The Foreign Policy Centre also calls for the Commonwealth to become a properly organised and policed organisation, with transparent rules of membership.

ECONOMIST: The Commonwealth

Mark Leonard works for the London-based Foreign Policy Centre.

BBC: Europeans on Europe

Some kidnap groups may have political beliefs, but the Foreign Policy Centre's Rachel Briggs said the driving force for all of them - like any multinational company - is trade, reputation and the bottom line.

BBC: The kidnapping business

In return, he bowed to a plan stitched up between pan-European socialists and the European People's Party, the main conservative block in the EU, to give the council presidency to someone from the centre right and the foreign-policy job to the centre left.

ECONOMIST: The EU presidency

As far as the author is concerned, Mr Clinton epitomises woolly-headed liberalism and arrogant over-confidence in his attempts to put the expansion of democracy and the spread of market economics at the centre of foreign policy.

ECONOMIST: How to win and lose the diplomatic game: Flummoxed by foreigners | The

But nobody, the government now says, thought to mention Sandline's activities, or the investigation, to a foreign secretary known throughout his department for having put control of arms sales at the centre of his newly ethical foreign policy.

ECONOMIST: Ethics man

Dmitry Trenin, head of the Moscow Carnegie Centre, argues that Russian foreign policy under Mr Putin has always been more defensive than offensive.

ECONOMIST: Russia, NATO and Europe