In the fields of trade and commercial relations, communications, humanrights and the environment, international law has come to play ascrucial a role as it had earlier, and continues to play, in thetraditional fields of diplomacy, treaty-making, the law of the sea, andthe relations of states, Even in the short period of five years sincethe last edition appeared, significant new developments have occurred,and they are of course fully covered in this new and updated edition.
Chief among these is the United Nations Convention on the Law of theSea, 1982, now strengthened by the implementing Protocol of 1994 andable to assume its intended place as the greatest codifying instrumentin the history of international law. Secondly, the collapse of theSoviet Union has enabled the United Nations to exercise more readilythose powers long denied it by the USSR's right of veto, witnessed bythe Security Council's action during the Iraq-Kuwait war. In addition,events in former Yugoslavia, Somalia and Rwanda continue to beg thequestion - when does a domestic matter assume the shape of a threat toregional or global peace and security upon which international actionmust be taken?
