UN General Assembly
1972

7. In the decade of the 1970s, the United Nations cannot confine itself to endorsing the acts of the great Powers. It has often been alleged that voting at the United Nations is the performance of a mere ritual. It well may be that this forum has served on numerous occasions to offer the great Powers a way out -a fitting way of saving face at times when, had they continued to follow a selfish or mistaken policy, they might have plunged our world into new and serious conflicts.