Hugh White, BA(Hons) (Melbourne), BPhil(Oxon)

Professor of Strategic Studies and Head of the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre, School of International, Political & Strategic Studies; Visiting Fellow, Lowy Institute for International Policy

Email: hugh.white@anu.edu.au

Biographical Statement

Hugh White is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University and a Visiting Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. He studies and writes about Australian strategic and defence policy, and the regional and global security issues that most directly affect Australia. He has worked on these issues for 30 years as an intelligence analyst, journalist, ministerial adviser, senior official, think tank analyst and academic. He has been an adviser to Kim Beazley as Defence Minister and Bob Hawke as Prime Minister, a Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence in the Department of Defence, and the first Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. He was the principal author of Australia's 2000 Defence White Paper. His recent publications include Power Shift: Australia's Future between Washington and Beijing published as Quarterly Essay 39 in September 2010. In the 1970s he studied philosophy at Melbourne and Oxford Universities.

Research interests

Australian strategic and defence policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, global strategic affairs.

Key publications

• (forthcoming), 'Four Decades of the Defence of Australia: Reflections on Australian Defence Policy over the past 40 years', in (eds) Huisken and Thatcher, History as Policy: Framing the debate on the future of Australia's defence policy, ANU E Press and the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, 2007.
• Beyond the Defence of Australia: finding a new balance in Australia's defence policy, Lowy Institute for International Policy, Sydney, 2006.
• 'The New Australia-Indonesia Strategic Relationship - A Note of Caution', in (ed.) John Monfries, Different Societies, Shared Futures: Australia, Indonesia and the Region, Institute of South East Asian Studies, Singapore, 2006, pp. 41-53.
• 'Old, New or Both? Australia's Security at the Start of the New Century', in (eds) McDougall and Shearman, Australian Security After 9/11, Ashgate, London, 2006 pp. 13-28.
• 'Studying Strategy Today', in (eds) Ayson and Ball, Strategy and Security in the Asia-Pacific, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2006, pp. 3-10.
• Defence Chapter, in (eds) Cotton and Ravenhill, Trading on Alliances: Australia in World Affairs 2001-2005, OUP, Melbourne, 2006.
• 'The Ethics of Invasion: Jus ad Bellum and Iraq', in (eds) Coady and O'Keefe, Righteous Violence: The Ethics and Politics of Military Intervention, MUP, Melbourne, 2005, pp. 32-50.
• 'Australian Strategic Policy', in (eds), Tellis and Wills, Strategic Asia 2005-06: Military Modernisation in an Era of Uncertainty, NBR, Seattle, 2005 pp. 305-331.
• (as co-author) Strengthening Our Neighbour: Australia and the Future of Papua New Guinea, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2004.

Career highlights

1985-1991 Senior Adviser to Defence Minister and Prime Minister; 1995-2000 Deputy Secretary for Strategy, Department of Defence; 2001-2004 Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.