UN General Assembly
1981

58. Yet and this is the disturbing part of it is not these problems that are the focal point of world politics and of world interests: the headlines of the international press tell us, rather, about an arms race and tensions between nations, about war, civil war and intervention. At a time when global interdependence and global cooperation have become a question of survival, the human race is in danger of once again pitting its strength against itself. 59. Now, at a time when we ought to be concentrating our material as weK as our intellectual resources on the task of bringing the world economy out of its structural crisis, on development in the third world and on preserving the conditions of life on our planet, $500 billion is being wasted on arms. But our children and grandchildren will judge us solely by whether we have succeeded in setting me world on the road to peace, development and survival, or whether we have declined into confrontation, an arms race and, ultimately, catastrophe.