UN General Assembly
1958

49. Foremost among our preoccupations in our efforts to reduce international tensions and the danger of war should be to eliminate the use of force as a method of settlement of international disputes. The resort to force, except in legitimate individual or collective self-defence, is outlawed by the Charter. Violence, as a technique of national or ideological policy, has constantly defeated its own purpose as it carries in it the germs of counter-violence. In the present tense situation in the world and in view of the existing destructive capacity of modern armaments, the resort to force as a method for the unilateral solution of international disputes brings forth a potential of danger for all mankind which has never been paralleled before. For these reasons, whenever an element of force is injected into a conflict in any corner of the world, the Members of the United Nations must feel duty bound to counsel the party which has taken an initiative in this direction to follow the path indicated by the Charter.