Saudi Arabia, taken by surprise by the early casualties of the Arab Spring, has now adapted and become convinced that regime change can be a good thing, so long as it removes your enemies and not your friends.

Saudi Arabia has adopted the most hawkish of stances against the Assad regime during the crisis in Syria. This is in large part because Riyadh (along with Washington and others) considers bringing down the pro-Iranian Assad regime as one line of operation in a larger regional strategy aimed at targeting Iranian expansionism. Saudi Arabia generally supports the status quo, as it considers stability preferable to the chaos that rapid change can bring. But it has obviously made up its mind that the long-term benefits of bringing down Assad are worth the short-term pain of post-Baathist bloodletting.

But the weakness (or absence) of political institutions in the Arab world also means policy-making is an intensely personal affair. And the way Saudi Arabia has targeted Assad is indicative not just of the fact that King Abdullah has decided that the inevitable chaos of a post-Assad Syria can be managed, but also that an opportunity now presents itself for a bit of old-fashioned payback.

Locked away in King Abdullah's memory is the killing of former Lebanese PM (and Saudi citizen) Rafiq Hariri, and Riyadh's conviction that it could not have occurred without the explicit assistance or implicit approval of Damascus.

For a bit of Christmas and Middle East thrown together, here's Jingle Bells being sung in Arabic by Fayrouz, perhaps the most famous female Arab singer alive:

(H/t Middle East Institute blog.)

America's containment strategy against the Soviet Union during the Cold War was a remarkable success. Indeed, so successful was it that it is being reprised with respect to Iran. Tehran must feel almost claustrophobic, as this little map from Juan Cole's blog illustrates (stars represent US bases).

Sure, there'll be a bit more breathing space in the west once the US leaves Iraq, and if the US continues to obliterate Pakistani border posts then the eastern flank might open up a bit, but at the moment the Yankees have got the Persians pretty well boxed in.

Or so you thought. Because those sons of Xerxes are clever little things, and they have been attempting a bit of containment of their own. It would nearly have succeeded as well, if the US Republican Party hadn't been awake to it. Over a year ago the North Carolina Republicans began revealing this perfidious Persian strategy, and now the hot tamale is out of the bag. 

Republican presidential nomination candidate Rick Perry has revealed that Hizbullah is being used by Iran to come to the US through Mexico, and he has called for a new Monroe doctrine to stop it. Another Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, backed up this view, even calling it an imminent threat. The Mexican Foreign Minister, Patricia Espinosa, naturally denied the accusation, but then again, she would, wouldn't she? 

It won't be long before the Republican Party's Iran research teams will begin applying the blowtorch to those multicultural Canadians, because we all know what a soft touch they are and how hard it is to contain a country from only one side...

There is a sense that the use of drones is risk-free warfare, given that humans are no longer in the cockpit. But as last week's capture by the Iranians of a US RQ-170 Sentinel shows, there are some downsides to drone warfare that don't exist (or at least, not to the same extent) for manned aircraft.

With a downed aircraft there is a good chance that the plane itself will be, if not destroyed, then at least extremely badly damaged. This lessens the ability to exploit the remains. This drone appears largely intact (Iranian TV coverage above), whether because its control was taken over by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps cyber-warfare chaps, as the Iranians would have us believe, or the Russians played some part in it, as former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton would have us believe, or it simply free-fell to earth after a malfunction, as the US claims.

Regardless of how it came into Iranian hands, it is intact, and intact pieces of military equipment are very exploitable. In the case of the Sentinel it is exploitable in two ways: for the intelligence that it may have stored, which could give an insight into US intelligence-gathering capabilities and targets, and for the engineering of the drone and the sensor technology.

Context is everything. So it is worth pausing for a moment to understand some of the elements that influence the minds of politicised Shi'a in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain and elsewhere.

Just as many in the Sunni world harbour a deep dislike of the Shi'a as dissenters from 'orthodox' Islam, many in the Shi'a world see themselves as perennially persecuted by the stronger Sunni establishment. In response, some Shi'a have adopted a quietist outlook while waiting for more favourable political conditions; others believe that only by standing up to oppression will they be able win their right to express themselves as equals, religiously and politically. 

Imam Hussein Shrine, Karbala, Iraq. (Photo by Flickr user James_Gordon_Los_Angeles.)

The former approach is embodied in the quiet influence of Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq, while the latter informs the approach of Hizbullah in Lebanon, Iran's hardliners and the Sadrists in Iraq.

Yesterday's events on the day of 'Ashura give strength to those Shi'a who see themselves as a persecuted minority in a Sunni world. Sixty dead at Shi'a shrines in Afghanistan and another 32 killed in Iraq. At the same time, Bahraini Shi'a are denied political rights and the opportunity to serve in the security forces. 

For centuries the leitmotif of Shi'ism was largely that of political and religious oppression. But the latter half of the 20th and early 21st centuries have altered that. The Iranian revolution of 1979 presented a new face of political Shi'ism — one that was confrontational and aggressive, but also one that delivered.

With the sanctions noose closing ever more tightly around the neck of the Assad regime, it is remarkable that Damascus can count on any support from its fellow Arab states. But even when the Arab League voted last week to impose sanctions on Syria, it was not unanimous. Two of Syria's three Arab neighbours abstained and will not abide by the League's decision.

Lebanon and Iraq both have reasons for backing the status quo in Damascus. Baghdad has close economic relations with Damascus, good relations with Syria's main backer Iran and a Shi'a-led government which finds comfort in an Alawite government that is equally dedicated to resisting Sunni political primacy. If the Assad regime were to fall, Iraq would be nervous about the succour that Syria's radical Sunni Islamists could provide across the long and porous border to their co-religionists in Iraq, still smarting from being usurped from power eight years ago.

A similar fear of change hangs in the air in Lebanon. Of course, Lebanon is such a patchwork of sectarian interests that the fear is not universal. The Christian nationalists, under leaders such as Samir Gaegae, welcome the fall of Assad, as does the Sunni bloc of Sa'ad Hariri. But the Shi'a, led by Hizbullah and Amal and the Christian bloc of Michel Aoun are firmly in Assad's corner. 

Hizbullah's political primacy would likely continue if Assad were to fall, but its logistic chain would be more difficult to sustain. Regardless of sectarian political considerations though, just like Iraq, there is a significant economic disincentive for Beirut to abide by the Arab League's decision. Most of Lebanon's exports transit through Syria, so any retaliatory action by Damascus against Beirut would be devastating for the Lebanese economy.

Lebanon has long been the country in which Middle Eastern regional and international rivalries have been played out, but Syria is increasingly assuming that mantle. The Assad regime is certainly under siege from many quarters, but so long as it can count on support from Iran and two of its neighbouring Arab countries, as well as the tacit support of Russia and China, it believes that it can survive. While there are many who wish to see the end of Alawite rule in Damascus, there are others in Syria and the region who fear the consequences.

Photo by Flickr user zoonabar.

Reading the series of posts about the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones, I couldn't help but think that it betrayed a degree of cultural superiority, with discussion centred on coalition strikes in Pakistan/Afghanistan against ideologically committed but technologically limited opposition. As though future war was simply about Nevada-based operators dropping bombs or firing missiles at targets with no threat from the ground.

A more interesting study into the future uses of UAVs may be found in the Levant, where Israel and Hizbullah have been engaged in a two-way drone war for nearly a decade. The latest episode this week involved speculation that Hizbullah may have found a way of bringing down an IDF drone and recovering it for technical exploitation.

This follows claims that Hizbullah had previously found a way of intercepting IDF drone feeds, ultimately leading to the disastrous Ansariyyah operation resulting in the death of 11 Israeli naval commandos in 1997. Similar claims were made about Iraqi insurgent groups' ability to download tactical UAV feeds from US assets.

While most people are aware of the camel racing scene in the Arab world, in honour of Melbourne Cup week I thought it only appropriate to shine a light on the horse racing scene. 

Horse racing is not a big crowd-puller in the Middle East, but it has more of a following than some may give it credit for. People know that Dubai (through Emirates Airline) sponsors the Melbourne Cup and that the Maktoum family are giants of the racing game. But every time I go to Beirut I love going past the Hippodrome, the Flemington of the Levant. I haven't yet had a day at the races, but driving past on race day while keen punters gain vantage points outside the track on whatever high ground they can find is one of my favourite Beirut scenes.

The more I looked into it, the more I learnt how active the scene actually was. There are two tracks in Saudi Arabia, and four in Egypt. Bahrain has a club, as does Oman and Qatar.  Even the Baghdad track is still alive and making something of a comeback.

But wait, there’s more. Across the Gulf, even the Iranians are into it. This article outlines what to expect, although I would hazard a guess that 'fashions in the field' is a bit more restrained than in Melbourne. Flexibility in religious interpretation has allowed the tote to replace 'bets and winnings' with 'predictions and prizes'. 

Whoever was giving out 'prizes' after the Melbourne Cup on Tuesday must have missed me out.

Photo by Flickr user delboy1203.

I know that Australian soldiers dying isn't good news, but I used to think it was at least newsworthy. Until yesterday, that is. When news of three dead and seven wounded Australian soldiers collides with a Qantas shutout, guess which event dominates the media?

I looked at the SBS and ABC news on Sunday night. Both accorded Qantas the lead, and discussed it in great detail. ABC, the national broadcaster, initially said the two main stories of the night were the Qantas dispute and the Australian deaths. However, by my reckoning the first 19 minutes were about the Qantas dispute (with a special edition of 7.30 coming after). This was followed by two to three minutes on the Australian deaths, of which nearly half was taken up with the suicide attack that killed 13 US soldiers the same day.

Perhaps leading with a minute on the deaths before launching into the orgy of Qantas news might have been more appropriate, but then again, why would people need to know about the deaths of three Australian soldiers when there are all those stranded passengers out there?

The ABC also wanted to look at how returning Qantas passengers were coping with the delays, and the impact on people wanting to travel to the Spring racing carnival. No mention of how three families somewhere in Australia were going to cope with their loved ones not returning at all, or of what the wounded might think about missing the Melbourne Cup.

In looking at the role of women in the Arab Spring it would be remiss not to touch on the spouses of autocratic rulers. Are they silent witnesses to the rule of their husbands? Are they partners in it? Or just beneficiaries?

Looking outside the Arab world, few wives have suffered as badly as their ruler husbands when revolutions came. There are examples in Tsarist Russia and revolutionary France, but not many in the 'modern' era.

Elena Ceausescu is probably the most famous, being executed with her husband after a summary trial on Christmas Day 1989. But she was hardly a peripheral player in the business of repressive government. She had amassed enormous personal wealth and great influence, but more importantly in 1980 she was appointed first deputy prime minister in the Romanian government, making her very much part of the autocracy.

Mirjana Milosevic is another who stood shoulder to shoulder with her husband in both a marital and ideological sense. Imelda Marcos of the Philippines also filled a number of senior political roles (as well as several hundred wardrobes) during her husband's rule and later returned to the Philippines after a period of exile in Hawaii.

With this in mind, it is interesting to view the varied approaches taken to the spouses of Arab autocrats.

Co-authored by Grace Williams, an intern in the West Asia Programme Lowy Institute and student of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Sydney. Part 1 of this series; part 2.

Egypt's women have been a focus of media attention in the Arab Spring, but women have a long history of activism in Egypt. Women were active in the 1919 and 1952 struggles, but gained very little in terms of equality and justice. In the aftermath of the uprising in Tahrir Square earlier this year, it is worth asking whether there will be a repetition of history and patriarchal control, or if any radical social transformation will finally break gender barriers, giving women a stronger, more equal role in the new Egypt.

The relationship between feminism and nationalism has been central to Arab women's movements. The rise of the women's press in Cairo in the early twentieth century paralleled nationalist publications and social movements, but after 1919, tensions arose between the early feminists and male nationalists.

While women's nationalist action had been widely accepted by male reformers, pressures emerged when creating a new constitution for Egypt in 1920. Women's political rights were not mentioned and the equality of women not discussed. Women, particularly poor women, gained very little from the 1919 revolution, although the uprising did create a momentum and revolutionary spirit for the Egyptian women's struggle, with the Egyptian Feminist Union founded in 1924.

The Arab Spring has presented even more dilemmas for Russia than it has for the West. Commercial considerations have to a large extent dictated its response to events, along with a desire to stymie advantages that may accrue to the West as a result of its interventions.

Since acceding to the NATO-led intervention in Libya, Moscow has been charting a more recalcitrant course regarding non-Arab support for the Arab Spring. Publicly at least, Russia accused NATO of overstepping the mark in its application of the UN Security Council Resolution that Russia abstained from, and was using the resolution as a means of regime removal rather than to protect civilians.

In the case of Syria, Russia has a lot more invested in its relationship with Damascus, which goes part of the way to explaining Moscow's vetoing of the European-sponsored UN Security Council Resolution seeking sanctions against Damascus. It also goes a long way to explaining why three Hizbullah members of parliament are visiting Moscow as guests of the Russian parliament (the Duma).

Nowadays the All Blacks use the Maori haka as the ultimate intimidatory weapon before kicking off in test matches. It is a challenge to a fight, and the intensity in the eyes of All Blacks of both Maori and European heritage can stir the soul and intimidate opponents.

But way back in the more genteel amateur 1970s, the haka performed by the All Blacks wouldn't have frightened the skin off a creme brulee.

And if the 1970s was the last time the All Blacks performed a poor haka, we all know that the 1980s was the last time they won the World Cup. I'm not in any way insinuating that New Zealand has a history of choking at the World Cup, but here's hoping that history repeats itself at the semi-final this Sunday. Go the Wallabies!

If it wasn't so serious, it would almost be funny. This week's revelation that the US has uncovered an Iranian Quds Force plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the US — by using an Iranian-American failed used-car salesman to sub-contract out the task to a Mexican drug cartel — has raised more than a few eyebrows.

There are two takes on this story. The first is that this action merely shows the desperation of the Iranian regime. It fears it is losing influence in the Middle East, and the plot was an attempt to lash out at its regional rival Saudi Arabia and the 'Great Satan' in the US. This is the argument made by Martin Indyk in Foreign Policy.

The second line of argument is that because this doesn't accord with previous Iranian behaviour and there is so much risk for so little return, it points either to a set-up (perhaps by Iranian opposition groups keen to get Saudi Arabia and the US to act more forcefully against Iran) or to a loss of control over the IRGC by the Iranian leadership.

The most intriguing issue is not so much the brazenness of the plot but the absolute amateurishness of it. The only access we have to the official version of events is the indictment that the Washington Post has put online, and it raises more than a few questions.

Granted, the hamfistedness of the electoral rorting in the 2009 presidential election shows that Iranian security forces are capable of amateurishness on a grand scale. But given this was perhaps the boldest offensive action ever carried out by Iranian intelligence, why were the communications conducted using an open mobile direct from the US to 'senior Quds Force members' in downtown Tehran? And why were the down-payments wired directly into the cartel's nominated bank account from overseas?

If it was an officially sanctioned operation, the indictments reveal breathtakingly poor trade-craft for a minor operation, let alone one of this sensitivity. Of course, we don't know what intelligence the US has to support the indictments and we may only find out if it gets selectively leaked to strengthen the public case as doubts are raised about the plot.

It is too early to tell what the truth is, but I have some sympathy for Hillary Clinton's argument that 'You couldn't make this up, could you?'.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Sebastian.YEPES.

One of the imponderables this early in the life of the Arab Spring is the degree to which the political upheavals will result in substantive, rather than cosmetic, improvements to women's political roles in the Arab world.

My first post on this subject argued that, while women have invested in these recent bouts of political protest, there is a widespread feeling that, for all their efforts in removing old regimes, women face a 'same horse, different jockey' scenario.

The best examples of Arab political systems being opened up for women have come when they were imposed from the top down, either through invasion (in the case of Iraq) or through government diktat (Morocco and Jordan both have parliamentary seats reserved for women). So there should be a healthy dose of scepticism about whether a bottom-up approach can force any substantive reforms.

The most common way advances in women's political influence is measured is through their access to parliamentary representation. But this alone is not going to be a sufficient indicator of influence. Increasing the number of female parliamentarians is a start, but the issue of ministerial appointments is the real test. And not appointments to what are sometimes referred to as 'pink' portfolios — social affairs, education and the like — but ministries that have been hitherto entirely male-dominated.

First indications are not particularly positive in this regard.

I promised to write a series of posts on women and the Arab Spring and this is the first, dealing with the role of women in the protest movements themselves. 

The greatest difficulty in writing about women and the Arab Spring is to understand the degree to which they have been moving forces behind the protests. Cultural and political forces have dictated that they are not well represented in the leadership that will govern in those countries where the old political order was removed. But women have not been silent in the events leading up to it. 

In many ways, the movements themselves were, if not leaderless, then at least relatively amorphous groups that lacked a centralized leadership. This, and the fact that the Arab Awakening/Spring was largely a story about the mobilization of youth, meant that women have had more of an opportunity to have their voices heard. Traditional Arab leadership is a male affair, but for a brief moment the combined effects of social media and youthful optimism have given women a prominence in the Arab uprisings that they haven't had in the past. 

Rumours swirling around the Nobel peace prize nominations have it that two Arab women are strongly in the running for the award: the Tunisian blogger Lina BenMhenni and Israa Abdel Fattah, the Egyptian internet activist whose political activism pre-dates the Arab Spring. 

While the freedom of women to congregate and take political action as equals on the streets in countries like Tunisia is merely an extension of the social freedoms they have taken as granted for years, it is their mobilisation in more conservative states such as Bahrain (pictured) and Yemen that has been the more remarkable. The question for the future is whether, having let the female political emancipation genie out of the bottle, post-Arab Spring leaders will be willing (or able) to put it back in.

Sport is one of the few avenues open to the world's minnows to make their mark by competing with top countries. Some have earned an enviable reputation as a result.

There are not too many times that the US would be nervous about taking on Jamaica in anything, but in the 4x100m relay the Caribbean nation is one you don't want to run against. If the Olympics is the time for the Caribbean nations to stand up and be counted, and the soccer World Cup the opportunity for sub-Saharan Africa to have a crack at the big boys, then the Rugby World Cup is the time for the South Pacific.

Anybody who watched Tonga defeat the French and Samoa make the South Africans pull out all stops on the weekend saw the Pacific countries' chance to shine on the world stage. The thing about the Rugby World Cup is that, unlike those other two major international sporting get-togethers (Olympic boxing excepted) physical contact is the essence of the contest. This makes the Pacific nations, with their size and warrior culture, well-suited to the task. 

And while it is still true that a handful of big countries are likely to win the Rugby World Cup, on the evidence of the past few weeks, the gap between the top tier and second tier nations is narrowing.

For me, the physicality of the World Cup also means that, unlike non-contact sports, rugby is as close to the Clausewitzian notion of sport being politics by other means (or something to that effect) as you can get. People who saw the way both teams ripped into each other in the England vs Argentina game would not have thought that the Falklands War ended nearly 30 years ago. Or that the Cold War was over when Russia and the US threw themselves into each other in another very hard game.

The World Cup has also revealed, if not reinforced, cultural stereotypes. 

The announcement by Defence Minister Stephen Smith opening up all ADF employment streams to women may upset some of the 'not in my day' brigade, but in reality it will likely have minimal impact on the ADF.

Forget the faux arguments based on cultural issues, gender bias, group cohesion or even 'women's issues'. Impediments to widespread female participation are really attitudinal and biomechanical. The weights that today's infantry soldiers have to hump around are enormous, so physical strength and endurance are pre–requisites. That is not to say that women don't possess them, just that the average male is more likely to possess them, which makes workforce planning pretty straightforward. And in a large workforce that is an advantage.

To ensure that the opening up of employment opportunities is done in an orderly manner and is based on good research (by DSTO and the University of Wollongong), the implementation is to be staged over five years. Somewhat fortuitously, that takes us past the exit date of combat forces from Afghanistan, so the media frenzy that accompanies the first female infantry soldier deployed on operations will likely be somewhat delayed.

Opening up these roles is hardly ground–breaking internationally, as several countries including Canada, NZ and Denmark did it years ago. And while numbers are hard to come by, the take–up rate of infantry positions by females who are deemed suitable physically and mentally has not been great.

If the role of the infantry does not appeal to all men who join the army, at least the same attitude is going to be expected among female recruits. Add to this the physical screening that is likely to take place for female applicants and the need to allocate to trade vacancies where they exist. The pool of available female recruits is likely to be quite small and it then becomes an issue of how keen they are to become an infantry soldier or artillery gunner as opposed to an intelligence analyst or UAV operator.

In a year of dramatic change in the Middle East, in which the desire for revolutionary political change is still being expressed in several Arab countries, it is educational to see that, away in the east of the Arab world, the Gulf states are addressing this phenomenon in the traditional Gulf way — with activity masquerading as progress.

This month, elections will be held in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Their conduct says much about the way Gulf rulers are approaching the issue of popular participation in government.

Supporters of the slow pace of reform argue that Gulf Arabs need to be introduced gradually to the concept of democratic norms. Shock treatment would tear apart the fabric of traditional leadership that the various kingdoms, emirates and sultanates have relied on for generations. Universal suffrage and legislative authority will eventually emerge from the structures now being put in place.

Critics say there is no real acceptance of free speech on the part of the leadership, let alone any willingness to cede legislative authority.

I was going to go on with my 'Women in the Arab Spring' posts but thought that, given I am being used as an online Kewpie doll, it may be apposite to say a word or two. 

Before people start looking at my name and imputing gender bias and condescension, I would like to point out that the comment I referred to in my initial post about a lack of female international relations talent in the media sphere came from a woman. And the comment about a possible female predilection for 'direct communication' came from an entirely different (and well-credentialed) woman. 

My question was a serious one. It is acknowledged that we have plenty of well-credentialed female IR academics and practitioners (albeit unevenly distributed in certain fields), but relatively few high profile female IR commentators. That was the basis of my question. Why is this the case? Statistical anomaly? Lack of women in newsworthy areas of IR? Media bias? An unwillingness of women to adopt a high public profile? I am open to suggestions and a healthy debate on the issue.

On the ripostes received to date, I commend those from Caitlin, Jocelyn, Linda and Susannah, who actually attempted to address the substantive issue. I admit to not knowing about the Foreign Policy piece to which Caitlin refers, but it touches on some of the issues I hoped to raise. No doubting the number of capable women in the IR field, but why is the field (along with possibly economics) dominated by men to a much greater extent than others such as health, education, science, and medicine?

Writing from the US, it is to be expected that there would be more women commentators, as the talent pool is bigger. But I would be interested as to whether men still dominate the broadsheets, television and IR faculties in the US to the extent they do in Australia. Susannah's point is also worthy of further exploration. Are men more prominent because they are more comfortable in expressing their opinion in public, regardless of how worthwhile it may be?

As to Jennifer's riposte, she failed to answer the question I posed in the original post and again above. I know there are well-regarded women in the university IR field. I have heard of Sarah Phillips and greatly admire her work. If Jennifer had used Google she might have noticed that Sarah and I co-wrote a Lowy paper on Yemen a little while back.

I say nothing about the capabilities of women in the IR field. I have been taught by them, worked with them, they are well represented in the Lowy Institute and I rate them on their abilities the same as everyone else. It's just that they seem to have a much lower public profile than men — an issue raised with me by other women and not dreamt up by me during some morning tea break. Either disagree with this supposition or explain it, but at least try to address it. 

As for me, I'm going to talk about women and the Arab Spring.

Photo by Flickr user Robert.Nilsson.

The lack of female commentators in international relations has been raised this past week at the Lowy Institute. Between reading the papers, examining one's bellybutton lint, baiting civilian strategists and working out where to have lunch, conversation sometimes turns towards such issues. 

This time it began with a comment to our strategic communications manager regarding the paucity of female 'talent' for public lectures about international relations. Plenty of white, middle-aged males, but not many women who appear willing to write or talk about such issues in public fora. 

Here at the Lowy Institute, I think we do better than most. Want to know about China? Ask Linda Jakobsen. The South Pacific? Jenny Hayward-Jones. Nuclear issues? Martine Letts. Diplomatic under-representation? Alex Oliver. Foreign aid? Annmaree O'Keefe.

But other measures reinforce the perception of quiescence amongst the international relations sisterhood, even here at Bligh St. Want to come to a Wednesday Lowy Lunch? Chances are it will be a middle-aged bloke talking to you (I'm talking later this month, by the way). Visiting The Interpreter? Chances are you will be reading something written by a bloke. Op-ed, anyone? Probably submitted by a Lowy bloke.

My thanks to the eagle eye of colleague Anthony Bubalo who brought this interesting photo of Saif al-Islam Qhadhafi to my attention. Jubilant after his reappearance in front of the media in Tripoli after news of his arrest was apparently greatly exaggerated, he appears to be wearing Australian army camouflage pants!

_{Skip to 2:05 in to see.}

As it's unlikely he picked them up in his local army surplus store. My bet is that either he bought them himself when he came to Australia in 2006 or more likely he got them from his brother al-Saadi who was invited to Perth’s Swanbourne Barracks by then Defence Minister Hill the same year. 

Imagine two Arab cities of approximately 700,000 people, each surrounded by the military forces of autocratic regimes intent on crushing rebellions against its rule.

In one case, the West mounts an argument based on the concept of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and the UN authorises 'all necessary measures' to protect civilians in the city. The Arab League supports action and government forces are attacked by coalition warplanes, sparing the city and its inhabitants. In the other case, there are harsh words of condemnation from some Western countries and eventually from the Arab states and UN Security Council President, but only well after government forces enter the city and large numbers of people are killed.

The cities are of course Benghazi in Libya and Hama in Syria. And the different international reactions to events that exhibit tremendous similarities on the surface show why R2P is largely unworkable. The problem with Responsibility to Protect as a concept is that, while the lives of all human beings are worth saving, the willingness of states to intervene and the ability of military force to save them differs significantly depending on the circumstances. 

It appears my post about civilian strategists brought a couple of these elusive beasts out of the woodwork. And bravo to Crispin Rovere for having a crack at defining what he thought a civilian strategist was. Still, after reading his response and that of Closet Idealist, who didn't really seek to describe what a civilian strategist is, I am still none the wiser.

From Crispin's definition, a civilian strategist weighs up the costs and benefits of military action measured against political goals and decides whether it is worth pursuing. But this sounds suspiciously like what a policy adviser might do. I imagine that someone with aspirations to be a civilian strategist would look at the enunciation and achievement of long-term strategic goals, would examine the manner in which the government should harness the elements of national power and synchronise them to achieve these long-term objectives.

In the contemporary Australian context, and based on my imagining of what a strategist should do, I would argue that we have no such thing as strategists (civilian or otherwise), for a range of reasons that would be worthy of a separate blog post. What we have are plain old, garden variety defence policy wonks — some who have done strategic studies courses, some that haven't, some who are good, and some not so good, just like other areas of the public service. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being good at policy work — the wheels of government would quickly seize up if we didn't produce and employ good policy wonks. 

People often conflate long-term thinking with strategy, but strategists should be much more than simply long-term thinkers. 

The current round of deaths the Assad regime is inflicting upon the Syrian population should illustrate the hollowness of the concept of Responsibility to Protect (R2P).  While one could hardly disagree with the concept of R2P, the conditions necessary for its implementation exist so rarely as to make the concept practically unworkable. 

While polite company refers to the 'narrowness' of the applicability of R2P, less polite people may prefer to call it 'selectivity'. When Muammar Qadhafi threatened to move on Benghazi, Australia was at the head of the pack in calling for intervention based on the principle of R2P. 

With the recent offensive by the Syrian army into Hama (a city the same size as Benghazi) and other towns and cities, resulting in reportedly well over a hundred deaths, the Foreign Minister has rightly described the actions as abhorrent and totally unacceptable. He has called on the security forces to put aside their arms and for the Syrian Government to respect the rights of the Syrian people as well calling for UNSC condemnation and ICC action.

But nowhere has Australia mentioned R2P with regard to Syria, even though it was trotted out with monotonous regularity in the lead-up to the intervention in Libya. Yet if this address by the Foreign Minister is any guide, Syria meets the threshold for intervening on the basis of R2P. 

So why isn't Canberra (or anybody else) speaking about R2P intervention if civilians are getting killed on a regular basis by the Syrian military?

A friend of mine, still in uniform, was reading an Interpreter debate thread about the utility/futility of our presence in Afghanistan and asked me what I thought was meant when one contributor wrote about the '...lack of mutual understanding (that) has underwritten much of the tension between uniformed soldiers and civilian strategists' (my emphasis).

Because I have one foot in the think-tank world and had one foot in the uniformed soldier world, my friend thought I might be able to tell him what a 'civilian strategist' was. I couldn't exactly enlighten him, other than to tell him what I think people who call themselves civilian strategists think they are.

Some people have done courses, so consider themselves strategists as a result. Some have worked in the public service in intelligence or defence policy and consider themselves strategists, while others have written on strategic issues that have influenced government policy. But 'strategist' is not a qualification; it is an appellation one can give oneself.  

Which then got me thinking why the military seems to want to get its people to think strategically but why the strategic community never appear to think operationally or tactically.

The notion of the 'strategic corporal', a phrase coined by US Marine General Charles Krulack in 1999, is a good case in point. With the onset of the information age and the omnipresence of the media (both social and old), the decisions taken by tactical-level commanders can readily resonate at the strategic level. So the concept of tactical commanders needing to understand the strategic effects of their decisions has been taught as a fundamental part of professional military education.

Riyadh has an oil problem – it is consuming too much in order to power its electricity grid, reducing Saudi Arabia's capacity for export as worldwide demand for its product increases. 

Saudi Arabia's domestic oil consumption has increased from 3.4 million barrels per day (bpd) throughout most of the 2000s to 8.3 million bpd in 2009. If the trend continues, by 2028 Saudi Arabia will have 30% less oil available for export than it does today. 

Of course, massive population growth allied with chronically inefficient practices bred by decades of reliance on inexhaustible supplies of oil have played a part in this situation. And plans for increasing reliance on gas-powered plants and nuclear energy will forestall the power demand crunch. But Riyadh is acutely aware (even if the population isn't) that consumption practices will need to change.  

But Saudi Arabia's rulers have more to worry about than air conditioners siphoning off oil export income. The labour market in this overwhelmingly youthful country is nearly completely reliant on the government to sustain it. With its huge numbers of South Asian labourers willing to work long hours for low wages, there is little incentive for Saudis to compete. Of the 1.2 million new jobs created between 2004-09, only 280,000 were taken up by Saudis. Eighty percent of the Saudi workforce is in the public sector, whose wage bill accounts for 40% of the national budget. 

The US$130 billion assistance package announced by Riyadh earlier this year has certainly been welcomed by the loyal subjects (3.5 million people registered for the increased unemployment benefits rather than the 500,000 expected) but it is likely only a temporary salve. Without significant changes to labour market policy and consumption practices, the good citizens of Saudi Arabia may end up killing the golden goose well before time.

Photo by Flickr user Leo Reynolds.

As if they didn't have enough to argue about, Israel and Lebanon are squaring off over another border dispute. But this one may prove to be even more intractable than the arguments over the Shebaa Farms, because this time there are significant resources involved. The Levant Basin may well contain significant gas reserves and naturally there is a dispute over exactly where the maritime boundaries are and who has access to what fields.

Israel has been busily demarcating its maritime boundaries now that it has found significant gas reserves off the coast of Haifa, and signed an agreement with Cyprus over maritime borders in December last year. Lebanon and Cyprus had signed a similar agreement in 2007, although Lebanon now claims that an error on its part during negotiations resulted in the drawing of the incorrect boundaries, effectively shortchanging itself.

Beirut has submitted its version of its maritime boundary with Israel to the UN for consideration, with claims that it has been independently reviewed and agreed on by the US. On the weekend, Israel's cabinet ratified its maritime boundary with Lebanon for presentation to the UN. Not surprisingly, it is at odds with Lebanon's submission. No prizes for guessing that Israel thinks the boundary should be further north and Lebanon thinks it should be further south.

Hizbullah in many ways represents the ultimate challenge for Western intelligence agencies — a high payoff target with information of direct security interest to Washington and some of its closest allies, and the opportunity to shine a light on the links between the organisation and its Syrian and Iranian allies.

But Hizbullah has over the years built a reputation for strict security and iron discipline, and its counter-intelligence capability has proved a significant hurdle. That's why this week's admission by its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah that three of its members had been found to be working for Western intelligence agencies was so interesting. If true, it shows that Hizbullah is not impervious to the normal entreaties of Western intelligence agencies.

Things are not going to get any easier for Hizbullah if rumours that five of its members are going to be indicted for the 2005 murder of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri are also true. These rumours have been given added strength as a consequence of the announcement of the 'spy ring'.

For a country that believes in its own exceptionalism and its ability to export individualism and liberty, supporting popular revolts against autocratic rulers provides some distinct foreign policy challenges for the US. The growing assertiveness of Saudi Arabia is perhaps at the top of the list of challenges.

Saudi Arabia was, like pretty well everyone else, taken aback by the speed of events in north Africa that culminated in the departure of Hosni Mubarak, one of Riyadh's closest allies. If some in the West saw the Arab Spring as a chance to fundamentally reshape the Arab political landscape, Riyadh saw in it a threat to the status quo that had to be stopped.

Riyadh's increasing activism in the region shows it has recovered after the initial shock of the revolts.

The entry of 1000 Saudi troops into Bahrain illustrated how much the island state mattered to the Saudis both as a demonstration to regional political reformists and as a warning to the Iranians. Links across the causeway have been further strengthened by the marriage between the Saudi king's daughter and the son of the Bahraini king. Riyadh has also led efforts to expand the GCC to include two more Sunni monarchies, with its invitations to Morocco and Jordan.

To its south, Riyadh has, through luck or good management, engineered the departure of President Saleh into Saudi territory, while the future of Yemen is being decided in a manner that will favour Saudi interests. Saudi Arabia has also forestalled the growth of its own minuscule protest movement (and that of less affluent neighbours, Oman and Bahrain) by spending over $130 billion this year on expanding the government workforce and providing housing for its nationals.