Diplomacy at the United Nations: The dual agenda of the 1992 security council summit

The Security Council summit meeting of 31 January 1992 was supposed to be a momentous event that would determine the course of the world body and international peace and security in the post-Cold War era. Despite high expectations, though, the actual meeting did not produce much more than a broadly-phrased declaration of good intentions. The article examines the hypothesis that the meeting had a dual agenda, with a hidden as well as a public part. It is argued that the main item on the hidden agenda was the confirmation, beyond any doubt or potential challenge, of Russia as the rightful successor to the USSR permanent seat on the Security Council. This suited well the weakened major remnant of the former Soviet Union as well as the other permanent members of the Security Council, especially the UK and France, who had good reasons to want to defer indefinitely any reexamination of the Council's composition and powers.