In his famous 1990 essay in Foreign Affairs, Charles Krauthammer declared that the unipolar moment had arrived. He listed a few reasons to support his argument: there was no challenging power, nor was there likely any in the few decades, no power dispersion at the international level, and the former Soviet Union’s capacity was in decline. Thus, Krauthammer emphasised that at that time, there was no first-rate power in the world that could match the capacity of the US.
The Syrian crisis has achieved the unachievable. It has compelled a communist country to talk peace and democratic/capitalist countries to talk war. Fortunately, it appears that the invasion of Syria by the US forces has been stopped, at least, temporarily. An agreement on chemical weapons stockpiled in Syria has been reached following the talks held in Geneva between the Foreign Minister of Russia, Sergey V. Lavrov, and US Secretary of State John Kerry.
There is good news from the Arctic for the shipping industry. According to data released by the Northern Sea Route Administration, the nodal agency of the Russian Federal Government, which manages the Northern Sea Route (NSR), 330 applications from ships have been received since April 2013 informing the agency of their plans to transit through the NSR this summer. Of these, 213 applications were approved and 51 rejected. The reasons for the rejection of applications and the fate of the balance of 66 applications have not been made public.
Pakistan has been struggling to cope with a multitude of predicaments ranging from political instability to sectarian intolerance, which often prompts the international community to tag this South Asian nation as a failing state.
The Indian Navy announced plans to dispatch a flotilla of four warships to the Asia Pacific region in March-April this year. These vessels will make goodwill visits to ports in the region and also engage in joint exercises with a number of regional navies: Singaporean Navy for the exercise Simbex in South China Sea; Malabar with the US Navy and the Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force (JMSDF) off the Okinawa coast; and Indra with Russian Navy off Vladivostok.