Taiwan joins UN in 2008

Belisarius II

If Taiwan rejoined the UN China would bellow and threaten, but take no military action. War is just such a bad option, and a failed invasion would be a humiliation.
 

NotedCoyote

Alanith said:
Would Taiwan’s membership even be before the Security council? If it’s not a SC matter Chinas veto there matters not one whit.
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The General Assembly only gets to vote on admitting a member if the membership of the prospective state is recommended by the Security Council. In order to get that recommendation, you need 9 of the 15 members of the Security Council to vote in your favour and none of the P5 to veto it.

If China vetos Taiwan's efforts at the recommendation stage, it will never make it to the General Assembly for a vote. Palestine's attempt to gain membership back in 2011 was indefinitely stalled at that stage, entirely because of the possibility of the United States vetoing the vote or too many members of the Security Council abstaining for the required two-thirds majority to be possible. The vote never took place at the Security Council, and so Palestine never got a vote at the General Assembly. The same situation would probably happen if Taiwan made an effort to join.

Taiwan would still have the option of going for permanent observer status as a non-member. That only requires a majority vote by the General Assembly, and would be the closest they'd be able to get to UN membership with China's veto (and who knows how many abstentions by countries that don't want to rock the boat) standing in the way at the Security Council.
 

acgoldis

Can a country apply to upgrade membership once admitted? What happens if (say) American politics starts turning on Israel and the US demands that the Palestinian territories get a seat at the table?

What good is UN observer status if they can't vote or bring issues to the General Assembly?

They should make a rule that the five most powerful countries always get veto power -- and that list is updated every 5 years.
 

Anneessens

acgoldis said:
Can a country apply to upgrade membership once admitted?
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I presume they can, but by the same procedure as any other candidate member. There are, in fact, no specific procedures concerning observer members in the UN Charter.

What good is UN observer status if they can't vote or bring issues to the General Assembly?
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It's up to the General Assembly to determine the privileges it grants to observer members (considering the lack of any provision in the UN Charter), so it's feasible that Taiwan would be granted the right to bring issues to the GA. For instance, the EU was granted the right to submit propsals etc.
However, it's very doubtful any observer member will ever be granted the right to vote.

I guess applying for observer status by Taiwan will be mainly done for reasons other than the right to vote: to gain political points for the domestic electorate ("full membership is unrealistic, but we got the next best thing AND gave Beijing a little humiliation), to be able to participate more easily in other UN agencies, to promote its cause more easily by diplomatic means, etc.

They should make a rule that the five most powerful countries always get veto power -- and that list is updated every 5 years.
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First of all: how does one measure international power?
Secondly: The problem is that this will lead to difficult diplomatic tensions every five years, and disgruntled declining powers who lose their veto power might exit the organisation altogether, resulting in a even further diminished international relevancy for the UN.
 

acgoldis

Hmm: maybe give six countries vetoes, the traditional five and one chosen at random per year? That way small countries can have a say.
 

Chris S

acgoldis said:
Hmm: maybe give six countries vetoes, the traditional five and one chosen at random per year? That way small countries can have a say.
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That still wouldn't give Taiwan a shot at a seat.

In any case some small countries do get a say in terms of vetoes once they are chummy enough with one of the P5. Look at what @NotedCoyote referred to. Palestinian membership was never going to be in Israeli interests in 2011, but Israel didn't need a veto. They had the US as a possible proxy veto plus could rely on the possible abstentions by enough members to kill the process.

I'm fairly certain that if the UNSC moved to condemn Armenia that Russia would veto it in a heartbeat. Same for any UNSC condemnation of really close French allies in Africa
 

NotedCoyote

acgoldis said:
...What good is UN observer status if they can't vote or bring issues to the General Assembly?...
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As mentioned above, being an observer grants participation (within some limits) in the General Assembly, but even more important is that Palestine was granted observer status as the State of Palestine. Under international law, a nation can only be recognized as a sovereign state if it has four things: a defined territory, a government, a permanent population, and the ability to enter into relations with other states. You don't need UN membership or the approval of the Security Council, but if other states aren't willing to enter into relations with you, you can't meet the fourth criteria, and so you can't be sure that international law will recognize you as a sovereign state.

Joining the UN as a non-member observer state allows Palestine to join international organizations, to take cases to the International Court of Justice, and to sign treaties that are deposited with the UN Secretary-General. In other words, getting that observer status gave Palestine the undisputed capacity to enter into relations with other states.

Essentially, the benefit for Palestine is that they are now legally considered a sovereign state under international law. It doesn't matter that America and its allies and many European countries don't recognize their statehood, because that isn't one of the requirements for statehood.

Taiwan, if it chose to approach the UN in 2008 with no chance of actually gaining full membership, might well have considered the benefit of recognition as a sovereign state to be worth seeking observer status for.
 
Dan1988

Dan1988

NotedCoyote said:
Taiwan, if it chose to approach the UN in 2008 with no chance of actually gaining full membership, might well have considered the benefit of recognition as a sovereign state to be worth seeking observer status for.
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Problem with that would be China would prevent any Taiwanese representation in the UN in any capacity, even as a non-member permanent observer à la Palestine. If Taiwan chose to go that far, China would start making preparations for invading Taiwan, as it would consider it a "declaration of independence" which it felt like it had to prevent, since the PRC considers Taiwan part of its territory (Taiwan, OTOH, would disagree). So IOTL China breathed a sigh of relief when Ma Ying-jeou was elected and dropped the whole thing. If ITTL Taiwan had a higher electorate for the referendum, China would probably start doing another round of missile tests before the Taiwanese government drops the idea; if Taiwan pressed on anyway, either China would begin invading - starting with Kinmen and Matsu, which are just literally several kilometers away from Fujian province - or they would exert other pressure, not just a veto, to get Taiwan to drop the idea.
 

David T

Belisarius II said:
If Taiwan rejoined the UN China would bellow and threaten, but take no military action. War is just such a bad option, and a failed invasion would be a humiliation.
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Taiwan is not going to rejoin (or technically just "join"---the Republic of China, not Taiwan, held that seat before the PRC, even if it in fact only ruled Taiwan after 1949) the UN, period. The point is not whether China would use force, though no doubt the fear of that was one factor in opposition to the referendum. The point is that AFAIK no nation favored it--not the US, not the EU. Look at the map at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timel..._China#/media/File:ROCDiplomaticRelations.png for the number of nations that still had diplomatic relations with the RoC by the twenty-first century...

You might as well speculate how China would react if the Pacific Ocean suddenly dried up.
 
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