potentially compel the US to act (say for example on Israel which the US continually defends with its Veto) it would take one hell of a leader to get that through congress and sell it to the country. Signing up to a “democratic” body such as G20 would be a major realignment of the direction of recent US foreign policy and one for which there would seem to be almost no desire for in the US (outside antiwar protestors that is).

Maybe I'm just naive but I can't see how one country, with a permanent seat on the SC and armed with a veto, can possibly assist the democratic decision-making process the UN purportedly claims to uphold.

I think in this case you may well be being naive; you seem to be working under the assumption that the major powers are in any way interested in democratic decision making I don’t think they but are interested in getting there own way, democracy is only of interest to small diplomatic powers and those who don’t have a Veto.

[Sea Skimmer]

Since when is a nation's readiness to go to war matter? It's their importance in the geopolitical game.

And India's is very low. Simply being big is all it has, it doesn't have a world influence that's anything close to what its mass would suggest.