Since the mid-1970s, Australia’s defence strategy has revolved around two key principles. But as our strategic environment changes, those two guiding lights are becoming increasingly incompatible. We can decide to keep one or the other, …
The Strategist on: "Defending Australia"
Many people believe that Australia would never need to defend itself unaided. Even if US support cannot be taken for granted in the future, they think that we needn’t ever stand alone, because we have …
In How to defend Australia, I argued that if we are to take our defence seriously, we need to prepare to defend Australia from a major Asian power independently. That is necessary, I said, because …
Could Australia defend itself independently from direct military attack by a major Asian power like China? That’s the key question I set out to answer in How to defend Australia. My answer was a cautious …
Australian citizens are frontline actors in today’s national security challenges: as targets of malign interference and coercion, victims of collateral damage, and agents of national resilience. The establishment of a parliamentary inquiry into social media …
Australia’s national security community is once again in the midst of a debate on whether or not Australia should acquire nuclear weapons. This latest round was initiated by the publication of Hugh White’s new book, …
In How to defend Australia, Hugh White refers to the ‘deepest national objectives: security, prosperity and identity’, observing that states seem ‘willing to risk war to pursue these objectives, even at potentially appalling cost’. Security, …
‘Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.’ — Saint Augustine of Hippo Pondering nuclear weapons, Hugh White offers Australia a reverse Augustine: Give me nuclear chastity, until there’s no alternative. The White version of …
Sink the navy and start again. Shrink the army. Double the air force. That’s the military revolution of Hugh White’s How to defend Australia, based on his claim that Australia has spent two decades building …
As a historian, I hold the now rather quaint view that the classics can help us make sense of the world. So to understand the recent efflorescence of debate in Australian strategic policy circles prompted …
Hugh White’s latest book has stimulated a debate about the defence of Australia and the capabilities and shape of the Australian Defence Force. This is an important discussion to have, not only because it will …
Australia’s traditional way of war is to send expeditionary forces abroad to fight in a coalition—to secure the continent by fighting far from it. For more than a century, a central tension of Oz strategic …