Council of Funding Nations
The Council of Funding Nations
The Council of Funding Nations (henceforth refered to as CFN) is an interesting case of an international organization because of its apparent legal nature and the flexibility it provides X-COM to deal with the alien menace. A brief analysis will be provided regarding its apparent workings.
Membership of the CFN
The available literature regarding the Council states that it was composed of 'representatives from the worlds most economically powerful countries gathered secretly in Geneva' (X-COM:UFO Defense introduction), while later it is refered that 'the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) holds a clandestine summit in Geneva, Switzerland' (from X-COM:Interceptor). This discrepancy between sources poses a problem to the nature of the CFN regarding its membership, which can be explained below:
| Country | UNSC Membership | CFN Membership | G8+5 Membership | National GDP rank (World Bank, 1999) | Population (2007) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | Permanent | Yes | Yes | 1st | 3rd |
| United Kingdom | Permanent | Yes | Yes | 4th | 22nd |
| Russia | Permanent | Yes | Yes | 16th | 9th |
| France | Permanent | Yes | Yes | 5th | 19th |
| China | Permanent | Yes | Plus 5 | 6th | 1st |
| Germany | W. European | Yes | Yes | 3rd | 14th |
| Japan | Asian | Yes | Yes | 2nd | 10th |
| India | Asian | Yes | Plus 5 | 12th | 2nd |
| Brazil | Latin American | Yes | Plus 5 | 15th | 5th |
| Italy | W. European | Yes | Yes | 7th | 23rd |
| Australia | W. European | Yes | No | 13th | 53rd |
| Egypt | African/Arab | Yes | No | 41st | 16th |
| South Africa | African | Yes | Plus 5 | 29th | 26th |
| Spain | W. European | Yes | No | 8th | 28th |
| Nigeria | Africa | Yes | No | 52nd | 8th |
| Canada | W. European | Yes | Yes | 9th | 36th |
| Mexico | Latin American | No | Plus 5 | 10th | 11th |
| Poland | E. European | No | No | 24th | 33rd |
| Indonesia | Asian | No | No | 25th | 4th |
| South Korea | Asian | No | No | 11th | 25th |
| Argentina | Latin American | No | No | 34th | 30th |
| Algeria | African/Arab | No | No | 48th | 35th |
| Pakistan | Asian | No | No | 47th | 6th |
- There are only 15 members on the UNSC (5 permanent + 10 elected), which poses a problem since there are 16 nations on the CFN.
- The elected members come from geographical blocs: Africa (3 members); Latin America and the Caribbean (2 members); Western Europe and Others (2 members); Eastern Europe (1 member); Asia (2 members). 1 member comes also from an Arab country, either from Africa or Asia. Comparing to the table above, there are major differences: Eastern Europe isn't represented; Western Europe has an excess of 3 members; Latin America is missing 1 member.
- The G8 is made of the 8 biggest economic powers (US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, Italy and Russia. The Plus 5 are the 5 largest emerging economies (China, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and India). The G8+5 was formed in 2005.
- One way to try to combine both the economic and UNSC geographic criteria for inclusion on the CFN is to say that the Eastern European bloc was simply dropped (since it's a remainder of the Cold War and its largest member, Poland, was ranked 24th in GDP) and replaced by Spain. Finally Australia was chosen for the CFN (occupying the extra 16th slot) instead of Mexico for geographic reasons (to include Oceania, since it does not have its own bloc). An argument could be made to exclude Spain instead and have both Mexico and Australia.
- The choice of Nigeria to occupy one of the Africa slots can be explained by the fact that it was the country elected at the time, since Algeria was ranked above it in GDP.
- Other possibilities to occupy positions at the CFN are Indonesia (due to its large population), South Korea, Argentina and Pakistan (large population plus owner of nuclear weapons).
Public International Law issues regarding X-COM
Due to the nature of X-COM's objectives and means it can be deduced that the international treaty that established it and the CFN must have several clauses that conflict directly not only with the national laws but also several international treaties. Together with the necessity of preventing mass histeria and general panic if the alien presence was revealed, this must be one of the main reasons why it was chosen for X-COM to remain covert. It remains to be determined what was the formula (legal or otherwise) adopted by the CFN to protect X-COM and its members from legal prosecution by the judiciary of the world states. Any international agreement would in no doubt have to be ratified by the legislative branch of the signatory countries. Some of the issues regarding the daily operations of the force are discribed below:
- Unsupervised use of public funding. Although it is possible for the CFN to conduct audits, X-COM has complete freedom on how it spends its funding and it seems also able to raise additional money (by whichever means) without needing the authorization of the CFN.
- Unrestricted use of national territory/airspace. UFO interceptions and ground engagements seem to have no restrictions regarding use of force, together with flyovers of national territories.
- Freedom of placement of bases on its national territory.
Other curiosities
- Regarding the choice of Geneva, Switzerland, it is interesting to notice that Switzerland only became a full member of the UN on 2002.