Looking back from an early twenty-first century vantage-point, it is easy to forget that there was once a time when the United Nations Security Council could not easily employ its sanctions tool. From 1946 until the middle of 1990, Cold War politics prevented the Council from imposing the coercive sanctions provided for in Article 41 of the United Nations Charter more than twice. In 1966 the Council imposed sanctions against Southern Rhodesia and in 1977 it applied them against South Africa. By contrast, the post-Cold War period has witnessed a dramatic increase in UN sanctions. Since August 1990 the Security Council has initiated no fewer than twenty-three additional UN sanctions regimes. UN sanctions now form a prominent feature of the international relations landscape.

While the end of Cold War tensions created the preconditions for a sanctions renaissance, two other factors have contributed to the rise of sanctions. First, sanctions can often represent the least unpalatable of the coercive alternatives available to the UN Security Council when faced with the task of taking action to maintain or restore international peace and security. From a political perspective, it can be extremely difficult to garner the support necessary to authorise collective military action under Article 42 of the UN Charter, as the governments which would be expected to shoulder the burden of collective forceful action are reluctant to assume responsibility for the serious financial, political and humanitarian consequences that are likely to flow from the use of military sanctions.