Secondary Sanctions and the Fragmentation of International Law: Sovereignty, Supply Chains, and the Rise of Economic Coercion

In contemporary geopolitics it is evident that secondary sanctions act as a primary tool to exert influence beyond one’s territorial jurisdiction. These sanctions are usually used by powerful countries such as the USA to exert their influence on third party countries by restricting their trade with other countries with primary sanctions. Though usually such actions are defended as “actions taken in the interest of national security”, these sanctions are used to force a State’s will upon others and thereby it bypasses the multilateral institutions present in the international legal system.

Existing scholarship focuses primarily on the legality of secondary sanctions under international law, with respect to principles of sovereignty and non-intervention. However, this paper will focus on the recent developments such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the instability in the Middle East as these have created a need for a wider and more integrated analysis.

This paper argues that secondary sanctions are reshaping international legal order, global trade and supply chains. The paper will first examine the tension between extraterritorial jurisdiction and state sovereignty under international law. It will also study the impact of secondary sanctions on global supply chains and their role in ‘de-risking’ and trade realignment. Further the paper will analyse the rise of countermeasures such as anti-sanctions law and blocking statutes, which indicate increasing fragmentation of legal norms across jurisdictions.

Thus, this paper moves beyond the traditional legality debate and highlights the limited capacity of international law to regulate economic coercion in an increasingly multipolar world. This paper will employ a doctrinal method of research which will include the use of both primary sources such as international charters and secondary sources like journal articles.