Policy Exchange, Britain’s most influential think tank, today announces the launch of a new international commission on the Indo-Pacific led by the former Canadian Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Stephen Harper. The Indo-Pacific Commission will include* diplomats, politicians and military and civil leaders drawn from the United Kingdom, the United States and across the Indo-Pacific region – including Japan, India, South Korea, Australia, Indonesia and Singapore.

Local people should decide on the future of place names, not the petty tyrants of the Red Guard.

Hoover Institution fellow Stephen Kotkin weighs in on the validity of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s depiction of the diplomacy in the 1930s leading up to the second world war.

Cemeteries are full of presidents for life. Whistling past the graveyard last week, Vladimir Putin forced through a plebiscite to zero out the constitutional limits on his rule.