Can international law help to maintain peace? If so, which areas of international law are relevant to the problem of war and peace? For a long time international law merely recorded that there was a distinction between the law of peace and the law of war, jus pacis and jus belli, a distinction based on the fact that there was a substantial difference between friend and foe, and that the enemy relationship could be one of life and death. This is typical of an underdeveloped legal community. The national legal order no longer recognizes the enemy relationship in the national context. This relationship only fits into a structure lacking central authority and central power. Such as a structure of sovereign States which determine their own way of life and are responsible for their own security. A structure of this kind is a polemogenous one in which the power struggle is considered the ultima ratio. The price of national sovereignty is occasionally war, The price of lasting peace will inter alia be interference with unlimited national sovereignty, restriction of the individual country's freedom of decision in matters concerning armaments, economic structure, ideology and culture, environmental protection and national law.