The coevolution
of sanctions and a multipolar world order

During the post-Cold War period, unilateral sanctions were often used by the United States to impose economic costs on adversaries. These measures were also meant to influence and shape the foreign or domestic policy behavior of weaker states to reinforce Washington’s unipolar status.

However, since 2022, and arguably even earlier, unilateral sanctions regimes began evolving in ways that both reflect and contribute to an emerging multipolar world order.

Commentators have described the concept of multipolarity as multiple states or blocs seeking significant power, in contrast to a unipolar order with a single overarching superpower. The 2025 Munich Security Conference report observes that “today’s international system shows elements of unipolarity, bipolarity, multipolarity and non-polarity. Yet an ongoing power shift toward a greater number of states vying for influence is clearly discernible.” It further concluded, “the world is entering an era of heightened tensions … as it shifts from U.S.-led unipolarity toward multipolarity.” 

In this context, Western unilateral sanctions – essentially those of the U.S. and its European allies – have increasingly focused not only on the primary target of the measures, but also third-party actors in the form of secondary sanctions.

Meanwhile, the targets themselves are attempting to bypass sanctions or adapt to their exclusion from Western-led financial, trade, logistical and technology networks. They increasingly seek to assert economic independence and build alternative economic networks.

These dynamics are shifting the architecture of global power, as one single dominant pole gives way to multiple power centers. Unilateral sanctions are becoming both an instrument of competition and a reflection of structural change.

Broadening of unilateral sanctions

The scale and scope of unilateral sanctions by the U.S. and its coalition partners have widened since 2022, when Russia began its war on Ukraine. Countersanctions imposed by China and Russia have also become broader.

U.S. Treasury announcements in early 2025 reported sanctions on a large number of Russian companies and individuals. An increasing number of people in countries not under sanctions were also accused of helping sanctioned Russian actors and profiting from ties to the Russian government.

This was on top of the Treasury’s unprecedented imposition of secondary or extraterritorial sanctions on non-U.S. financial institutions, in 2024, for enabling “significant transactions” involving sanctioned Russian persons and key sectors supporting Russia’s military-industrial complex.

The upshot was that between February 2022 and January 2025, the U.S. imposed 976 secondary sanctions tied to Russia, with progressively rising annual totals: 97 in 2022, 264 in 2023 and 475 in 2024. Most of the secondary sanctions targeted companies in China (283), the United Arab Emirates (125), Turkiye (118) and India (36).

Secondary sanctions and extraterritoriality

The proliferation of secondary sanctions represents one of the most significant developments in the post-Cold War evolution of economic coercion. The measures have become a central theater where the unipolar order’s mechanisms of control clash with the forces of multipolarity.

Secondary sanctions differ from primary sanctions in that they are not confined to the jurisdiction directly targeted by the sanctioning state. Often deployed by the U.S. through legislative instruments such as the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) and a series of executive orders under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), they extend far beyond the traditional bounds of sovereign jurisdiction.

Secondary sanctions seek to penalize third-party actors which have no connection or nexus with the sanctioning state, including businesses, financial institutions or even governments, that engage in economic relations with a sanctioned person.

Such measures have become central to the practice of U.S. sanctions policy, particularly in relation to Russia, Iran and several lesser adversaries.

In the context of a shifting international order, the effectiveness of secondary sanctions depends significantly on the responses of targeted third-party actors. Instead of universal compliance with the sanctioning power’s regime, these states often pursue policies of selective engagement or open resistance. The growing reliance on secondary sanctions shows that, in a multipolar environment, coercive power increasingly works by pressuring intermediaries, not just the primary target.

China

Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the West has imposed the broadest sanctions regime in modern history on Russia. These measures have included export controls, individual and government asset freezes, removal from the global financial messaging network SWIFT, bans on imports of energy and other commodities, price-caps on Russian sea-borne oil and sanctions on hundreds of vessels forming Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet.”

Faced with extensive exclusion from Western systems, Russia has been pivoting eastward and building a parallel economic infrastructure. China has emerged as the most consequential partner in this dynamic. As a result, Chinese firms have found themselves repeatedly targeted under U.S. secondary sanctions frameworks for their participation in supply chains in support of Russia.

Between 2022 and 2024, the number of third-country entities subject to U.S. secondary sanctions more than quadrupled – nearly one-third of these firms were Chinese-owned.

Among the best-documented examples are Chinese logistics and manufacturing companies accused of providing dual-use goods and electronic components to Russian companies connected with the military establishment.

In March 2025, trade with China accounted for almost 35 percent of all Russian foreign trade, compared with less than 20 percent in 2021. In achieving this, one of the strategic responses was the creation of mirror accounts and payments in ruble or yuan to obscure flows from Western scrutiny.

These acts of obfuscation and diversification, along with China’s growing role as a partner for Russia, point to a world in which economic ties are no longer anchored solely in the Western-led economic system. Instead, connectivity is increasingly organized around rival or parallel axes that reflect a more multipolar order.

Turkiye

Turkiye offers one of the most illustrative examples of a third-party actor navigating, exploiting and sometimes directly undermining unilateral sanctions. During the period of intensive Western sanctions against Iran in the early 2010s, Turkish financial institutions and state-linked enterprises were deeply implicated in sanctions circumvention.

The Halkbank case, in which U.S. prosecutors charged senior executives with helping Iran move oil revenues through gold shipments and shell companies, clearly  showed the tension between U.S. extraterritorial sanctions enforcement and Turkiye’s pursuit of its own regional economic interests.

More recently, following Western sanctions against Russia after 2022, Turkiye’s role as an intermediary economy again came to the forefront. Turkish logistics firms, construction companies and banks became conduits for Russian trade and finance that were heavily subject to American secondary sanctions.

These developments reflect Turkiye’s broader foreign policy trajectory. Ankara has shifted from a Western-centric orientation to one of ​strategic autonomy in a diversifying and multipolar world order.

India

New Delhi’s position is more cautious. As one of the principal states advocating a policy of strategic autonomy, India has faced repeated exposure to U.S. secondary sanctions, particularly under CAATSA.

Its continued defense and energy cooperation with Russia and its historical engagement with Iran’s oil sector have persistently brought it into potential conflict with U.S. sanctions regimes, and in more recent times with those of the European Union and United Kingdom.

Yet, rather than fully aligning with Western pressure or openly defying it, India has crafted a balancing strategy. It has sought waivers where possible, diversified energy imports and promoted alternative mechanisms of payment, such as rupee-denominated trade or local-currency settlements with sanctioned partners.

This approach reflects India’s broader role in the evolving multipolar system. Unlike Turkiye, whose behavior sometimes verges on opportunistic facilitation of sanction circumvention, India opts for selective non-alignment.

In short, the cases of Turkiye and India demonstrate that third-party actors are no longer passive recipients of external pressure. They are strategic agents shaping the evolving interconnection between unilateral sanctions and the multipolar order that is steadily emerging in response to their actions.

The UAE

A similar dynamic is evident in the United Arab Emirates, which has functioned as both a key logistical hub for sanctions circumvention and a jurisdiction increasingly under scrutiny by Western regulators.

After the implementation of Western sanctions on Russia, hundreds of UAE-based companies became intermediaries for trade in dual-use goods, commodities and re-exported materials.

U.S. and European authorities responded with escalating warnings and targeted designations, highlighting the risk that Emirati entities could face secondary sanctions if they continued to facilitate such transactions.

The Emirati response has been pragmatic rather than confrontational. Local authorities have tightened sanctions compliance procedures while simultaneously seeking to maintain open channels of trade with sanctioned economies.

In doing so, the UAE embodies the logic of the multipolar world order: Smaller and medium-sized states no longer simply choose alignment with or opposition to a dominant power but instead manage complex webs of economic interdependence across competing systems.

Vietnam

Vietnam provides another example of how pressures from secondary sanctions intersect with strategic autonomy. Hanoi has long maintained deep defense and energy relationships with Russia while cultivating an increasingly close partnership with the U.S.

Following the introduction of CAATSA, Vietnam’s ongoing procurement of Russian military equipment placed it in potential violation of U.S. sanctions law.

Rather than abandon these defense ties, Vietnam developed a mechanism to mitigate exposure. It used profits from a joint oil venture in Siberia to settle payments for Russian arms, effectively avoiding dollar transfers and bypassing global financial systems vulnerable to U.S. oversight.

Taken together, these case studies reveal the paradox of unilateral sanctions power in a multipolar world: The very tools designed to preserve dominance can accelerate the diffusion of that dominance.