After the Second World War, the charter of the newly formed United Nations established an eleven–member Security Coun...

shunhe on October 6, 2020

Hi @ElizabethGlassmann,

Thanks for the question! So let’s take a look at the stimulus here. We’re told that after WWII, the UN charter established an 11-member Security Council that’s supposed to take collective action in response to threats to world peace. Also, the five nations that were major powers then get to have sole veto power. Why was it done this way? Well, the reason given was that the burden of maintaining world peace would rest on the world’s major powers, and no nation should be required to assume the burden of enforcing a decision that it found repugnant.

Now we’re asked to find something that the reason given for the structure of the Security Council assumes. In other words, this is a strengthen with necessary premise question, and we can use the negation technique here. Now, you might want to think of some things that the argument does assume. For example, it seems like the argument assumes that all five of these nations are going to stay the superpowers.

Let’s take a look at (B), which tells us that no nation that wasn’t among the major powers at the end of WWII would become a major power. Does the argument assume this? Well, let’s say that this isn’t true, that there was some nation that wasn’t among the major powers at the end of WWII, but became a major power. Well, if that’s true, then that nation wouldn’t have a veto power, but would still have the burden of maintaining world peace. But then the reason doesn’t make sense, because that’s not supposed to happen. So negating (B) weakens the argument, and so (B) is a necessary assumption of the argument.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.