International agreements apparently treat an unauthorized threat of force and the actual use of force as equally grave, yet distinct, wrongs. If, however, formal legal appraisals of specific situations are taken as indicators of existing practice, it seems that the threat of force has no separate significance, as it were, beyond the use of force: either it precedes actual violence and therefore is eclipsed in legal appraisals by the latter, or it is not followed by the use of force and thus ceases to demand prompt legal consideration. Such an attitude toward the question of threat implicitly acknowledges that threats of force are a ubiquitous element of international relations and that they may not be detrimental, indeed may even be beneficial, to the preservation of international order. On the other hand, the attitude of apparent tolerance of threats of force ignores that they produce consequences whether or not they are followed by resort to force and for this reason need to be scrutinized more closely and their lawfulness evaluated. This situation reflects a dissonance between the absolutist aspiration of the international principle prohibiting the threat of force and the complex, often ambiguous and rather pragmatic code applied in international practice.