The Imperialist Anatomy of Sanctions

This Article makes two critical interventions in the long-held debates on the use and legality of economic sanctions. First, it provides a political-economic analysis of the use of sanctions, compelled by the legacy of anticolonial resistance movements’ analysis of the imperialist world order. This analysis elucidates how and why imperialism persists today, thereby revealing the inherently disciplinary nature of U.S./EU-imposed sanctions against formerly colonized states in this context. Second, this Article recovers the immense efforts borne of transnational solidarity among anticolonial resistance movements during the era of decolonization. These efforts aimed to reshape international law to shield against the continual exploitation and ongoing plundering of their peoples. By moving out of an oft-used frame of human rights into the anti-imperial analysis that these movements brought to international fora, we can recognize how their efforts transformed international law expressly to undermine imperialism and, consequently, designate such measures illegal.