Circumventing Sovereignty: Extraterritorial Sanctions Leveraging the Technologies of the Financial System

Abstract

US extraterritorial sanctions are implemented with comprehensive global reach, despite allies and adversaries opposing and rejecting them as violations of international law. I argue that this staggering reach rests on more than just the central position of the US in the global financial system, as existing accounts indicate; it builds fundamentally on the financial system’s operational autonomy. Enabled by technologies such as the ‘risk-based approach’ and automated screening procedures, this globalized network of private actors observes its regulatory environment through its own logic. It translates sanctions into risks susceptible to mitigation beyond the political system’s territorial borders, as the cases of Switzerland and the European Union show. These jurisdictions took futile measures to defend against foreign encroachment of their authority. Unless the financial system’s increased autonomy from the state system is recognized conceptually, analyses of international sanctions will remain deficient and attempts to counter their extraterritorial reach ineffective.