The only time I've heard the expression about multipolar was from Chinese and Russian Foreign Minister playbook. Add "NATO", "Russophobia", "Nazis", "Western"

The only time I've heard the expression about multipolar was from Chinese and Russian Foreign Minister playbook. Add "NATO", "Russophobia", "Nazis", "Western" and other keywords in the soup and you have the perfect anti-Western speech. It's not even a Western tool. Sanctions are a tool to refuse to trade with opponent regimes, and it works both ways (China has sanctions on the West too, for example on semiconductors. Russia has sanctions too against the West). It's not perfect, and it has side-effects, but overall it deters other countries / terrorist organizations to follow the same path of taking an hostile posture against you. If you let people go around sanctions, then becoming hostile will simply have no consequences. If there are no consequences to actions, and there is a big prize to win, then the politics will do it, no matter what.