UN General Assembly
1981

173. Today, we cannot talk about a mere stalemate in the detente process which was begun about 20 years ago and on which so many hopes were placed throughout the world. It is in open rout. We are going back to the era of strident rhetoric, of the arms race, a race which is absurd, because there can be no winner. Again, we are faced with a lack of dialog or even of communication, and above all, we are seeing a situation in which the selfish interests of the major Powers are placed before the higher interests of the international community A few years ago, during the era of detente, it was possible to talk of imposing on the rest of the world the joint force of SovietNorth American understanding; today, with greater reason, we can say that a worse joint force is being imposed on mankind that of confrontation.