The Hugh White Thesis: Five Years On
In 2010 Professor Hugh White challenged Australians when he wrote ‘Power Shift: Australia’s future between Washington and Beijing’, published in the academic journal Quarterly Essay.
White argued that in order to meet its interests in Asia Australia should persuade the US to relinquish primacy in the region. He asserted that the best outcome for stability in the Asia-Pacific would be a power-sharing agreement between these two great nations. He posited a ‘Concert of Asia’ to balance state interests and achieve shared leadership between major powers in the region.
White’s thesis prompted a vociferous response from many political commentators and Quarterly Essay in the subsequent issue published replies from Gareth Evans, Bruce Grant, Michael Wesley, Lyric Hughes Hale, Robert Kaplan, Harry Gelber and David Uren.
Five years on has the White analysis been confirmed? Is Australia’s foreign policy challenge more acute? What propelled this debate? And where does it stand?
Professor White discussed these questions on a panel with James Brown, Director of the Alliance 21 Project at the United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney. The discussion was moderated by Bob Carr, former Foreign Minister and Director of ACRI, on August 11 2015.
View the full event photo gallery here.
Gallery
Speakers
Professor Hugh White, Professor of Strategic Studies, School of International, Political & Strategic Studies, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific
Hugh White is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University. His work focuses primarily on Australian strategic and defence policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, and global strategic affairs especially as they influence Australia and the Asia-Pacific. He has served as an intelligence analyst with the Office of National Assessments, as a journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald, as a senior adviser on the staffs of Defence Minister Kim Beazley and Prime Minister Bob Hawke, and as a senior official in the Department of Defence, where from 1995 to 2000 he was Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence, and as the first Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). In the 1970s he studied philosophy at Melbourne and Oxford Universities.
James Brown, Director, Alliance 21 Project, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney
Captain James Brown is the director of the US Studies Centre's Alliance 21 Project at the University of Sydney. The Alliance 21 Project is dedicated to examining the Australia–US relationship in the 21st century. Previously he served as an Australian Army officer with experience including command of a cavalry troop in southern Iraq, service on the Australian task force headquarters in Baghdad, and a tour attached to coalition Special Forces in Afghanistan. He was awarded a commendation for work in the Solomon Islands and as an operational planner at the Australian Defence Force Headquarters Joint Operations Command, and also instructed at the Army’s Combat Arms Training Centre. Between 2010 and 2014 Captain Brown was the Military Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. He writes a regular column for The Saturday Paper on Australian foreign policy and is the author of the critically acclaimed book Anzac's Long Shadow: The Cost of Our National Obsession (Black Inc, 2014).
