system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: The security council has 5 permanent members (the winners or WWII) - US, UK, China, Russia, and France. How come other Allied countries that won don't have permanent seats? (Canada, India, Poland)
gpt
Because those permanent seats (along with veto rights) were given out to countries that were world powers at the time, not just winners of WWII. Basically, the security council realised that unless they got these five world powers involved, a security council was going to be useless. So they were willing to offer these particular countries a few concessions to get them to sign up. While other countries, such as Canada and India contributed greatly to WWII, they also didn't have the same sort of influence on world politics as Russia or the US did, so it was not that critical to get them on board.