A new Bank is added to the lexicon of world development finance. Rather than welcoming it, the merchants of poverty eradication propagate its unbecoming. Completely one-sided views have been floating since the announcement of the BRICS New Development Bank adopted in Brazil during the BRICS Sixth Summit. Even after a month-long soccer carnival, it is a shocker to the world.
After the tragic downing of flight MH17, the US along with some major European countries has called for “hard-hitting sanctions” on Russia. The UK is pushing for tough “Tier 3” sanctions against Russia that could cover areas such as financial services, trade and energy exports.
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.