Speaking at the UN Security Council session on Monday, Lavrov remarked that any hopes for real multilateralism in the "Euro-Atlantic space" that emerged in the wake of the Warsaw Pact's dissolution and the USSR's demise were dashed when Western nations opted to retain and expand NATO rather than to uncover the true potential of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Noting how then-US Secretary of State James Baker reported to then-US President George Bush that the OSCE might pose a threat to NATO, Lavrov said that today, the United Nations and its Charter "also pose a threat to Washington's global ambitions."
"Today, the UN-centric system is in a deep crisis whose primary cause is the desire of certain members of this organization to replace the international law and the UN Charter with some 'rule-based order'," said Lavrov. "No one has seen these rules, they never were a subject of transparent international talks."
These rules are invented and employed in order to oppose the "natural processes" that result in the emergence of "new independent centers of development" - the processes that are essentially an "objective manifestation of multilateralism," said Lavrov.
In order to curb these processes, the US and its allies employ "illegitimate unilateral measures" that include cutting off access to modern technologies and financial services, confiscation of property and even destruction of critical infrastructure.
"The result of it is the fragmentation of global trade, the breakdown of market mechanisms, the paralysis of WTO and the final, open transformation of the IMF into a tool the US and its allies use to achieve their aims, including military aims," Lavrov said.
He also lamented that, in a desperate attempt to assert its dominance by punishing those who refuse to follow its lead, the United States resorted to destroying the very globalization that was once touted as the greater good for all mankind and was meant to service the multilateral system of the global economy.
The United States and the rest of the West who submitted to Washington utilize these so-called "rules" every time they need to justify illegitimate measures employed against those who "chart their policy in accordance with the international law and refuse to follow the self-serving interests of the 'golden billion'," Lavrov added.