Politics & Power Quote by Nong Duc Manh

"All countries, big or small, strong or weak, are equal members of the United Nations" is diplomacy’s cleanest fiction deployed as a negotiating tool. Nong Duc Manh isn’t making a naive claim about how power actually works; he’s invoking the UN’s founding promise as a moral lever against the brute realities of geopolitics. The sentence is built like a balancing act: paired opposites (big/small, strong/weak) flatten the hierarchy that everyone in the room knows exists, then the word "equal" pretends the flattening is already accomplished. That’s the trick. It’s aspirational language masquerading as settled fact.

The context matters. As a Vietnamese leader shaped by a century of colonialism, war, and dependence on great-power mood swings, Manh speaks from the vantage point of states that live with the consequences of other nations’ "interests". For them, the UN isn’t just an institution; it’s a stage where sovereignty can be performed, recorded, and cited. "Equal members" signals more than voting rights in the General Assembly. It’s a demand for recognition, non-interference, and the right to pursue development without being treated as a proxy battleground or a case study.

Subtext: don’t lecture us, don’t coerce us, don’t rewrite the rules mid-game. It’s also a reminder to powerful states that legitimacy still needs a script, and the UN charter is one of the few scripts available. The line works because it turns weakness into principle and principle into pressure.