Economic sanctions are an important tool of international policy aimed at influencing countries that violate international standards or pursue aggressive policy. The essence of economic sanctions is to restrict trade, financial transactions, and investments to stimulate changes in political or economic behavior of the target country. Grounds for the application of economic sanctions may include human rights violations, annexation of territories, military aggression or other actions that contradict international norms. The international community bodies, such as the UN or the European Union, make decisions on the application of sanctions based on a joint assessment of the situation and the desire to preserve world peace and stability. The effectiveness of economic sanctions is a matter of debate, sometimes they can lead to changes in the country's policy, and sometimes they cause suffering to the population. Within the community of nations, it is important to balance the strategies of sanctions and diplomacy to achieve the desired results while maximizing the positive impact on the geopolitical situation.
At the stage of searching for widely acceptable agreements in global trade and economic relations, mutual consideration of interests becomes especially important. In modern conditions, these spheres have become the object of unprecedented politicization. Considerable attention is paid to the values of free trade, which nowadays often become hostages of trade conflicts and unfair competition. Recently, sanctions have gained an important role in international economic relations. Motives for applying sanctions, including economic ones, can be diverse and depend on various factors, the main of which are political considerations. In most cases, economic sanctions are determined by political goals that are accomplished through economic pressure.
The very term "sanctions" and their mechanism in the international sphere combine regulatory, political, and economic aspects, forming the interdisciplinary nature of this phenomenon in theoretical terms.