Is the World Really Bigger Than Five?

The United Nations (UN) was established in 1945, after the Second World War, with the aim of preventing the world from being devastated by an all-out war again. The UN is an international organization whose official purpose is to maintain world peace and security and to establish economic, social and cultural cooperation. The two main organs of the UN, which has 193 members as of today, are the General Assembly and the Security Council. The General Assembly is a structure in which all member states are represented, while the Security Council consists of 15 member states, 5 permanent and 10 temporary. The 5 permanent members have absolute veto power for Security Council resolutions. Absolute veto power means that no decision can be made in the Council as a result of the rejection of any of the permanent members. The 5 permanent members of the Security Council are the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China, which are also the founding members of the UN. Except for China, the other 4 countries are the victors of the Second World War.

Size is a subjective concept in the adjective sense, but if we use the phrase "greater than" as a result of an analytical analysis, it is a logical and mathematical inference. In this article, we will try to analyze the expression “the world is bigger than five”, which CB Erdoğan said in reference to the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council.

We have to use some parameters for our analysis. Dozens or even hundreds of parameters can be used for this analysis, but here we will highlight the factors that affect the political power of the countries. In the analysis, the magnitudes of Turkey will be given, in this way, we can see the place of Turkey's political power assessment in the world. The parameters we will use are; population, GDP, area and military power.

Population

With the data of 2021, the total population of the world is 7 894 576 000 people. That's roughly 8 billion. Within this total population, the populations of the 5 permanent members of the Security Council are given in the pictures:

Area

What is meant by the area is the total territorial sovereignty areas of the countries. Although the uninhabited desert does not seem like a very meaningful data with its poles or wide steppes, the width of the surface area provides advantages to the countries in terms of natural resources and also affects the structure of the military forces of the countries. In our evaluation, only the polar areas were excluded from the terrestrial area.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

GDP is the monetary value of all products, goods and services produced within the borders of a country in a certain period of time. It represents economic size. GDP is taken as a reference when comparing the international market and the national economy. According to the current data, GDP figures of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council are shown in the pictures:

According to the table, we can say that 50% of the world's economic size consists of these 5 permanent member countries. Only Japan and Germany can be included among these countries with a total size of approximately 10%. Turkey's GDP figure is 649 436 billion dollars.

Military power

Military power, which is one of the fields that are difficult to define and measure qualitatively, is one of the strongest elements of political effectiveness. Many factors affect the formation of military power, so a multiple evaluation should be made rather than just the number of soldiers, aircraft and ships. There are institutions and organizations and media organs that make periodic military power assessments in the world. The evaluation we will use here is www.globalfirepower.com, which is a multi-comparison website. This site periodically considers more than 50 factors and collects its evaluation in a numerical index called "PowerIndex" and measures the military strength of countries on the basis of capability, financial and logistic support, and geography. The sample table below is the evaluation of Turkey.

According to the 2021 evaluation of the www.globalfirepower.com site, the military power ranking of the countries is the USA, Russia, China, France and England.

In this ranking, India, Japan and South Korea take the 4th and 6th places, respectively. Turkey ranks 11th after Brazil in 9th place and Pakistan in 10th place. Of the countries that might interest you, Iran is at the 14th place, Israel is at the 20th place, Greece is at the 29th place, and Azerbaijan is at the 63rd place.

EVALUATION:

First of all, we should consider the veto right granted to the 5 founding and permanent members of the UN Security Council as a mechanism for compelling reconciliation, not an obstruction. Unfortunately, this veto power was frequently used to prevent, especially in the bipolar world of the cold war period. For this reason, the authority and effectiveness of the UN in crisis regions of the world are constantly questioned. However, considering that global crises such as natural disasters, climate change, terrorism and migration are on the agenda more frequently, it becomes a necessity to implement the understanding of intervention through consensus within the UN body. What will be done here may be to expand the scope of the compromise by increasing the number of twill members.

In our analysis, it is seen that the most obvious advantages of the 5 permanent members are GDP and military power. However, when we say scope, population is also a factor that must be taken into account. When we evaluate from these aspects, we see that the first country we can add to the permanent 5 members is India. In addition to India, Brazil, Japan and Germany are the prominent countries in the collective evaluation. Permanent membership of 3 countries from Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, which have the characteristics of candidates in accordance with the geographical participation of Africa and South Asia, on behalf of Islamic countries, taking into account the religion that creates a political compartment, taking into account the socio-cultural characteristics. conceivable. Of course, what is in our hearts is Turkey's membership. Indonesia and Egypt are suitable candidates. In my opinion, the most suitable formation for the Security Council, whose permanent members will be 12 countries, will be the country list in the pictures.

In this case, the rhetoric of "the world is bigger than 12" would be unrealistic for an enlarged UN Security Council with high representation in each of the areas of population, area, GDP, military power and making decisions by consensus.