UN General Assembly
1967

97. It is an elementary principle of justice that so far as possible the punishment should fit the crime. Even in politics, when intervention is not proportionate to the initial act, assistance or self-defence rapidly takes on the look of provocation as a pretext for aggression. This is not, I think, the wish or the intention of the United States; nor is it the desire of South Viet-Nam. That the latter should seek and obtain assistance to secure self-determination vis-à-vis or against the North strikes me as normal and legitimate. For just as it is normal for North Viet-Nam to wish to be socialist, so it is for South Viet-Nam to wish not to be. But it must show similar zeal and prove that its convictions are genuine. The fight must be carried on with the same weapons — conviction by both sides.