1. Since the beginning of the last session, the international situation has substantially changed. We have seen the end of the war in Korea — the end, that is, of the hostilities to which communist aggression gave rise in that republic. If the present promising situation is compared with that of the world in 1948, when the Berlin blockade was in progress, or with the more recent period of war in Asia, it might be thought that international tension had diminished and that the aggressive groups had realized what risks they were running in pursuing a policy of provocation. World opinion wants nothing so much as a feeling of security. This may be seen from the enthusiasm which any peaceful gesture on the part of those who have the power to cause conflict or promote peaceful coexistence arouses.
2. Upon reading the Secretary-General's report [A/2404], however, and especially the chapter on political and security questions, we realize that there are still problems and difficulties which could dangerously disturb this precarious coexistence. Moreover — and this is much more serious — there is no sure sign of a change of heart in those who have long compelled the other peoples to live in fear. It would seem that the world has resigned itself to living in a state of permanent danger and that the cold war makes the peoples long for peace but without hope. In order to meet the threat of aggression, a level of rearmament has been reached which suggests that a world war is expected to break out any day.
3. But international life is fraught with difficulties other than these caused by the totalitarian menace. There are latent conflicts, resulting from previous arrangements, which are now coming to the surface again, because the atmosphere of fear is so wide-spread as to give cover to any kind of violence. In our time, too, dogmatic fanaticism of every conceivable kind has renewed its strength. As we live in a state of constant anxiety, opposing sides, instead of seeking a friendly solution, prefer the path of violence. This menacing prospect might suggest that lasting peace is unlikely of attainment and that the only course is continued rearmament.
4. Nevertheless, material forces are strengthened by moral values. The fact that war has not yet broken out and may not break out is due primarily to the existence of the United Nations. In many quarters the United Nations is criticized as ineffective. But the United Nations was organized to maintain peace, not to create it; that was the responsibility of the great Powers which were victorious in the recent world war. The United Nations has worked under difficult conditions in the political held, but its moral authority has prevailed, if war has not broken out, it is because the aggressor would have had to face the rest of the world.
5. For this reason, in this time of unceasing vigilance, my delegation reaffirms its adherence to the United Nations; it believes that only in so far as the United Nations is supported by governments and peoples will peace be maintained even among those who doubt the possibility of it, so that even the aggressors will be compelled to live in peace.
6. Faith in the United Nations is indivisible. The Charter signed at San Francisco conceived a system of collective security based on the restoration of normal relations among States, steadily increasing respect for human rights and a constant improvement in the standards of living of the peoples. It was considered that, in order to maintain peace, it was not sufficient merely to prevent the outbreak of war, and the last world war showed that a bold and imaginative effort was required to eradicate the causes of such great disasters. That was why there was talk of respect for human rights and why it was tacitly agreed that the individual was the real subject of international law. While there remain regions or countries where hunrm beings are despised and abandoned, the fear of war will persist, for it is impossible to believe that a State can be peace-loving in international affairs if it denies a peaceful life to its people at home.
7. We must note with regret that very little progress has been made in the vast field of human rights. There are States which take refuge behind Article 2, paragraph 7, of the Charter and claim that anything relating to the abridgement of freedom in their territory is a matter of national sovereignty, of no concern whatsoever to the international community and entirely outside the competence of the United Nations. But for those who still believe, and with reason, that any country which denies freedom to its own people is not likely to behave in a democratic fashion in the world at large, that attitude constitutes a threat to the system of collective security.
8. The Chilean delegation is therefore anxious that this General Assembly should take a decision on the draft international conventions on human rights, so that States may be given the opportunity of ratifying these instruments which, taken together, will encourage greater respect for those rights.
9. Neither formal good relations among States, nor even a general respect for human rights, are in themselves enough to make possible a lasting peace. Good neighbourliness among all peoples and the full enjoyment of individual rights cannot be ensured until poverty and want have been eliminated. That was why the United Nations Charter stressed the importance of better standards of life and the possibility of building a society where there would be equal opportunity for all and industry could eliminate poverty.
10. The industrial countries had to recover from the disaster of war. The under-developed countries sought to attain a satisfactory level of production and consumption. The effort required was too much for national resources and made international co-operation essential. Loans, gifts, technical assistance, credits and other forms of aid had to be mobilized to carry out this joint enterprise with all due speed. All were directly interested in a victory over want because all knew that until that victory was won peace was in danger.
11. Unfortunately, the cold war too is indivisible. The democracies have had to arm to meet the danger of totalitarian aggression. The technique of destruction has reached a level at which the expenditures involved are tremendous. More than $80,000 million has been spent on armaments in the past few years. That is the price that has so far had to be paid to keep in check those who would engage in violence. If the same sum had been invested in production and the means of production, we should now have a flourishing and prosperous community, a world of common effort and well-being. During these years wc have lost the greatest opportunity offered by history and the whole responsibility rests on those governments which, dominated and consumed by an anti-human dogma, believe that war is inevitable, that it is a historical necessity and that it is almost a duty to precipitate it. The cold war has deprived the under-developed areas of capital. It has diverted civil industries to unproductive ends. It has hindered the economic recovery of the countries devastated during the last war through the conversion of some of their factories to armaments production. It has limited the scope of technical assistance by leaving it a tiny budget, the total amount of which is less than the cost of twenty military aircraft.
12. The United Nations Secretariat has prepared valuable material on the world economic situation; we see, once again, that it has been impossible to halt inflation, that international trade has not returned to normal, that the pace of development in the underdeveloped areas is extremely slow, that economies are being bled white by the cost of rearmament and that the standards of living of the peoples have remained stationary. All this, and much more, is the result of the cold war. It is the price the peoples who wish to remain free have paid to prevent aggression by those governments which have no respect for the human person.
13. Unsatisfied needs afford a breeding ground for misunderstandings of all kinds and contribute to the campaign of hate, dominated by a war psychosis, that has been launched against the free world. The democracies are wrongly accused of having provoked rearmament, when in fact they have merely used some of their resources to prevent aggression from devastating Western Europe and other parts of the world. They are accused also of denying their peoples better standards of living when the fact is that, to safeguard their existence as nations they have been compelled to sacrifice some part of their legitimate right to a better life so as to be prepared, albeit insufficiently, to meet the aggressor. It has been asserted that the United Nations forces used bacterial weapons in the war in defence of the Republic of South Korea, when in fact its armies deliberately refrained from using certain modern weapons in order to respect the moral principles of the United Nations.
14. Nevertheless the propaganda machine of the totalitarian regimes has persisted in its campaign of hate which, unfortunately, has been able to affect a part of world public opinion.
15. The Korean armistice and the appearance of quiet on the front of aggression would seem to show that the free world’s determination to defend itself has contained the totalitarian advance. If this interpretation were correct, the United Nations would begin its eighth session in a more favourable atmosphere. Nevertheless we are anxious lest what has been gained in the political field should be lost in the economic and social fields.
16. It is essential that the effort that made military rearmament possible should be directed to economic ends and that from now on the cold war against want should be fought and won. A depression, a world economic crisis or the continuation of the present imbalance between production and consumption could cause as much harm as war and disrupt the democratic system. The most important thing at this point is to tackle die problem of financing programmes of economic development, to increase the resources of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, to set up an assistance fund — in short, to enable all the peoples who desire freedom to live their lives in real freedom without the constant fear of want and poverty. For that reason, my delegation believes, now as always, that the economic and social questions on the General Assembly’s agenda are closely linked with recent victories in the political field, and if we do not make headway in dealing with those questions, the little we have gained in one sphere may well be lost in the other.
17. The Chilean delegation, as the spokesman of its Government and of the people of Chile, believes that the eighth session of the General Assembly should be concerned principally with the mobilization of international effort to raise the standards of living of the peoples and to avoid an economic crisis whose consequences would be as calamitous as war. Now, more than ever, imagination is needed to surmount the difficulties that beset us. Although the international situation may seem to lead to scepticism, my delegation has confidence in this General Assembly, for faith has always risen above disillusionment.