International Law and Sanctions: The Search for Red Lines

Abstract

The activization of sanctions policy by leading global powers and their alliances has recently revealed the insufficiency of doctrinal studies on international legal regulation when implementing international coercive measures. Prevalent approaches to the correlation of the categories of sanction and law have been determined in terms of domestic and international law based on historical and comparative analysis of the positions of domestic and foreign legal doctrines. Despite fundamental differences in the national and international legal systems, it has been established that in both cases sanctions act as a coercive measure to comply with legal norms both in terms of implementing international responsibility and in relations not involving responsibility. Specific examples are given of unilateral coercive measures (sanctions) by regional international organizations that disagreed with the imperatives of general international law. The conclusion is made that international legal regulation of coercive measures is unsatisfactory, and the main causes of this situation are revealed. The analysis undertaken made it possible to formulate a proposal to elaborate a doctrinal model of eligibility criteria for international coercive measures.