Hugh White AO is Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre of the Australian National University. He has worked on Australian and regional strategic, defence and foreign policy issues since 1980.

He has been an intelligence analyst, journalist, ministerial adviser, departmental official, think tanker and academic. In the 1990s he served as International Relations Adviser to Prime Minister Bob Hawke and as Deputy Secretary of Defence for Strategy and Intelligence. He was the principal author of Australia’s 2000 Defence White Paper.

His recent publications include How to Defend Australia, published by Black Inc. in 2019, Power Shift: Australia’s Future between Washington and Beijing published by Black Inc. in September 2010, and The China Choice: Why America should share power, published in Australia by Black Inc. in 2012, and by OUP in 2013. The China Choice has also been published in Chinese and Japanese.

In the 1970s Hugh White studied philosophy at Melbourne and Oxford Universities. He was awarded an Officer of the Order of Australia(AO) in the Queen’s Birthday honours in 2014 for distinguished service to international affairs, through strategic defence studies as an analyst, academic and adviser to government, and to public administration. In 2018, Hugh was granted the title of Emeritus Professor.