Here is some information worth mentioning:
rankings:
GDP
Population:
Military expenditure:
[minor hijack]
Actually, that’s not that odd of a concept. The Byelorussian SSR and the Ukranian SSR maintained General Assembly seats from the founding of the UN in 1945 up through their independence from the Soviet Union. Of course, they could be reliably counted on to vote in sync with the Soviet Union’s representative. After all, they all answered to the Kremlin.
[/minor hijack]
How about one seat per continent.
US, China, EU, Brazil (or rotating S.A. country until they form a sort of EU in the south), South Africa and Australia. (Maybe Antarctica can send a penguin to take the seat vacated by France).
OK, the Australia seat is somewhat questionable. Perhaps that rotates between Pacific nations, including Japan.
[hijack]
Thanks. I won’t be starting for a bit of time yet. I passed the test, but am a mere tenth of a point away from the bar for the political track. I am going to take the foreign language competency test to make up the difference. Thing is, I have two years left on the eligible hires list, so it looks like I am going to get an MA first to ratchet up my starting salary. 
And I’ll make sure to get my medical evaluation done stat.
Look forward to reading your analysis. And I don’t remember where I read that you were headed for the FS. Perhaps in the SDMB careers thread.
[/hijack]
I have a very different list:
United States
Russia
United Kingdom
France
China
Pakistan
India
Israel
The common connection should be pretty obvious.
Of course, the problem with the Security Council isn’t who’s on it. The problem is the existence of a veto in the first place.
Brazil, yes. India I’m not too sure about. I imagine France and the UK have better force projection capabilities, but neither is capable of fighting a war with India and winning in any sense at all ( India couldn’t win either ). On a purely regional basis, India’s military ( which is reasonably professional - certainly the best of the British-descended militaries, reasonably well-armed, and much, much larger than any European power ) is really only rivaled by China ( who for geographic reasons have only a limited capacity to threaten India ) and could probably handily defend against any distant aggressor short of the United States ( and even they wouldn’t be willing to take on such an undertaking unless it were desperate, I’m sure ).
Personally I’d probably would put India on the short list of potential security council members. Brazil is iffy, but an interesting proposition. However I see no reason we should limit the permanent security council ( if it must exist and I’m not certain it should ) to five seats.
Interesting discussion :).
Tamerlane, you are right that in many aspects India is the military equal to France or the UK. But I consider force projection an important area of military strength when discussing world powers, so when comparing two militaries and all other things are equal, if one state has projection capabilities much greater than another, I would consider the former to have much greater military strength.
That’s just my opinion, though, and it’s not scholarly in any sense of the word.
This is a hijack but a related one:
When the Soviet Union dissolved why was Russia given the vacant slot on the SC?
Because Russia was declared the successor state to the USSR for the UN’s purposes. Although 14 of the 15 Soviet republics seceded, Russia did not, and the remains of the USSR government were merged with the Russian Republic government after the failed anti-Gorbachev hardliners’ coup.
The China seat, not only in the General Assembly but on the permanent Security Council, was also transferred from the Republic of China government to the People’s Republic government (1971?), in belated recognition of the results of the civil war there. The remainder of the ROC, Taiwan, was expelled from the UN entirely in the process, and, along with the Vatican, is the only country not to be a full member now - and even the Vatican holds observer status, by the Pope’s own choice.