>> Abolish the UN Security Council -- Let Democracy Prevail through the
>> General Assembly.
>> --
>> Yoshie
>
> Terrific--Yoshie claims to be in favor of real UN democracy. So am I.
> Of course, that would entail a) the governments of despotic states
> wouldn't be represented, since the will of such regimes (contra Hobbes)
> rarely reflects anything like the collective will of the peoples they
> govern and b) nations would be represented in a manner proportional to their
> populations (e.g. France should have a lot more say than Luxembourg).
>
> -- Luke
That's an odd way to go into this particular problem. Obviously, the Burmese junta isn't representative of the Burmese. But neither is England - or the barely-elected US administration - representative of the Burmese. So at a stretch, you could say that the General Assembly is not less democratic than the Security Council. That leaves a lot to be desired as an argument against the reforms Yoshie suggests.
As for the population sizes, should that be the only consideration? One billion wills crammed into one vote is less democracy per vote than a hundred thousand wills into one vote - and how is this problem, which is one of imperfect representation, solved by having the resulting vote weighed more heavily?
From another perspective, someone could argue that tyrannical regimes such as Burma - or for that matter the USSR back in the day - ought to be given equal footing with democracies given (a) the absence of acceptable transnational criteria of democracy (b) the fact someone has to make decisions for the populations of these countries until they become democracies and (c) there is no reason to think the Western powers have the interests of these populations at heart, save the self-serving statements of Western leaders.
Thiago Oppermann