UN General Assembly
1977

161. There was, perhaps, a certain shortness of vision in mustering the so-called automatic majorities, as well as in the disdainful dismissal by the great Powers of the decisions made by those majorities. There was a marked attitude which implied that what the leaders and spokesmen of Asia, Africa and Latin America demanded was of little account, since the fate of the world would hinge, in the last analysis, on the security of the Western democracies and those cultural values that they had nurtured through many centuries. 162. It is fair to point out that there has now been a hopeful change in that attitude. It has not yet become general, but one may hope that it will spread. There is no doubt that there are those who will look askance at the moral basis of the foreign policy proclaimed by the new administration in the United States of America. I, for one, welcome it because it reinforces my advocacy two years ago, in this very chamber, of an international code of ethics which might restrain ambition and greed.