- Adam Elkus and Nick Prime contend that US strategy towards the Islamic State should be understood not in terms of florid rhetorical commitments to its destruction but rather in terms of the pragmatic search for control.
- The Center for the National Interest has published a collection of essays on the costs and risks to all parties of renewed US-Russia confrontation.
- Jay Ulfelder argues in defence of the Obama Administration's use of sanctions to handle the Ukrainian crisis.
- The saga of the Mistral class continues: there are signs that Poland is attempting to use its own arms imports from France as leverage to pressure Paris over any attempt to go through with exports of amphibious warfare ships to Russia.
- Cicero Magazine has a stimulating interview with Paul Staniland regarding his book, Networks of Rebellion, and the prospects for a more rigorous understanding of the weaknesses of recent attempts to conduct counterinsurgency.
- How should NATO go about strengthening its crisis rapid-response forces? Perhaps by modeling them on US Marine Corps' Marine Expeditionary Brigades.
- Ahead of the new defence white paper, Hugh White offers a diagnosis and treatment for Australia’s defence policy.
- Defence One explores a fascinating US Navy experiment with autonomous naval robot swarms, offering a glimpse into the future of maritime operations.
- There are unconfirmed reports that Syrian rebels have captured a joint Syrian-Russian signals intelligence station, along with documents suggesting Moscow's involvement in the crisis goes far deeper than is commonly appreciated.
- Finally, as part of series on forgotten leaders, CIMSEC profiles the naval thought of Soviet Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, father of the USSR's startling effort to transform itself into a global maritime power — and, indirectly, a contributor to the defence burden that brought down an empire.
Military & strategy links: Controlling IS, re-examining COIN, Mistral and more
Published 7 Oct 2014
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