International sanctions are now closely associated with a world governance framework, whereas they are actually a relic of mercantilism. There was a time when nations behaved like territorial lions…one had to kill or risk being killed. Some of the effects of that approach were theendless and sometimes completely meaningless wars. Eventually, nations began to build fragile alliances when they realized that it was costlier to fight one another than to work together. Eventually, those alliances grew large and looser until we reached the age of the United Nations (a child of the toothless ‘League of Nations’). The rationale behind international sanctions was that nations who did not play by the rules would be punished by the UN with the force of many nations acting in concert. Not only would a punishment meted out by the international community be heftier than an individual nation’s response, but they would also be cloaked within the comforting language of international law.