Pursuing National Interests: The 1992 British Presidency of the UN Security Council and the Soviet Permanent Seat

The UNSC presidency functions under the twin assumptions of neutrality and impartiality. However, chairing multilateral negotiations in institutionalised bargaining fora always offers substantial opportunities to the country in office to pursue its own national interests. An important constraint for the presidency is the very short duration of the period in office, which does not allow chairs to capitalise on the existing informational asymmetries and use them to their own advantage. Can this institutional constraint be overcome? We address this issue by examining the British one-month presidency in January 1992. In a highly turbulent period, with mounting pressures for the UNSC to become more representative, the presidency secured the transition from the Soviet to the Russian UNSC seat without opening the Pandora's box of UNSC reform, in line with British preferences.