Examine how secondary sanctions regimes challenge the framework of international law, particularly the requirement of UN Security Council authorisation.

Secondary sanctions penalise third countries for lawful trade with a targeted state. Under Chapter VII, Article 41 of the UN Charter, only the Security Council may decide binding non-military coercive measures [1]; unilateral regimes therefore substitute national legislation for collective authorisation, as the US Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, 2026 shows.

Bypassing the UNSC's collective mandate

• Article 41 makes economic coercion a collective decision of the Council, applied by member states [1]. Secondary sanctions invert this: one state defines the wrong, the penalty and the enforcement.
• The 2026 Bill empowers the US President to impose duties up to 100% ad valorem on goods from countries among the five largest importers of Russian crude or gas [2] — chiefly India and China, neither party to any Council decision on Russia.

Extraterritoriality and sovereign equality

• Applying domestic law to conduct outside one's territory — what China terms "long-arm jurisdiction" — strains the sovereign equality principle of Article 2 of the Charter.
• The UN General Assembly endorsed this critique in 2025, proclaiming 4 December the International Day against Unilateral Coercive Measures by 116-51-6, urging states to refrain from unilateral economic, financial or trade measures inconsistent with international law and the Charter [3].

Weak remedies in trade law

• Discriminatory tariffs violate WTO non-discrimination norms, yet the security exception (GATT Article XXI) offers an escape route.
• In DS512, Russia — Traffic in Transit (report adopted 26 April 2019), the panel upheld Russia's invocation in the first-ever interpretation of Article XXI [4], leaving limited scope to challenge security-framed tariffs.

Secondary sanctions thus erode the Charter's monopoly on collective coercion without offering an adjudicable remedy, yet GA majorities cannot bind the states controlling global finance. India's course is principled and pragmatic: contest the method of unilateral coercion in multilateral forums, diversify energy sourcing, and settle contested issues through negotiated trade understandings — upholding both strategic autonomy and a rules-based order.