Sanctions have become the world's new caste order

Sanctions are no longer tools of diplomacy but instruments of hierarchy. They divide nations, quietly dismantling the ideals of global equality

- SRINATH SRIDHARAN

In every age, humanity has found a way to separate the privileged from the punished. In older civilisations, it was by birth or bloodline. In modern times, it is by access—to capital, to trade, to technology, and to the right to participate in the global order. Today's world has perfected a new form of that ancient impulse. The sanction has become our contemporary caste mark.

For decades, we told ourselves that the twentieth century had birthed an architecture of fairness—a system of treaties, multilateral institutions, and shared norms that would prevent the strong from preying on the weak. The United Nations, the World Bank, and the WTO—they were meant to be neutral arenas for resolution, not tools of coercion. Yet, quietly and almost imperceptibly, that belief has been eroded. Sanctions have replaced dialogue. Access has replaced equality. The right to transact, to move goods, to borrow, and to learn—these have become privileges controlled by a few powers.

What began as a supposedly moral instrument—a way to deter aggression or human rights violations—has become the default language of dominance. The sanctioning power decides what counts as aggression, what counts as morality, and what constitutes compliance. The modern sanction does not strike like war. It works like quarantine. It isolates a nation, not through guns but by denying entry to the worlds bloodstream of finance and technology. When a country’s banks are cut off from global payment systems, when its ships are barred from ports, when its students are denied visas and its scientists cannot collaborate—that is the silent violence of modern geopolitics.