UN General Assembly
1983

291. Surveying the debate over the past 12 months as a whole, therefore, international opinion seems to have been evolving in a promising direction. We were beginning to move away from the sterile confrontations that have been the hallmark of international economic debate even in recent years. 292. However, we now face the possibility that the recovery—welcome as it is—may have the somewhat predictable result of unravelling a good deal of that growing consensus. If the international community has been increasingly ready to consider the scope for changes to the trade and payments system, it has no doubt been due to the long period of stagflation we have been through. Equally, now that the first clear signs of a recovery in the United States and certain other industrial economies are evident, some of the pressure to examine these long- term issues is off. It may be only realistic to expect that debate to be influenced by short-term fluctuation in the real economy. It would, I suggest, be reasonable to expect a little more vision.