Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister, stated that he has always admired George Orwell's imagination in his book 1984, a satire on totalitarian regimes, but remarked that Orwell could never have imagined totalitarian regimes as they exist in the West today.

According to Lavrov, the U.S., Europe, and some Asian nations like Japan and South Korea live under a "rules-based totalitarianism." In contrast, Russia and China, supported by nations such as Iran and Egypt, offer the world a multipolar New World Order (NWO) which, in the Russian-Chinese view, would be more just, more democratic, and better protect the rights and sovereignty of nations.