Rules of Conduct in the Settlement of Regional Conflicts

Abstract

The settlement of regional conflicts has definitely joined the U.S.-Soviet agenda. Both superpowers have become engaged in talks on the approaches to such settlement in their bilateral relations and in their relations with third parties-participants to conflicts. This development has emerged only recently and demands more attention on the part of researchers. What makes this task even more attractive is the necessity of finding an approach shared by the United States and the USSR in dealing with regional conflicts. For this purpose, it is necessary to analyze the past experience of the superpowers when they adhered to a collision course in their attitudes toward regional conflicts and, first of all, to find what types of actions and decisions they should avoid in order to establish the necessary level of trust and, second, what type of actions they could envisage in order to establish a pattern of cooperation. Without such a study, it would be difficult to expect a positive result from the superpowers' efforts to settle conflicts in different areas of the world.