What's a seat on the UN Security Council worth these days?

Canada's bid to land a seat on the UN Security Council has the pundits divided on whether it's a worthwhile endeavour.

On Oct. 12 the UN will elect two member states to temporary positions on the Security Council. Canada’s up against Germany and Portugal, and there’s a good chance Stephen Harper's well on his way to securing the spot.

“Canada is an excellent candidate for a seat on the Security Council of the United Nations,” says an editorial in the Globe and Mail. The column notes that “In the past two years, this country has added a worldwide reputation for financial and fiscal competence, to its history of peacekeeping.” Economic prudence has generally not been considered one of the UN’s “cardinal virtues, but after the first truly global financial crisis and recession, the good record of Canadian banks … has stood out.”

In his speech to the UN yesterday, Harper “was like the Slap-Chop guy on the floor of the UN General Assembly,” writes the National Post’s John Ivison. “It wasn’t quite as crass as Vince’s 'You’ll love my nuts' routine but it showed similar command of the marketing man’s art.” Ivison says Harper’s spirited bid for a Council seat is a high-risk, low-yield proposition for the PM. Canada has run for the position each decade since 1948 and never lost, so if Harper succeeds, he won’t get much credit. But if he loses, he “would hand Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff a very large stick with which to beat Conservative foreign policy.” Unfortunately Ivison doesn’t go on to speculate what the Slap-Chop guy would be like as PM. The Mark’s official analysis: his nuts-loving policy is untenable, but his diced tomato initiative is dynamite.

Rex Murphy wonders why Harper’s wasting his time pandering to the UN. “The United Nations may have begun as a noble dream,” he writes in the Post, “but it has become just another bartering house for international politicians.” As evidence of the organization’s descent into nonsense, he points to the UN’s continued tolerance of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s annual diatribes, the kind of “pathetic junk (usually reserved for) some sad coffee shop or bar,” not the halls of an international organization.