| Summary/Abstract |
International developments over the last three to five years have created a situation where questioning the practicality of international law, criticizing it for being inefficient and weak, and predicting, with a thoughtful air, its immediate collapse has become not just a commonplace but dominant mode of behavior among many Russian and foreign historians, political analysts and international relations experts. Indeed, the situation does not look encouraging: the cumbersome and overly bureaucratized United Nations; U.S. attempts to establish a unipolar world based on the use of force and diktat; a phantasmagoric caliphate in the Middle East, terrorizing the whole world; the "great transmigration of peoples" on the Eurasian continent-this list can be continued endlessly. Against this background, statements about a "leading and guiding" role of international law may seem too pompous.
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