New Modalities of the Global Sanctions Policy

Abstract

The relevance and scientific novelty of the study lies in the author’s identifi cation of fundamentally new modalities of the global sanctions policy, including: the gradual expansion of the circle of countries initiating sanctions, the transformation of sanctions tools and thematic regimes of sanctions, the replication of the practice of using unilateral sanctions as tools to achieve foreign policy goals in a crisis of the unilateral world order and increasing competition and strategic confrontation between the great powers. The discourse and content analysis of legal documents regulating the institutionalization of sanctions regimes in the initiating countries made it possible to identify a number of important global trends in the last decade in the fi eld of sanctions policy. First, in the context of the growing popularity of fi nancial restrictions in the last decade, they are rapidly becoming more complex. The practice of imposing sanctions against Central banks and freezing the foreign exchange reserves of sanctioned countries is being replicated. From “freezing” the assets of sanctioned persons (individuals and legal entities), the initiators of sanctions are increasingly moving towards the practice of their confi scation, while forming appropriate legal mechanisms. Secondly, there are important shifts in the thematic regimes of sanctions: the “collective” legalization of cybersanctions regimes, the massive introduction of liability for circumvention of sanctions into national legislations and the replication of the experience of introducing sanctions restrictions against transactions with cryptocurrency and alternative mechanisms for cross-border settlements. Thirdly, the gradual replication of secondary sanctions tools is obvious, which are beginning to be used not only by the United States, but also by the United Kingdom and China, which in the long term (taking into account the strategic confrontation between China and the United States) might create a fundamentally new phenomenon of actual competition of sanctions extraterritoriality.