UN General Assembly
1981

88. On the other hand, general and complete disarmament will continue to be not much more than an irrelevant item of academic discussion if, as could occur now, States do not have the opportunity of recourse to law to avert the risk of a real or imagined threat to the integrity and stability of their Governments. As long as the present alarming indifference exists regarding the fate of international law, there will always be justification for the acquisition of arms and for increasing the war potential. Even worse, it is possible that some who, for reasons of prestige or profit or with even less admissible motives, see a good opportunity to derive political or economic profit from a generalized arms race, are the same who promote such a state of affairs by advising their Governments that, instead of relying on the rules of treaties, they should resort to the insidious security of weapons to preserve the law, without actually having to fire those weapons.