The Club.

There is a particular kind of outrage reserved for a club you are not a member of. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, recently delivered a characteristically full-throated critique of the United Nations Security Council, that discreet little arrangement where five nations enjoy permanent membership and the ability to veto anything that might inconvenience them, embarrass them, or, on occasion, restrain them.

His complaint was simple enough. Wars are launched without consultation, consequences ripple outward, and the institution nominally responsible for maintaining peace is left to convene meetings about why it wasn’t consulted in the first place.

The examples required little prompting. Iraq. Libya. Ukraine. Gaza. A sort of greatest hits compilation of modern intervention, in which the guiding doctrine appears to be that international approval is a pleasant accessory, but not an essential one.

The veto, meanwhile, has evolved into something rather more useful than originally advertised. Less a safeguard against rash action, more a guarantee that once rash action has occurred, nothing terribly inconvenient will follow.

It is, as critiques go, solid, but it does leave out a small detail. Because having laid out the case against this exclusive arrangement, its selective morality, its elastic interpretation of rules, its tendency to treat international law as something between a guideline and a hobby, the proposed remedy was not to dismantle it. It was, in effect, to expand the membership. More seats, more nations, a larger table at which more people might, with any luck, be in a position to ignore one another.

Brazil, India, Germany, Japan, serious contenders, all. And entirely justified in asking why a mid-20th-century settlement should continue to dictate 21st-century power. But the underlying principle remains reassuringly intact, the problem is not that a few countries can overrule the rest of the world, it is that the current few are insufficiently representative of the rest of the world. Which is not quite the same thing.

For all the indignation directed at the Security Council, there is remarkably little appetite for abolishing the veto itself. No great movement to remove the ability of powerful nations to act first and tidy up the paperwork later. No serious push to redistribute power so thoroughly that it ceases to look like power. Instead, there is a waiting list. The club, in other words, is intolerable, until such time as one is admitted.

This leaves the Security Council in its current, faintly absurd position: denounced as outdated, unbalanced, and structurally incapable of doing the job it was designed to do, while remaining the most sought-after address in international diplomacy. A broken system, then. But a highly desirable one.

None of which lets the current permanent members off the hook. Their record suggests that the phrase “rules-based order” is best understood as a flexible concept, applied vigorously when convenient and thoughtfully set aside when not. The veto has not prevented conflict so much as ensured that objections to it can be efficiently filed and safely ignored. But there is a distinction worth making between opposing a system and aspiring to inherit it.

At present, the global mood appears to favour a bit of both. Which raises a mildly uncomfortable question. If the structure remains, if the veto survives, if power continues to be concentrated rather than dispersed, what exactly improves? A more geographically diverse group of nations able to act without consequence? A fairer, more inclusive distribution of double standards? It is possible, of course, that a broader council might behave differently. That inclusion might encourage restraint. That a larger number of voices might produce something resembling consensus. It is also possible that it simply ensures more countries get a turn at being disregarded slightly later in the process.

In the meantime, the fundamentals hold. Decisions are taken by the few, experienced by the many, and explained afterwards with great seriousness. And outside the chamber, the rest of the world continues to press its case. Not for a different system.

But for a seat at the same table - preferably one with a veto.

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The views expressed are those of the correspondent. Factual claims draw on publicly available sources.