Politics & Power Quote by Adlai E. Stevenson

Stevenson is selling the UN less as a utopian parliament than as a hard-edged upgrade to the old great-power club. The phrase "the whole basis" plants a flag: this is not a decorative add-on to world politics but the minimum architecture for legitimacy after empire and world war. His insistence on "great or small" does double duty. On the surface it flatters newly independent states by granting them dignity; underneath it pressures the superpowers to accept constraints without calling them concessions. Equality is framed as procedure ("weight", "a vote", "be attended to") rather than morality, a savvy move from a politician who knows ideals survive longer when they are built into routines.

The repetition is doing work, too. "To have... to have... to be..". reads like a checklist of what power normally buys you in back rooms: influence, a seat, attention, belonging. Stevenson translates that into institutional terms, implying that the alternative is the return of informal spheres of influence where small nations exist mainly as terrain. "Be a part of the twentieth century" is the quiet sting. It suggests that ignoring smaller countries isn't merely cruel; it's anachronistic. Modernity, in this telling, is measured by inclusion and process, not just technology or GDP.

Context matters: Stevenson, a prominent American internationalist and later UN ambassador, was arguing for a rules-based order during early Cold War tension and decolonization. The subtext is an American pitch for leadership that looks like partnership, and a warning that if the UN can't make small nations feel heard, they'll look elsewhere - to blocs, strongmen, or revolt.