Chapter 6 — Outlook and Conclusion. 
Outlook 
The existing UN based international system is critical for the continued security of small states 
without militaries. The current rules based international system is centred on the institution of 
the United Nations and the concepts of sovereignty and sovereign equality? 
. Membership of 
the United Nations affords a state the protections to its sovereignty afforded by the United 
Nations Charter and it gives a state a vote in the General Assembly that is of equal value with 
all other members. The vote of Tuvalu or Liechtenstein is of equal status to the vote of 
Germany or Brazil. On top of these sensible and egalitarian principles sits the first paradox of 
the UN system, that of the permanent veto wielding members of the Security Council, a diplo- 
bureaucratic manifestation of the Orwellian concept that some are more equal than others’. 
The permanent members of the Security Council are the winners of the Second World War who 
set up the new international system in a way that gave them advantage and acted as a safety 
valve to the superpower rivalry that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union. 
While China has always been a member of the Security Council, the China that helped build 
the system, the Republic of China (ROC), is not the China that occupies the Security Council 
seat today, the Peoples Republic of China (PRC)'?". The rules and the nature of the system 
were not of the People's Republic's creation and as the PRC has grown in military, diplomatic 
and economic power the desire for an international rules based order that better reflects 
China's interests and world-view grows too'*. 
Added to this is the fact that since 1945 states that at that time were minor powers or did not 
exist as independent sovereign entities, either by military defeat and occupation or colonisation, 
are now major powers on the world stage. India, Japan, Germany and Brazil all have large 
populations, large economies and considerable military potential, including nuclear weapons in 
India's case. The world has changed but the international structures that govern it have not'??. 
A desire to change these systems is a concern to small states whose security, sovereignty and 
status are guaranteed and enshrined by the current global order. Sovereign equality is a 
  
135 nttp://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-i/ 
136 http://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-v/index.html 
137 UN Resolution 2758. 
http:/\Wwww.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/2758(XXVI) 
38 Andrew Hurrell, Hegemony, Liberalism and Global Order: What Space for Would-Be 
Great Powers?, in International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), (Vol. 82, 
No. 1, Perspectives on Emerging Would-Be Great Powers Jan., 2006), 2. 
139 Nadin, Peter, UN Security Council Reform, (Berlin: Taylor and Francis, 2016). 52-59.