Abstract
Economic sanctions have been an increasingly conspicuous feature of world politics since the end of World War I. This increase owes largely to the decreasing legitimacy of the use of force and the world's growing economic interdependence. With World War I, it became generally recognized that modern war meant the mass destruction of human life and property and the wholesale devastation of nation's cultural heritage. The end of the war brought to an end, the right of states to resort to war. This right was earlier seen as absolute and legitimate. After World War I, the Covenant of the League of Nations provided for economic sanctions against those resorting to war in disregard of the Covenant. These sanctions were automatic, immediate and not graduated. The first economic sanction was in 1933 by the UK against USSR. The almost exclusive role of economic sanctions between the European armistice of 1918 and the renewal of European hostilities in 1939 was the alternative to force.
