The colonial powers helped create conflicts, extracted enormous wealth and still possess the power to block reform. Why should the world accept their permanent privilege?
Opinion | Charuka Abhayawickrama | 5 November 2026
In 1956, Britain and France helped organise an invasion of Egypt, then presented their own intervention as a mission to restore order. Both already held permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council. That single episode should make us question a system in which countries may violate the principles of international security while retaining extraordinary authority to enforce them. [1]
It was not an isolated contradiction. British imperial decisions contributed to the political divisions surrounding the partition of India. British and American intelligence helped overthrow Iran’s prime minister in 1953. France compelled newly independent Haiti to pay an enormous indemnity to its former colonisers. And in 2003 Britain joined an invasion of Iraq that its own official inquiry would later condemn for proceeding before peaceful options were exhausted. [2–5]
These episodes do not mean that Britain or France caused every subsequent war, or that either has never supported peace. France opposed the 2003 Iraq invasion, for example. But the record makes the continued concentration of international power in their hands difficult to justify. The central issue is not whether these countries deserve a voice. They do. It is why they deserve an irrevocable privilege that others do not.
The privilege that protects itself
The United Nations Charter entered into force on 24 October 1945. Britain and France received permanent Security Council seats alongside the United States, the Soviet Union and China. This was a settlement shaped by the political power of the victorious wartime alliance, not a democratic verdict on which nations were most qualified to bring peace. [6]
Article 108 provides that Charter amendments must be adopted by two thirds of the General Assembly and ratified by two thirds of UN members, including every permanent Security Council member. In practical terms, Britain or France can prevent an amendment that would end or reduce its own permanent privilege simply by withholding ratification. The same is true of the other three permanent members. [6]
Should any country hold a permanent privilege that the rest of the world cannot change without that country’s consent?
The problem is not merely that the system is old. The problem is that it confuses the balance of power in 1945 with a timeless entitlement to govern the world. These countries were influential at the end of the Second World War. They were not appointed eternal guardians of humanity.
The borders and interventions that outlived empire
India and Pakistan gained independence in August 1947 amid Partition, one of the twentieth century’s great humanitarian catastrophes. Britain’s National Archives estimates that more than 15 million people migrated across the new borders. Historians commonly place the number killed around one million, although estimates vary. Political organisations and armed groups on the subcontinent contributed to the violence, and Britain alone cannot be held responsible for every decision. But the rushed transfer of power and hurried boundary-making under British authority helped turn independence into catastrophe. [7]
In the Middle East, Britain and France negotiated the Sykes–Picot Agreement in May 1916, allocating projected spheres of influence in former Ottoman territories without meaningful consent from their inhabitants. Later mandates in Iraq, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon helped shape political arrangements whose consequences endured. These imperial decisions were not the sole cause of modern Middle Eastern conflicts, but they were foundational interventions that colonial powers had no moral right to treat as their private business.
Iran offers a sharper example. In 1951 Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalised the British-controlled oil industry. A November 1952 US State Department memorandum records that the British Foreign Office favoured a coup to replace his government if the Americans cooperated. Mossadegh was overthrown on 19 August 1953 in a coup backed by British and American intelligence. The grievances it created continue to influence perceptions of Western intervention. [3]
When a country asserts control over its own oil, is that sovereignty or an offence against an empire?
Suez, 1956: the supposed peacekeepers organised the war
On 26 July 1956, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal Company and offered compensation. Britain and France had important commercial interests in the canal and strongly opposed his decision. They secretly coordinated with Israel: Israeli forces invaded Sinai on 29 October; Britain and France then intervened under the pretext of separating the combatants and protecting the canal. International pressure forced their withdrawal. [1]
The British National Army Museum openly describes a joint operation devised to allow Britain and France to occupy the canal “in the guise of peacemakers”. This was not an accusation invented by an adversary. It is the historical description offered by a British military museum. [1]
Both countries were already permanent Security Council members. Yet the powers trusted to uphold international security were themselves participants in an attack on a sovereign state. Suez was a warning about the danger of confusing great-power status with principled leadership.
Iraq, 2003: a warning from Britain’s own investigators
On 20 March 2003, Britain joined the US-led invasion of Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s regime had committed grave abuses, but the case for immediate war was not established. The 2016 Chilcot Inquiry found that military action had been taken before peaceful options had been exhausted; that assessments about weapons of mass destruction were presented with unjustified certainty; that postwar planning was inadequate; and that Britain helped undermine the Security Council rather than strengthen it. The inquiry did not itself rule on the war’s legality. [4]
Iraq Body Count records a range of 200,065 to 226,628 documented civilian deaths from violence since the 2003 invasion. These deaths occurred across years of warfare and involved many perpetrators. It would be inaccurate to say every death was caused by British or American forces, but it would be equally absurd to treat the invasion and its disastrous aftermath as a minor policy error. [8]
France opposed the invasion and argued for continued weapons inspections. That distinction is essential. It shows why governments must be assessed by specific decisions rather than condemned or praised as nations. It does not, however, confer an eternal right to veto decisions taken by the rest of the world. [9]
Colonial extraction: wealth left, and the bill stayed behind
Colonialism was not simply the possession of distant land. It involved systems of taxation, trade, resource control, coerced labour and political power designed extensively around imperial interests. The long-term financial damage is difficult to measure precisely, but several examples are documented beyond dispute.
In Britain’s empire, Parliament abolished slavery across much of its colonial territory through legislation passed in 1833. The government set aside £20 million in compensation for slave owners, while the formerly enslaved received no equivalent award. The Bank of England records the compensation scheme and its transactions. At the end of slavery, the colonial state compensated those who had claimed people as property, not the people who had endured enslavement. [10]
For India, economist Utsa Patnaik estimated that British extraction between 1765 and 1938 amounted to approximately US$45 trillion when historical resource transfers were compounded at 5 per cent. The calculation is contested and must not be represented as a settled invoice owed by modern Britain. Its significance is that scholars can trace a substantial economic drain through colonial taxation and the treatment of export earnings, even while disagreeing over its precise present-day value. [11]
France imposed an even more stark demand on Haiti. After Haiti won independence in 1804 through a revolution against slavery, French warships pressured it in April 1825 to accept a 150 million-franc indemnity for former colonists. The demand was later reduced to 90 million francs, but the associated debt diverted resources from a new republic for generations. The United Nations has documented this history. Formerly enslaved people were made to compensate the former slaveholding interests from which they had freed themselves. [5]
In West Africa, French monetary influence also survived formal independence. A long-standing arrangement required part of the West African central bank’s foreign reserves to be deposited with the French Treasury. Reforms announced in December 2019 ended this centralisation requirement and France’s role in relevant governance bodies, while retaining the euro exchange-rate link and French guarantee. These deposits were not confiscated wealth, and the monetary arrangement also offered stability. Yet the history raises an unavoidable question about how far independence had extended into economic decision-making. [12]
A colony can become politically independent and still spend generations paying for decisions made when it was not free.
Who sells the weapons, and who claims to guarantee peace?
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reports that France ranked second in the world for exports of major conventional arms during 2021–2025, accounting for 9.8 per cent of global transfers. Britain ranked eighth with 3.4 per cent. The United States led with 42 per cent. These are shares of SIPRI’s volume measure, not monetary sales revenue. [13]
Selling weapons does not prove that a country wants conflict. Arms supplied to a state resisting an invasion can save lives. But military export income, defence-industry lobbying and relationships with buyers create interests that deserve transparency, especially when the exporting government also exercises exceptional diplomatic power. The question is not whether every arms sale is illegitimate; it is whether the world should accept peacekeeping authority without equally rigorous scrutiny of commercial interests.
A changed world, an unchanged hierarchy
In 1945, India remained under British colonial rule and much of Africa was still colonised. Today, India and Indonesia are central to Asian politics, Brazil is a major regional and diplomatic power, and Japan, Germany and South Korea are leading industrial economies. Nigeria represents an important demographic and diplomatic voice in Africa. These countries are not interchangeable, and population or GDP alone cannot determine moral leadership. But it is indefensible to assume that the same two European states must possess permanent privileges simply because the postwar settlement gave them those seats.
Africa has 54 UN member states and no permanent Security Council seat. The African Union’s 2005 position called for two permanent seats with the same privileges as the existing members, plus five non-permanent seats. Its demand is not a request for charity. It is a demand to correct an obvious representational imbalance. [14]
Spain and Portugal, also former colonial empires with records of conquest and exploitation, participate in international diplomacy without a permanent Security Council veto. Spain remains a substantial economy, not an economic minnow. Their example shows that a former empire need not hold permanent authority over global security to remain influential.
The answer is not two new masters
Britain and France are not the only states whose conduct deserves scrutiny. The United States, Russia and China possess the same structural privilege and have their own histories of military intervention, coercion and violations of international norms. Removing only the British and French seats while leaving veto power otherwise untouched would address a symbol but not the underlying problem.
A credible reform agenda would expand regional representation, give Africa a meaningful permanent or long-term voice, examine renewable rather than hereditary-like seats, and restrict use of the veto in cases involving mass atrocities or the direct interests of a permanent member. These changes would require formidable diplomacy under Article 108. That is an argument for building a broad coalition, not for surrendering to the status quo.
Emerging powers should also be judged by their conduct, not romanticised as morally superior. The solution to imperial arrogance is not another hierarchy. It is an international system in which law, accountability and regional legitimacy matter more than the military balance of 1945.
Conclusion: the world is not their inheritance
When Egypt nationalised its canal, Britain and France helped organise an invasion. When Iran asserted control over its oil, Britain helped pursue a coup. When India became independent, millions were uprooted amid a calamitous partition. When Haiti freed itself from slavery, France demanded payment. When Britain invaded Iraq in 2003, its own inquiry later found that peaceful options had not been exhausted. These are not arguments that every modern crisis has a single foreign author. They are proof that the historical record of powerful countries must never be exempt from examination.
Britain and France do not need to be silenced, diminished or made poor. Their citizens should not be blamed for their governments’ history. Their contributions to diplomacy, culture, science and peacekeeping remain real. But those contributions are not a warrant for permanent constitutional privilege over everyone else.
No more inherited vetoes. No more treating the victors of 1945 as the owners of 2026.
London and Paris can participate in solving world problems. They should not decide, by inherited right, who is allowed to change the rules. Africa, Asia, Latin America and the rest of the world do not need permission to seek more equal institutions.
The final question is not whether Britain and France can ever help bring peace. They can, and sometimes have. It is this: if they genuinely believe in sovereign equality and a rules-based world, why should they retain a privilege that the rest of the world cannot remove without their agreement?
The world has outgrown its empires. It is time to outgrow their privileges.
Sources and fact-check notes
Sources are numbered in the text. Figures described as estimates should remain qualified in any published version.
[1] US Department of State, Office of the Historian, “The Suez Crisis, 1956”; British National Army Museum, “Suez Crisis”.
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/suez | https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/suez-crisis
[2] Oxford Bibliographies, “Partition”; UK National Archives, “Partition of British India”.
https://academic.oup.com/reference/62357/reference-article-abstract/554520845 | https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/teaching-resources/partition-of-british-india/
[3] US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 26 November 1952, memorandum on a proposed coup in Iran.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1951-54IranEd2/d148
[4] UK House of Commons Library, “Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability”, 2016.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-2016-0235/
[5] United Nations in the Caribbean, “How Haiti paid for its freedom – twice over”, 19 April 2025.
https://caribbean.un.org/en/293392-how-haiti-paid-its-freedom-%E2%80%93-twice-over
[6] United Nations, Charter, Articles 108–109, and history of the Charter.
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text
[7] UK National Archives, Partition of British India; Oxford Bibliographies, Partition.
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/teaching-resources/partition-of-british-india/
[8] Iraq Body Count, continuously maintained public database of documented civilian violent deaths.
https://www.iraqbodycount.org/
[9] Le Monde, coverage of French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin’s speech opposing immediate war, 14 February 2003.
[10] Bank of England, “The collection of slavery compensation, 1835–43”.
[11] Utsa Patnaik’s colonial extraction calculation discussed in Cambridge University Press, Journal of British Studies, 2025. The $45 trillion estimate is contested.
[12] French Treasury, “Réforme des relations de coopération monétaire entre l’UEMOA et la France”, published 2021.
[13] SIPRI, “Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2025”, March 2026.
https://www.sipri.org/publications/2026/sipri-fact-sheets/trends-international-arms-transfers-2025
[14] African Union, Sirte Declaration on Reform of the United Nations, 5 July 2005.
Editorial note: This is a political opinion supported by attributed historical records. The interpretation of causes and responsibility is analytical, and the colonial wealth estimates are not settled scholarly totals.
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