Economic Sanctions, Racial Capitalism, and the Crisis of the International Order

Abstract Economic sanctions have predominantly been analyzed in terms of their effectiveness in achieving the goals of the sanctioning country and their domestic consequences for the sanctioned state. Less attention has been paid to their role in shaping and sustaining racialized dynamics in global capitalism. This article offers a new way of thinking about economic sanctions by engaging with the literature on racial capitalism, arguing that sanctions, as race-making mechanisms, reinforce the global color line in two ways. First, sanctions’ economic repercussions for target countries intensify the precarity of already marginalized groups, thereby reinforcing the racialized contours of capitalism. Second, economic sanctions contribute to the management of global accumulation, reproducing the racialized hierarchical structure underlying the international division of labor. Through this perspective, the article situates sanctions within broader debates in international political economy and international political sociology, offering a contribution to the understanding of their structural role within the longer history of racial capitalism.