UN General Assembly
1960

191. The industrially developed countries, on the other hand, are now making immense efforts to introduce automation into all production processes and public services and to achieve scientific progress, both on earth and beyond, the pace of which is constantly increasing, as if accelerated by its own impetus. And those same countries, unfortunately, without exception, are also making an ever more costly military effort. This vast industrial and intellectual transformation, coupled with inordinate military preparation, is absorbing the major part of their technical and financial resources, while the progress which it involves is constantly reducing the proportion represented by primary commodities in the value of the modern world’s products. This, for Africa, Asia and South America, means a reduced capacity for investment and less favourable terms of trade. That is convincingly demonstrated by the disparity, both in volume and from the standpoint of its conditions offered, between our needs and the financial arrangements proposed to us with a view to meeting them.