An obscure diplomatic dispute over who should draft United Nations Security Council resolutions on Afghanistan is turning into a major row between the United States and China in the world body. The debate, which has been brewing since late 2024 but has escalated in recent weeks since the Trump administration took over the U.S. seat, has significant implications not only for how the U.N. engages with the Taliban in Kabul, but also for how Beijing positions itself as a leading power in the Security Council. While the Trump administration has made headlines by pulling out of U.N. mechanisms like the Paris climate pact and World Health Organization, this argument in the council could be a harbinger of more Sino-American tensions over multilateral security.
The focus of the argument is which power should act as Security Council “penholder” on Afghanistan. In U.N. parlance, penholders are the council members that “initiate and chair” the drafting of mandates, tabling the initial versions of texts for negotiations. The nation that “holds the pen” on a given file has significant leeway to set the terms for how the council approaches a peace operation or sanctions regime. The three Western permanent members (the United States, France, and the U.K. – the “P3”) have guarded this privilege in most cases. Of the 24 country or region-specific issues on the council’s agenda in 2024, the U.S. was penholder on 6, France on 7, the U.K. on 6, although in some cases they shared duties with elected council members. Russia leads on its own for one region (Central Asia) and co-leads with the United States on the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Golan Heights. The elected members of the council have long griped about how the veto powers have hogged this source of influence.
China, to date, has stood apart from the other permanent members. While it co-drafted some resolutions with the United States on North Korea in the 2010s, it has wielded the pen on no other country-specific issues on the council agenda (some years ago, it did pen a thematic resolution on the safety of peacekeepers). This is despite the fact that Beijing has become more willing to assert itself in other ways in the council – such as casting its veto – in recent decades. Experts on China’s behavior at the U.N. have long wondered when Beijing would try to pen a resolution.
A Shift in China’s UN Diplomacy
The answer came last fall, when China indicated that it wished to act as penholder on Afghanistan. This was a significant bid, not only because it marked a shift in Chinese diplomacy, but because the Afghan file is a rare case where elected members have typically acted as penholder. In 2024, Japan took on the role (having held it jointly with the United Arab Emirates in 2023). With Japan ending its two-year term, a number of elected members made a pitch to take over, with Pakistan and South Korea making the most sustained bids. China caused some surprise by also throwing its hat in the ring, although it signaled it would be happy to partner with a co-penholder.
Beijing has a number of reasons to focus on Afghanistan and the U.N. Assistance Mission there (UNAMA), which has had the unenviable task of wrangling with the Taliban on human rights, humanitarian needs, and other topics since the fall of Kabul in 2021. Beijing appears to see a continuing U.N. presence in Afghanistan as suiting its interests. Beijing is both wary about Afghanistan as a potential haven for terrorists, and intrigued by its mineral wealth.
In March 2022, when the Security Council was debating the future of UNAMA in parallel with angry debates over Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Chinese diplomats quietly warned their Russian counterparts not to conflate the two issues and use their veto over Afghanistan. Since then, Beijing has pursued a gradual diplomatic thaw with the Taliban, and welcomed an ambassador from Kabul last year. China could potentially use the penholder position to support broader efforts to normalize the Taliban’s relations with the world (a prospect that many Afghan exiles and human rights groups oppose, especially given the authorities’ treatment of women and girls).
Whatever Beijing’s precise reason for pursuing the Afghan pen, its diplomats have been forthright that they want the role, but tried to reassure other council members that they will handle it responsibly. China indicated that it was open to working on the file with either Pakistan or South Korea or both, and made it clear that it did not envisage major alterations to the UNAMA mandate, which is due for renewal in mid-March. Many council members thought that some sort of Chinese-Korean cohabitation in the role might be a good outcome (with Seoul acting as a pro-Western counterbalance in the mandate drafting), although Pakistan has been adamant that it has a right to be penholder on the file given its proximity to, and security concerns over, Afghanistan.
The United States has, however, firmly opposed China’s pitch, both under the Biden administration and now under President Donald Trump. This is not especially surprising, given the bipartisan view in Washington that it is necessary to contain Chinese influence at the U.N. The Security Council typically agrees on penholding matters by consensus, but members fruitlessly debated who should hold the pen on Afghanistan over the holiday period. Chinese officials became increasingly frustrated, and threatened to start drafting resolutions on the topic without waiting for U.S. permission. The dispute has prevented the council from confirming the penholders of other open files – as these are agreed as a package – and complicated debates on chairing of related sanctions committees.
This dispute has come to a head over the last two weeks, after China and Pakistan circulated a draft resolution rolling over UNAMA’s mandate for a year. The United States and South Korea responded with an alternative resolution of their own. The debate between the two sides is not especially substantive. The Chinese-Pakistani draft would essentially instruct UNAMA to keep up operations as it has before, with no major changes to the mandate. The U.S.-Korean draft reportedly contains some additional language on women’s rights and human rights, but nothing dramatically new.
Dueling Drafts
It is clear that what is at stake is not what the UNAMA mandate says, but who has control over the text. The council (over which China presides this month) held closed consultations on the dueling drafts on Feb. 10, but could not agree to prioritize one. Diplomats say that they will now try to reconcile the two texts, but there is no sign of either set of claimants to the pen backing down. One face-saving option may be for the president of the council in March, Denmark, to table a text renewing the UNAMA mandate – and presumably leaving it unaltered – but this would not resolve the question of which council members should table further Afghan-related texts.
However this diplomatic game is resolved, it is obscuring the question of how the U.N. can best engage with Afghanistan. The Taliban, unhappy with their extended estrangement from international forums, view UNAMA with increasing suspicion. Japan and the United Arab Emirates used their tenure as council penholders on Afghanistan to promote a debate about how to improve relations with Kabul in 2023, but there has been little progress in that direction since. The current debate will not help that.
Until now, world powers have worked together to a remarkable degree on Afghanistan issues because they have shared interests in preventing terrorism, curbing migration, and protecting regional stability. Further cooperation will be necessary this year, as the United States and other donors cut aid budgets. Donors need to coordinate their exit strategies so that Afghanistan can feed itself and avoid calamity. That requires penholders who can keep the council members on the same page.
More broadly, the argument offers some worrying indications about the possible future trajectory of relations between China and the United States in the Security Council. As the Trump administration has taken recent swipes at the U.N. system, there has been a lot of talk in the Western media about Beijing replacing Washington as a leader in the multilateral system. As I have argued elsewhere, some of this is overstated. China is not willing to invest a lot of political capital or money in every U.N. body the United States quits. But if Beijing is now ready to step up its role in the Security Council, and the United States opposes it on principle, the clash could disrupt U.N. diplomacy severely in the years ahead.