UN General Assembly
1959

171. It is known that for the last few years the word "disarmament" has mostly been taken to mean no more than a partial reduction of armaments and armed forces. Disarmament negotiations have envisaged the retention, after an agreement has been concluded, of certain kinds of weapons — that is the retention of the material capacity to wage war. This relative disarmament can only relatively reduce the threat of war. In the days of conventional armaments, such a relative lessening of the menace of war might have been satisfactory. Today, however, no one is in a position to determine what quantities of modern armaments in the hands of a single State can be regarded as not constituting a threat to other States.