UN General Assembly
1952

17. As for the Korean situation, we may regard it as the crucial question facing the Assembly at its seventh session, since it is a sad fact that in that question every principle of the Charter has been violated; at the same time, we can console ourselves with the thought that there is no question in which the future of the United Nations is so much at stake or in which the principal machinery for the preservation of world peace is being so thoroughly employed. This is not a case of imperialist war or of war for purposes of conquest. It is not a case of one national army fighting another. In Korea, perhaps for the first time in the history of mankind, the principle of collective security and defence against aggression is being put to the test. The soldiers of the United Nations, under the Unified Command, are engaged, not in an international war, in the old meaning of that expression, but in what should rather be called a police action, to defend a State against unjust aggression and to engage in open warfare for the victory of the principles which guide and inspire the United Nations. It is this moral fact which confers upon the United Nations in its battle in Korea an authority which should in itself have been sufficient to bring the conflict to an end.