Why Great Powers Sleepwalk to War — A Masterclass with Prof. Hugh White
2,500 years of strategic history, 11 books, one afternoon. Hugh White is Australia's foremost strategic thinker: former senior adviser to Defence Minister Kim Beazley and Prime Minister Bob Hawke, Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence in Defence, inaugural Director of ASPI, and principal author of the 2000 Defence White Paper. He is now Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University. Before this conversation, I asked Hugh for the eleven books that most shaped his thinking on strategy, international relations and defence policy. We work through them one by one — what each book argues, what it gets right and wrong, how it shaped his worldview — and use them to tackle the big questions: why great powers start disastrous wars, how international orders collapse, and how Australia and America should respond to the rise of China. EPISODE RESOURCES Hugh's strategy reading list: https://josephnoelwalker.com/hugh-whi... Hugh's 1993 Tathra note: https://josephnoelwalker.com/hugh-whi... SPONSORS Eucalyptus: the Aussie startup providing digital healthcare clinics to help patients around the world take control of their quality of life. Euc is looking to hire ambitious young Aussies and Brits. You can check out their open roles at https://www.eucalyptus.health/careers. Vanta: helps businesses automate security and compliance needs. For a limited time, get one thousand dollars off Vanta at http://vanta.com/joe. Use the discount code "JOE". To sponsor a future episode, go to https://josephnoelwalker.com/sponsor/ EPISODE LINKS Transcript: https://josephnoelwalker.com/hughwhite/ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5DOS... TIMESTAMPS 00:00:00 - Introduction. 00:03:44 - Donald Kagan: The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War 00:29:03 - Garrett Mattingly: The Defeat of the Spanish Armada 00:47:08 - A. J. P. Taylor: The Struggle for Mastery in Europe: 1848–1918 01:25:07 - Barbara Tuchman: The Guns of August 01:44:49 - A. J. P. Taylor: The Origins of the Second World War 02:21:13 - E. H. Carr: The Twenty Years' Crisis 02:49:03 - Michael Howard: The Continental Commitment 03:07:50 - George F. Kennan: American Diplomacy 03:25:19 - Neville Meaney: The Search for Security in the Pacific, 1901–1914 03:33:39 - Henry Kissinger: Diplomacy 03:48:59 - Paul Kennedy: The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers 04:00:14 - General questions.
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