UN General Assembly
1992

has been brought down and, with it, the strategies of nuclear deterrence upon which the leaders of the bipolar world political order depended throughout the post-Second World War era. Our world today is in a state of flux. It is emerging from a past that is now collapsing under our eyes and is moving towards a future that has not taken shape yet. Intimations of that future are being brought home to us on the crests of mighty waves and the winds of heavy storms that have brought down the Berlin wall, caused the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the dismantling of the Soviet Union side by side with the many developments and conflicts we now witness on the international arena. Although the features of the new world order broke forth sharply in waves of violent and profound transformations, the winds of change have not been able to uproot the problems of the cold war. For in the wake of the fall of certain States, there was the eruption of severe national and ethnic disputes