United Nations Deadlocked on North Korea Issue

An emergency UN meeting to discuss North Korea ended up with no agreement.

While Japan was seeking a resolution in this regard (of North Korean rocket launch) to be passed, China and Russia seemed to urge restraint with the response. And the meeting ended with no agreement today, a dead-locked situation. The UN couldn't even agree on as simple an issue as a North Korea missile launch and is instead divided on the response.

The responsibility of United Nations is to maintain world peace and security. United Nations can do this in the form of one of :

a) Peacekeeping operations
b) International Sanctions
c) Authorization of Military action

United Nations consist of 192 members.

Security Council decisions on all substantive matters require the affirmative votes of nine members. So to pass a resolution , nine members have to vote for it.

In addition, the security council defines what it calls as Permanent Members with special rights. There are only five permanent members:

1) China
2) Russia
3) United States
4) United Kingdom
5) France

The five permanent members have veto power, meaning they could veto any resolution and prevent it from being passed, even if it has received the required nine affirmative votes. This is where the problem is. For example , all it takes to block any action from United Nations is for Russia to veto it and that is the end of it (and statistics say that Russia has used veto power the maximum) . This voting procedure is what is essentially making the United Nations a powerless / useless body.

Why do we want to empower a single country to block or veto a resolution when majority of countries may want it? Why can't we have a simple voting mechanism in the Security Council that would allow a resolution to be passed if a majority of 192 members vote for the resolution and remove any veto power from a single country whatsoever? This would prevent Russia and China from blocking a resolution as long as a majority of 192 countries vote for the resolution. And that is a true democratic voting mechanism!

Bush was smart enough to recognize this defect in the United Nations operational procedure. Had he not, Saddam Hussein would still be there, killing millions. Let us hope the new administration under President Obama is smart enough to recognize the same defect in United Nations operational procedure, and either

a) chooses to push a reform of the United Nations voting procedures and end up transforming United Nations

OR

b) chooses to ignore the currently useless / powerless United Nations with flawed Voting procedures (if United Nations is not willing to change the flaws) which will get us no where.

Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7984635.stm