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The article highlights norms and provisions of international legal documents within such international organization as the League of Nations, the United Nations Organization, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Council of Europe, the Organization of American States and the Organization of African Unity (African Union) in terms of means and procedures for the peaceful settlement of disputes. Conventions, declarations, resolutions, protocols, statutes, charters, treaties and other acts can be found among these international legal documents from all continents all over the world. In the process of studying the international legal acts, there are analysed provisions stipulating the use of means and procedures for the peaceful settlement of international disputes. There are also described characteristic features of applying these tools and mechanisms. Besides, it is conducted an analysis of their peculiarities and perspectives for use in practice. Despite a wide range of instruments and mechanisms available for the peaceful settlement of disputes, number of conflicts all over the world is increasing. It may say about their ineffectiveness or about a necessity to develop new concepts, new ideas, new approaches to understanding of conflict and ways of its solution. All peaceful instruments include application of negotiations. Along with that, negotiations as a method to resolve a dispute are not fully discovered and updated. There are no strict and generally recognised rules of conducting negotiations, what participants of negotiations should comply with and what is allowed or not allowed to do while convincing. Researchers of the peaceful settlement of disputes agree on effectiveness and reasonableness of engaging the third, neutral party for dispute resolution. It can be an objective remedy in terms of impartiality and fairness. One more aspect which is taken into account more and more often is prevention. That is to take corresponding measures in advance. When the situation is at the ...

Thucydides is considered to be the founder of political realism. Even in those times he determined the basic premises of realism - security and survival. He made an impact on subsequent development of realism embodied in the works of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Morgenthau, Car, Niebuhr, Aaron, Waltz etc. They will call the system of international relations as anarchical one since there is no supreme arbitrator which will force states to adequate behaviour. His views of realism were given in the volume 'The Peloponnesian War' where he had determined the anarchy of the relationships among states. Such system did not rely on justice and morale, but force and power were the predominant facts. He also introduces the category of just wars by claiming that Sparta led a just war against the increased power of Athens, and observed morale principles. Nevertheless, Thucydides faces contradictory, since Sparta itself as the largest land force of that time had to use force in order to beat Athens. He went ahead since he considered force and power as a necessary condition to achieve other objectives, which was later on adopted by Raymond Aaron. Following the example of the war between Athens and Sparta, he successfully analysed bipolar system of balance of power in which the conflict between the leading members of the two opposite blocks was possible in the end, while beforehand there should have been conflicts among weaker members of both blocks. Thucydides explained the manifestation of force and power using example of the Melian dialogue between the envoys of Athens and Melos. It was about the pure politics of force of Athens regardless of the fact that Melos had its independence.