Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This article presents a critical legal analysis of unilateral coercion in international relations. The novelty of the study lies in its attempt to look at the problem of unilateral coercion, firstly, in the most general and comprehensive manner possible, integrating its military and non-military forms; secondly, through the prism of identifying strategic issues related to this problem, on which there is a lack of clarity in current international law; and thirdly, by proposing possible directions for increasing legal certainty and strengthening anti-sanctions policy. It is concluded that the main political reason for the presence of unilateral coercion in modern international relations is the stalling of the UN collective international security system, which manifests itself, first of all, in the different views of the permanent members of the UN Security Council on issues of law and fact in terms of regulating relations to maintain international peace and security, which hinders the adoption of multilateral measures to protect them. The fundamental legal problem in assessing unilateral coercion is the lack of clear, fully tested criteria for the application of relevant universal standards of conduct in the practice of international adjudication, which creates legal uncertainty. In a situation where a practice of international adjudication that fully clarifies the content of those standards has not yet been established, and their crystallization is otherwise hampered, the differing views of states perpetuate a gray area in international law, providing space for theoretical discussions, on the one hand, and for practical manipulation, on the other. With regard to unilateral sanctions, those imposing them deliberately avoid classifying them under international law in order to preserve maximum freedom of maneuver within the broadly understood principle of sovereignty, and at the doctrinal level, they reserve the possibility of legitimizing them as measures imposed in response to violations of erga omnes obligations or for security purposes. With regard to unilateral military coercive measures, they justify them with artificially constructed arguments based on individual or collective self-defense. The primary solution to this problem, in a situation where restarting the UN collective security system is currently impossible for political reasons, could be for the states of the global majority to formulate their own normative vision of the relevant universal standards, concretize it, and effectively defend it in the international arena. Given its strategic importance, the work of specifying and protecting this normative vision of existing universal standards could become one of the main items to the agenda for the substantive content of the initiative to strengthen a polycentric world order. In conclusion, the article proposes a program of measures aimed at shaping a normative model of a multilateral world in which cases of unilateral measures would be reduced to a closed short list of clearly defined and objectively verifiable acceptable exceptions. The program includes guidelines for developing new legal norms (lex ferenda) and strengthening the effective application of existing norms (lex lata). States and non-state actors willing to participate in the program could use it to establish an international counter-sanctions solidarity mechanism.
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7225588933