this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
329 points (98.8% liked)
Late Stage Capitalism
5614 readers
1 users here now
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
@[email protected] @[email protected] Having gone through my own reading rabbit-hole on UN diplomacy in the past, I can clarify: The vote was on passing the "important question" scheme that the US first devised in 1961. Every time a motion in the UNGA was put forth to restore the UN seat to China, the US inserted a preliminary amendment to have the motion considered a "important question," which would require a supermajority rather than a simple majority for it to then pass. This blocked China's membership for 10 years until 1971. This is why the vote in the video has the US and its underlings voting in the affirmative and why the Assembly laughed, because by the US' turn to vote, it was already clear that the UNGA majority would reject the supermajority amendment and thus be able to restore China's membership.
Very interesting, thank you.
Not exactly "eleventh hour", it was submitted on the 29th of Sept, 4 days after the Albanian (et al.) proposal on the 25th of Sept. A truely eleventh hour proposal can be seen with the Saudi Arabian A/L.638 submitted on the day of the vote (25 Oct.)
Also... From A/PV.1976: