Last week I suggested that Australia takes two steps with regard to those Australians fighting in the Syrian conflict, who’ve been trained by extremist groups and gained battlefield experience.

First, our government should release a comprehensive statement outlining its position on the Syrian foreign fighter issue. There’s no one place for people to find out exactly what Australia’s approach is— what the applicable laws are, the government’s reasons for being concerned about Australian involvement in the conflict, what the government’s strategy is, and what people can do if they have concerns.

Secondly, to get the message through we should have a national awareness campaign about the dangers of citizens travelling to Syria. It should be led by the police working with relevant community-based organisations. Read more

With the centenary of the commencement of WWI looming, many in the blogosphere have been looking for good history books to read. Historian Margaret MacMillan has a Brookings essay entitled ‘The Rhyme of History: lessons of the Great War’ (including short interviews with the author). For a more detailed narrative of Europe in the years leading to the war, there’s also MacMillan’s new book, The War that Ended Peace: the road to 1914. The NY Times rated Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers: how Europe went to war in 1914 one of its ten best books of 2013. For fans of beautiful writing, there’s always Barbara W. Tuchman’s The Guns of August. And over the next four years we should heed Hew Strachan’s admonition to do more than remember.

Earlier in the week, Rosa Brooks asked on Foreign Policy, has the nature of ‘war’ changed since the days of Clausewitz? She says:

Take cyberwar: much of what is often spoken of under the “cyberwar” rubric is not violent in the Clausewitzian sense of the word. Cyberattacks might shut down the New York Stock Exchange and cause untold financial damage, for instance, but would we say that this makes them violent? Or, say cyberattacks shut down the electrical grid for several major cities, and as a result of the loss of power, a few hundred hospital patients on ventilators die. I’m still doubtful that most of us would call this violence in the usual sense of the word.

Sticking with the changing nature of warfare, why is the Syrian opposition disappearing from Facebook?

This week the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) launched Military Balance 2014, IISS’ annual assessment of military capabilities and defence economics worldwide. See here for key summaries on defence spending (infographic below, click to enlarge. Source: IISS), and here for global developments. Another observation from that volume is that drone usage has increased as the costs of acquiring them fall.

A few weeks ago, The National Interest brought you ‘The five best submarines of all time’. This week, here’s their five worst. This follows their five worst fighter aircraft list—which we mention more for completeness rather than recommending it. You can see what The Strategist‘s exec editor thought of it here.

Speaking of technology, here’s footage of Britain’s new unmanned drone, ‘Taranis’, flying in the Australian desert.

US Special Operations Commander, Admiral William McRaven, delivered an impassioned speech in January at West Point of a sailor’s perspective of the US Army. He said:

I learned that taking care of soldiers is not about coddling them.  It is about challenging them.  Establishing a standard of excellence and holding them accountable for reaching it.  I learned that good officers lead from the front.  I can’t count the times that I saw Petraeus, without body armor, walking the streets of Mosul, Baghdad or Ramadi, to share the dangers with his men and to show the enemy he wasn’t afraid.

Lastly, on a lighter note, the Swedish Marines we listed last week have some competition from the Royal Dragoons—or do they? The editorial team think that neither of them can oust the US Army from #1: Lazy Ramadi remains the benchmark.

Events

The Australian Defence Force has teamed up with the Sydney Theatre Company to create The Long Way Home, a theatre production that explores the experiences of ADF personnel on operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and East Timor. Servicemen and women perform alongside professional actors as part of a broader rehabilitation program. The season commences on tonight in Sydney, and runs in major capital cities until mid-April. Details here.

Natalie Sambhi is an analyst at ASPI and editor of The Strategist. Image courtesy Flickr user cwasteson.

President Barack Obama’s 10 September address to the American people about Syria continues to send confused messages about the administration’s plans. Obama reasserts his authority to authorise a strike following the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons on 21 August, but he persists in asking an unwilling Congress for support before he acts. He points to the risks of the US doing nothing:

If we fail to act the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons. As the ban against these weapons erodes, other tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas and using them. Over time, our troops would again face the prospect of chemical warfare on the battlefield, and it could be easier for terrorist organizations to obtain these weapons and to use them to attack civilians. Read more

In an attack linked to pro-Syrian government supporters, the sites of The New York Times, Twitter and up to ten other sites were compromised by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA). Using stolen log-in credentials from Australian IT company hosting the domain names of the affected sites, the SEA is said to have effectively ‘walked through the front door’ of the websites. The subsequently rerouted traffic to SEA websites and attacked Twitter’s twimg.com domain, used to store image data and styling code. The Pentagon is reportedly preparing for a wave of retaliatory cyber attacks against US targets in the event of any US action against the al-Assad government. While the SEA remains a concern in Washington, Syria’s allies in the form of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and their state backed hackers, pose a much greater concern to officials. Read more