Author: Mahak Chatkele, Rabindranath Tagore University
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahak-chatkele-19994a278?utm_source=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=member_android
Introduction
In the modern world, the worst wars weren’t about area or territory. They were cold wars wars about power, about who exercised how; much power, and about who could make another nation bend without ever raising a weapon.
One way of compulsifying a country’s power to the world was by imposing sanctions. Sanctions are coercive measures imposed by one country or group of countries against another restricting trade, freezing assets, cutting off financial systems, isolating economies. These sanctions are imposed to break the leg of a country without taking the stick to the leg. The damage is real. The bruise goes deep. But the hand that swings never touches you directly.
For decades, sanctions have been the West’s preferred instrument of coercion a way of punishing governments, changing behaviours, and demonstrating dominance without the political cost of war. The United States alone maintains over 10,000 active sanctions designations globally. The European Union follows. The United Kingdom follows. And the rest of the world is expected to fall in line regardless of whether they agreed, regardless of whether the United Nations authorised it, regardless of whether international law permits it.
India has consistently refused to fall in line.
When the USA and EU imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, India did not join. It continued buying Russian oil, developed alternative payment mechanisms, and defended its position on the floor of every international forum it was pressured in. When threatened with secondary sanctions over its purchase of the Russian S-400 missile system, India did not cancel the deal. When asked to isolate Iran, India held its ground for as long as it could.
This article examines why India was not just politically right but legally right. And why sanctions, as wielded today, are less about international law and more about international power.
Abstract
Sanctions have long been presented as a legitimate tool of international law a non-violent mechanism through which the global community holds rogue states accountable. The reality is considerably more complicated. While United Nations Security Council sanctions carry binding legal authority under Article 41 of the UN Charter, the overwhelming majority of sanctions imposed today are unilateral decreed by the United States, the European Union, or the United Kingdom without any multilateral authorisation. Their legal basis under international law is contested. Their extraterritorial application through secondary sanctions is arguably illegal. And their selective deployment against adversaries of Western powers while allies escape scrutiny entirely exposes them as instruments of geopolitics dressed in the language of law.
India has navigated this landscape with a consistency that is both legally defensible and strategically significant. Through the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the Iran oil dispute, and the CAATSA confrontation over the S-400 missile system, India’s doctrine of strategic autonomy has repeatedly placed it in direct tension with Western sanctions regimes.
This article examines sanctions through the lens of international law and Indian foreign policy arguing that India’s refusal to join unilateral sanctions is not defiance. It is sovereignty.
To the Point
The world has always had rules. The question has always been who writes them, who follows them, and who gets to break them without consequence.
Sanctions, in their truest legal form, are simple. The United Nations Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, determines that a threat to international peace exists and authorises member states to impose economic or diplomatic measures against the offending state. Every UN member is legally bound to comply. This is sanctions as international law intended them multilateral, authorised, accountable.
What exists today is something else entirely.
The United States maintains over 10,000 active sanctions designations against individuals, entities, sectors, and entire countries. The European Union has its own parallel regime. The United Kingdom followed after Brexit. None of these require UN Security Council authorisation. None are binding on states that choose not to participate. And yet, through the instrument of secondary sanctions the threat of punishing any third country that does business with a sanctioned state these unilateral measures have acquired a coercive reach that their legal foundation does not justify.
Secondary sanctions are the most legally controversial tool in this arsenal. When the United States tells India do not buy Russian oil or we will sanction your banks it is not enforcing international law. It is exporting its domestic law onto a sovereign nation that never agreed to it, never voted for it, and has no legal obligation to follow it. This is extraterritorial jurisdiction in its most aggressive form. It is, by any honest reading of the UN Charter’s Article 2(1) on sovereign equality, deeply problematic.
India has understood this. And India has said so not quietly, not apologetically, but directly.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the USA and EU moved swiftly to impose the most comprehensive sanctions package in history. India abstained on UN votes condemning Russia six times. India increased its Russian oil imports from 2% to over 40% of total imports within a year. India paid in rupees and dirhams, deliberately routing trade outside the US dollar system to avoid SWIFT-based financial sanctions. And when pressed by Western officials, India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar delivered what became one of the most quoted lines in recent diplomatic history “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems.”
This was not recklessness. This was a legally grounded, strategically coherent position that unilateral sanctions imposed without UN authorisation carry no binding obligation for India, that India’s sovereign right to determine its own trade relationships cannot be overridden by another country’s domestic legislation, and that strategic autonomy is not a slogan but a principle with deep roots in both Indian foreign policy and international law.
The point is this sanctions have become the weapon of the powerful, wielded selectively, applied hypocritically, and dressed in the language of law while operating well outside its boundaries. India’s refusal to comply is not a violation of international order. It is a defence of it.
Legal Jargon
Sanctions — Coercive measures imposed by a state or group of states against another state, entity, or individual, restricting trade, financial transactions, travel, or diplomatic relations as a tool of foreign policy or international law enforcement.
Unilateral Sanctions — Sanctions imposed by a single country or bloc without United Nations Security Council authorisation. Legally binding only on the imposing state and its nationals not on third countries.
Secondary Sanctions — Measures that punish third-country individuals, entities, or governments for conducting business with a sanctioned state. Widely considered an extraterritorial overreach of domestic law under international legal standards.
Strategic Autonomy — India’s foundational foreign policy doctrine asserting the right to make independent decisions on international matters without alignment to any bloc, power, or sanctions regime not authorised by international law.
OFAC — Office of Foreign Assets Control, US Treasury Department. Administers and enforces US sanctions designations globally the most powerful unilateral sanctions authority in the world.
CAATSA — Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act 2017. US legislation mandating sanctions on any country conducting significant transactions with Russia’s defence or intelligence sectors directly threatening India over its S-400 purchase.
De-Dollarisation — The global movement to reduce dependence on the US dollar in international trade and finance directly undermining the coercive power of US sanctions which derive their reach from dollar dominance.
Extraterritorial Jurisdiction —The assertion by one state of legal authority over acts occurring outside its territory or involving non-nationals. Secondary sanctions are the most aggressive contemporary example legally contested under international law.
The Proof
The data on sanctions tells two stories simultaneously the story of how powerful they appear, and the story of how consistently they fail.
The United States currently maintains over 10,000 active sanctions designations globally the largest unilateral sanctions regime in history. The EU and UK maintain parallel regimes. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, over 16,500 individuals and entities were sanctioned by Western powers in what became the most comprehensive sanctions package ever assembled against a major economy.
Russia’s economy contracted by approximately 2.1% in 2022 far less than the 15% Western analysts predicted. By 2023, the Russian economy had stabilised and was growing. Russia found alternative markets in India, China, Turkey, and the Gulf markets that declined to join Western sanctions and had no legal obligation to do so.
India’s numbers tell their own story. Indian imports of Russian oil went from approximately 2% of total imports before February 2022 to over 40% by mid-2023. India saved an estimated 8 to 10 billion dollars purchasing discounted Russian crude ; savings that directly benefited the Indian economy while Western sanctions were supposed to be isolating Moscow.
Iran has been under US sanctions since 1979 ; 44 years. The Iranian government remains in power. North Korea has been subjected to 11 UN Security Council sanctions resolutions the most sanctioned country on earth under legally binding multilateral measures. It has nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles regardless.
Cuba has been under US sanctions since 1962 over 60 years. The Cuban government has outlasted ten US presidents and the sanctions that were supposed to bring it down.
The proof is not just in the numbers. It is in the pattern sanctions imposed by the powerful, selectively applied, consistently failing to achieve their stated objectives, and consistently succeeding at one thing the data rarely measures hurting ordinary civilians who had no say in the decisions their governments made.
Case Laws and Key Incidents
International sanctions law does not produce courtroom verdicts the way domestic criminal law does but it produces incidents, rulings, and legal confrontations that define the boundaries of what is permissible.
Nicaragua v. United States — ICJ 1986
The International Court of Justice ruled that the United States had violated international law by supporting Contra rebels in Nicaragua and imposing a trade embargo. The court held that economic coercion violates the principle of non-intervention in another state’s domestic affairs. The USA ignored the ruling. The case established the legal principle unilateral economic coercion can violate international law while simultaneously demonstrating that powerful states face no enforcement consequences for doing so.
India and CAATSA — S-400 Confrontation 2018-2021
When India signed a $5.4 billion deal to purchase the Russian S-400 missile defence system, CAATSA mandated that the USA impose sanctions on India for conducting a significant transaction with Russia’s defence sector. India refused to cancel the deal. Deliveries began in 2021. The USA never imposed CAATSA sanctions on India offering an informal waiver rather than risk the strategic relationship. The incident proved a critical point secondary sanctions have limits when applied to economically and strategically significant nations. India’s size and importance gave it leverage that smaller countries simply do not have.
India-Iran Oil — Waiver and Withdrawal 2018-2019
India received US waivers to continue purchasing Iranian oil after Trump reimposed maximum pressure sanctions in 2018. In May 2019, the USA ended all waivers India was forced to completely halt Iranian oil imports. The incident demonstrated the real cost of secondary sanctions for India losing a major cheap oil supplier due to another country’s domestic legislation. India had no legal obligation to comply but faced economic consequences that made non-compliance practically costly. This remains the clearest example of secondary sanctions coercing India against its legal rights and economic interests.
Russia-Ukraine and India’s Abstentions 2022-2024
India abstained six times on UN General Assembly resolutions condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. India’s legal position consistent and clearly articulated was that the conflict required dialogue and diplomacy, that unilateral sanctions were not binding on India under international law, and that India’s sovereign right to determine its trade relationships could not be overridden by Western pressure. No international legal body has found India’s position to be a violation of international law because it is not.
Analysis
The fundamental legal problem with the contemporary sanctions regime is not that sanctions exist it is that they have been detached from the legal framework that was designed to govern them.
The Legality Question
UN Security Council sanctions under Article 41 of the UN Charter are legally binding. They represent the international community acting collectively through its authorised institution. India has consistently complied with UN-authorised sanctions on North Korea, on various non-state actors, on situations where the Security Council has spoken.
What India has refused to comply with are unilateral sanctions measures imposed by the USA or EU without UN authorisation, carrying no binding legal obligation for third states under international law. This distinction is not diplomatic convenience. It is legally accurate. The UN Charter’s Article 2(1) enshrines sovereign equality of states. Article 2(7) prohibits interference in the domestic affairs of member states. Secondary sanctions threatening India for its own sovereign trade decisions violate both principles.
The Hypocrisy Question
The selective application of sanctions is perhaps the most devastating argument against their legitimacy as legal instruments.
The USA sanctioned Russia for invading Ukraine a sovereign state in 2022. The USA invaded Iraq in 2003 without UN Security Council authorisation, in violation of international law, causing hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. No sanctions were imposed on the USA. No ICC prosecution followed. The UN Security Council veto ensured accountability was impossible.
The EU and USA imposed sanctions on Russia while simultaneously declining to sanction Israel following ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant in November 2024. The message is clear sanctions follow geopolitical alignment, not legal principle. Allies are exempt. Adversaries are targeted. The law is the language used to dress the policy.
The Effectiveness Question
Beyond legality, the empirical record of sanctions is damning. Iran — sanctioned for 44 years has a more advanced nuclear programme today than when sanctions began. Russia — subjected to the most comprehensive sanctions package in history saw its economy stabilise within a year. Cuba — sanctioned for over 60 years remains governed by the same political system sanctions were designed to dismantle. North Korea — under legally binding UN sanctions has nuclear weapons.
What sanctions consistently achieve is civilian suffering. Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis was deepened by US sanctions. Iranian patients struggled to access medicine due to financial sanctions affecting pharmaceutical imports. Ordinary Russians face economic hardship for decisions made by a government they did not choose and cannot remove.
India’s Position — Legal and Moral
India’s strategic autonomy doctrine is not isolationism. India trades with the world, participates in multilateral institutions, and contributes to UN peacekeeping more than almost any other nation. What India refuses is the substitution of American foreign policy for international law.
India’s position that unilateral sanctions without UN authorisation carry no binding obligation, that secondary sanctions violate sovereign equality, and that engagement produces better outcomes than isolation is legally defensible, empirically supported, and morally coherent.
As the world moves toward multipolarity with BRICS expanding, de-dollarisation accelerating, and alternative payment systems developing India’s principled resistance to unilateral sanctions is not just a foreign policy position. It is a contribution to a more legally grounded international order.
Conclusion
They called it pressure. They called it accountability. They called it the international community speaking with one voice.
But when the United States sanctions a country without UN authorisation, when the EU follows suit, when secondary sanctions threaten India for buying its own oil from its own trading partners that is not the international community. That is the powerful few, using the language of law to exercise the logic of power.
India has understood this. India has said so. And India has acted accordingly.
The Russia oil decision was not reckless it was legally grounded. The S-400 purchase was not defiance it was sovereignty. The abstentions at the UN were not fence-sitting they were a principled refusal to endorse a legal framework that the imposing parties themselves do not follow consistently.
Sanctions imposed to break the leg of a country without taking the stick to the leg are only as powerful as the target country allows them to be. India, by refusing to accept the premise that American domestic legislation governs Indian foreign policy, has demonstrated that middle powers have more legal and strategic room than they are often told.
The world is changing. The dollar’s dominance is being questioned. Alternative payment systems are being built. BRICS is expanding. The unipolar moment in which one country’s sanctions could reshape the global economy is ending.
India did not wait for that world to arrive. It helped build it.
And in doing so, India reminded the international legal order of something it had begun to forget that sovereignty is not a courtesy extended by powerful states to weaker ones. It is a right. It belongs to every nation equally. And no amount of sanctions, secondary or otherwise, can legislate it away.
FAQ
Q1. Are unilateral sanctions legal under international law?
The legality of unilateral sanctions is contested. United Nations Security Council sanctions authorised under Article 41 of the UN Charter are legally binding on all member states. Unilateral sanctions imposed by individual countries or blocs without UN authorisation such as US or EU sanctions on Russia, Iran, or Venezuela have no binding legal force on third countries. Their extraterritorial application through secondary sanctions is widely considered a violation of sovereign equality under Article 2(1) of the UN Charter and the principle of non-intervention under Article 2(7).
Q2. Was India legally obligated to join Western sanctions on Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine?
No. The UN Security Council never authorised sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine invasion — Russia’s permanent membership and veto power made this impossible. Without UN Security Council authorisation, Western sanctions on Russia are unilateral measures that carry no binding legal obligation for India or any other non-participating state. India’s decision to continue purchasing Russian oil and abstain on UN condemnation votes was fully consistent with its rights under international law and its doctrine of strategic autonomy.
Q3. What is the difference between sanctions and war and why does it matter legally?
War involves the use of armed force, governed by international humanitarian law and the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force under Article 2(4). Sanctions are non-military coercive measures theoretically governed by Chapter VII of the UN Charter when multilateral, and by contested legal norms when unilateral. The distinction matters because sanctions are often presented as a legal alternative to war but when imposed unilaterally, without authorisation, and with extraterritorial secondary effects, they may themselves violate international law. The line between legitimate economic pressure and illegal economic coercion is one international law has not yet drawn clearly and that ambiguity is precisely what powerful states exploit.
