Conflict & Consequence, Compromise & Sacrifice - Hugh White Has a Clear Picture of The Hard New World

Today’s show is with Hugh White, one of Australia’s most prominent figures on strategic and defence policy, whose career has spanned government and academia. Hugh was a senior advisor to Kim Beazley and Bob Hawke through the 80s and 90s in what was a period of substantial changes for this nation and the way we saw ourselves in the world, before becoming Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence in the Department of Defence. Hugh has now also spent the best part of two decades in academia, where he is an Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at The Australian National University. In that time he’s authored 12 books and four quarterly essays, and has written in The Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Saturday Paper. Few in this country hold such a breadth and depth of experience and expertise in how the world operates and Australia’s place in it.

Hugh’s the author of the latest Quarterly Essay titled Hard New World; Our Post-American Future. It’s one of the most valuable pieces of writing I’ve read for a long time on how geopolitics, foreign affairs, defence policy and diplomacy are shaping the world today and finding a way to understand the shifts in behaviour from the US, China, Russia, India and Europe. Hugh’s depth of knowledge on history and the clues the past hold to make sense of today was illuminating, and with the seemingly daily chaos and instability of rising conflict right around the world, Hugh’s work cuts through to offer a grander story of deeper forces at play.

We cover tonnes of territory in this chat. The ongoing conflict in the Middle East, the return of nuclear war as a here and now threat to civilisation, US isolationism, the shifting plates of power in East Asia and Europe, a unipolar world dominated by America’s dominance being replaced by a historically normal multipolar world order, Aukus, Australia’s denial of reality, climate change and what a new era of strategic policy means and needs in an age of climate breakdown. This was mind expanding for me to be able to put the daily goings on be they wars or climate events or political decisions into a larger frame of context and history.

This episode was a remarkable experience for me, I was honoured to spend some time with Hugh and looking forward to more conversations in the future.

This quote from former German chancellor in the post World War Two period rings true today - “A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes they have the biggest piece.”

Til next time, thanks for listening.

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