UN General Assembly
1949

89. For one moment it had been thought that unanimity would be achieved in all matters, and it had been established as an absolute rule. The smaller nations had wanted to differentiate coercive measures from pacific measures and had said that a normal situation in the international community was one where questions could be solved by peaceful means, where the rule to be applied was not that of unanimity but only the rule of a specified majority. 90. In the case of enforcement measures, the veto could be applied as Belgium and Peru had proposed; Peru, however, had gone so far as to accept the principle that in the case of enforcement measures which might jeopardize the political balance of the Organization, the rule of unanimity was necessary. The mistake was to have established unanimous decisions as the rule and majority decisions as the exception.