A war by any other name would still be the cause of as much misery, to reapply the Shakespearean quote.

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The two so-similar autocrats, Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump, do not like the word "war". (And there is a lesson in this for Australia.)

For them, the invasion and killing of combatants and civilians and destroying buildings is not "war". Putin pretends his "special military operation" is to protect Russians in what he sees as Russian territory. The Trump regime has called its war "a pre-emptive strike" and a "proactive defensive action".

This is because the US Constitution provides "Congress shall have power ... to declare war".

An autocrat who does not want any fetter on his power just takes the Orwellian route of language abuse and concludes that an attack in a "proactive defensive action" without declaring war does not breach the Constitution.

The first draft of the Constitution gave Congress the power to "make war", as distinct from just declaring it, but it was changed by the framers to permit the President to take emergency action to defend the US against a sudden invasion.

Trump and his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, have characterised the air attack on Iran to eradicate its nuclear-weapons program (that they had said eight months earlier had been obliterated) as an emergency defensive action.

Three years ago, a joint standing committee of the Australian Parliament delivered a report on its Inquiry into International Armed Conflict Decision Making.

It recommended greater reporting to Parliament on the deployment of Australian troops overseas, but nothing much has changed.

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If the Coalition was in power, it is a fair bet that the Navy and Air Force personnel would have been sent to Trump's war and that the decision would have been made in secret - just........

© Canberra Times