Insider REVEALS: Australia Prepares War With China To Rescue US Hegemony | Prof. Hugh White

## Australia’s strategic anxiety: a fragile confidence in a changing order The conversation with Professor Hugh White crystallizes a stark truth: Australia's long-standing sense of security rests on an international order that is fraying. For more than two centuries Australians have assumed that strategic safety in the Western Pacific derived from domination by an English-speaking, Western power—first Britain, then the United States. That assumption is now under unprecedented stress. Australia's strategic class, White explains, is waking up to a future in which the distribution of power in East Asia no longer guarantees the comfortable margin of safety enjoyed in the post‑war era. The immediate consequence is not mass panic about invasion; it is a deep, existential unease about what a different regional order will mean for Canberra's capacity to secure itself without large-power patronage. This unease is not merely sentimental attachment to tradition. It is grounded in a sober assessment of capabilities: China has remade the balance of economic and military power in Asia in ways not seen since the nineteenth century. For Australian strategists, that shift is less about imminent boots-on-the-ground scenarios and more about the erosion of the political and military architecture—treaties, alliances, forward-deployed forces—that has underwritten Canberra’s safety for generations. ## China’s rise: direct danger or systemic transformation? A central analytical pivot in the dialogue is the distinction between a direct threat to Australian territory and a broader systemic threat to the security architecture Australia relies upon. Professor White insists that imagining a Chinese invasion of Australia strains credibility; Beijing lacks both the motive and the practicable means to mount a conventional invasion comparable to Russia’s assault on Ukraine or conceivable threats to the Baltics. The real worry, he argues, is the second‑order effect: China’s challenge to U.S. primacy in East Asia would transform the very context in which Australian security policy has been made. If Beijing displaces Washington as the dominant power in the Western Pacific, Australia would no longer be a comfortably distant, secure outpost supported by an external global policeman. Instead, Canberra would face a region shaped by Asian great powers, each pursuing influence in ways that might not preserve the latitude Australia has enjoyed. The risk, then, is strategic marginalization and the need to revisit defence, diplomacy, and foreign economic policy in an environment where alliances are less assured. ## Varieties of hegemony: Monroe Doctrine or Stalinist control? White’s subtlety about hegemonic behavior is instructive. Great‑power dominance is not monolithic. A hegemon can be relatively benign—think of aspects of U.S. behavior in the Western Hemisphere, where influence has often been exercised without systematic direct governance of neighbors—or it can be coercive and intrusive. The danger for Australia is not simply whether China becomes more powerful than the United States; it is what kind of hegemon China would be if it secures predominant influence in East Asia. If Beijing adopts a Monroe‑style model—protecting a sphere of influence while allowing neighbors considerable autonomy—Australia might adapt without existential harm. If, on the other hand, China embraces a more coercive posture, demanding conformity from nearby states or projecting force to remake regional arrangements, the strategic calculus for Canberra alters dramatically. Even benign hegemons sometimes use force to advance strategic objectives, and that alone elevates the long‑term risk profile for Australia compared to the Cold War and the age of British and American dominance. ## Neighbors, not nachbarn: the paradox of proximity A recurring theme is the misalignment between Australia’s political rhetoric about regional engagement and its actual strategic choices. While Australian ministers emphasize ties with Southeast Asia, White points out that Canberra’s policy has, in practice, diverged from the posture of its immediate neighbors. Southeast Asian governments—Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and others—share Canberra’s interest in a stable regional order and generally prefer continued American engagement to balance China. Yet they also behave pragmatically: they avoid binding themselves to a strategy of containment and are reluctant to commit to backing U.S. efforts that could provoke escalation. This pragmatic hedging contrasts with Australia’s more unequivocal alignment with Washington. The implication is that Australia is politically and psychologically closer to the Anglo‑American tradition than to its geographic neighborhood. That gap matters because security in Asia will increasingly be negotiated by proximate powers; distant reassurance matters less when spheres of influence crystallize around regional giants. Canberra’s challenge is to reconcile its cultural and historical affinities with the practical need to construct deeper, reciprocal ties within the region. ## AUKUS and the choice to back America AUKUS—the trilateral arrangement that commits Australia to acquiring nuclear‑powered submarines and deeper defense cooperation with the United States and the United Kingdom—emerges in the discussion as the clearest symbol of Canberra’s strategic choice. White suggests AUKUS is both an expression and a cementing of Australia’s decision to place its bets on U.S. leadership and to help preserve the American role in East Asia. For Washington, AUKUS signals a dependable ally willing to share burdens. For Canberra, it promises enhanced capabilities and political assurance. But White also warns that this choice may be self‑defeating. If the premise underlying the strategy—that the United States can and will maintain primacy against an ascendant China—proves false, then Australia has not only failed to hedge but has actively aligned with a policy likely to fail. In that case, AUKUS could deepen Australia’s estrangement from its neighbors and tie Canberra’s fate to a contest whose costs and risks may outweigh the prospective benefits. The central critique is strategic mismatch: Canberra has committed to supporting an approach that may be unsustainable, generating risk without clear reward. ## The emerging multipolarity: India, Indonesia, and new strategic edges Complicating the China–U.S. binary is the rise of other major regional actors. White underscores that India and Indonesia are not passive variables in Australia’s future security equation. India, often framed in Canberra as an automatic counterweight to China, is a great power with its own ambitions and interests in South Asia and the Indian Ocean. If India asserts a sphere of influence of its own, Australia could find itself at the boundary between competing regional orders, with pressure from multiple directions. Indonesia’s potential transformation is equally consequential. Geographically proximate and likely to be among the world’s leading economies by mid‑century, Indonesia might choose a more assertive posture as it attains the material attributes of great powerhood. That would create a strategic challenge much closer to home than any remote Beijing policy. Canberra’s long‑term prudence requires nuanced, high‑quality engagement with both India and Indonesia; these relationships may determine whether Australia can avoid being trapped between larger regional ambitions. ## The gravest risk: war, escalation, and the specter of nuclear use Perhaps the most sobering strand of the interview is the warning about the potential for major‑power war and the risk of nuclear escalation. White argues bluntly that if policymakers in Canberra and Washington commit to preventing China’s rise by force, they are contemplating a conflict the West may not be able to win. Attempting to fight such a war could, paradoxically, destroy the global order the e

Australia Prepares War With China To Rescue US Hegemony | Hugh White What’s Down-Under up to in Geopolitics? Will you be safe there from the looming Third World War there? Well, not exactly. Turns out, Canberra has no better idea than to offer itself on a silver platter as a loyal servant to US military ambitions. Is Australia risking everything for the sake of US empire? Today I'm talking to Dr. Hugh White, an emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at Australian National University. Professor White has researched and published for decades on Australia’s strategic and defence policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, and global strategic affairs. Among other positions, he has served as an intelligence analyst with the Office of National Assessments, and as a senior official in the Department of Defence. Read more of Professor White's analysis at the Quarterly Essays : https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2025/06/on-war-and-peace-and-the- new-global-order #M3 And I guess, going back to the thing we were discussing before, the essence of the Australian government's position at the moment, although the Australian government wouldn't exactly put it this way, is that we do think that China's challenge to America's leadership is so important that that challenge must be defeated, and if necessary, we should be willing to go to war with China in order to prevent it. Now, that is, I think, fantastically dangerous. There are several reasons. One is I don't think that's a war that the West can win. I don't think it's a war that America can win. And attempting to fight it would actually destroy the very thing that it was trying to preserve. I also think it's very likely that that war would become a nuclear war. #M2 Hello everybody, this is Pascal from Neutrality Studies, and today I'm talking to Professor Hugh White, an Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University. Professor White has researched and published for decades on Australia's strategic and defense policy, Asia- Pacific security issues, and global strategic affairs. Among other positions, he has served as an intelligence analyst with the Office of National Assessments and as a senior official in the Department of Defence. Today, we want to discuss Australia's strategic situation and the hard choices ahead. Professor White, welcome. #M3 Very nice to be with you. Thank you for the invitation. -- 1 of 16 -- #M2 Very glad to have you because you're one of the people who have been working on Australian strategy, grand strategy for many years. And maybe my first question is, what keeps the Australian security community currently awake at night? What are the country's greatest geopolitical worries? #M3 Oh, I think that's an easy question to answer now, easier now than it's been for many decades. We in Australia do see that China's growing power and ambition threaten the US leadership in strategic affairs in Asia, which we have seen as the necessary and sufficient condition for our security. Ever since the Second World War, and indeed, you could say more profoundly than that, ever since European settlement of the Australian continent in 1788, Australians have always regarded the domination of the Western Pacific by either Britain first, and then America after Britain's decline, as the necessary and sufficient condition for our security. As long as this region was dominated by an Anglo-Saxon power, an English-speaking power with whom we felt very strong affinities of language, culture, values, and so on, then we always felt that, in the end, we'd be pretty secure. And, you know, the fact is that China poses the greatest challenge to that since European settlement, because China has become by far and away, relatively speaking in global terms, the most powerful Asian power since the beginning of the 19th century, really. In fact, since China lost its place as the world's biggest economy to Britain, as Britain powered ahead with the Industrial Revolution. And, of course, the only other challenge in all of those centuries has been the challenge from Imperial Japan. That was, of course, very serious while it lasted, but Imperial Japan was, relatively speaking, a much less formidable challenger than China has proved to be. At its strongest, Imperial Japan never had an economy that was probably bigger than about a fifth the size of America's in PPP terms. And now, of course, in China, we have a challenger whose economy is as big as America's in PPP terms, maybe bigger. And so that makes China the most formidable challenger that the Anglo-Saxon powers have ever faced in Asia. And that brings us to a position where we, in Australia, see the fundamentals of our security as facing perhaps the most serious challenge they've ever faced. And I think, to be honest, we don't know what to do about it. And so, you know, the short answer to your question of what keeps Australian strategic thinkers awake at night? China. #M2 But is China a real threat in the sense that Australians feel, "Oh, my God, we are going to be attacked?" Or is it a kind of, "Oh, we've never had this situation," a challenge of just getting used to the U.S. not being the top dog anymore? Are Australians really worried about a Chinese invasion? #M3 -- 2 of 16 -- Really, really good question. Look, let me separate my answer into two parts. I think in Australia, many Australians, including many people who are, so to speak, professionally engaged in the debate rather than just sort of the person in the street, do in a fuzzy kind of way fear direct Chinese aggression. I think that's wrong. I don't think China threatens Australia in the sense that Russia threatened Ukraine before February of 2022, or for that matter, the way Russia, I think, clearly threatens the Baltic states today. You know, it requires no feat of the imagination to imagine Russia attacking the Baltic states today, whereas it requires a real feat of the imagination to imagine China attacking Australia directly. And so my argument is that China's growing power and ambition do not threaten Australia directly. What it does do is threaten its challenge to the US-led order in Asia, threatening the structures, the national structures, the national order upon which we have relied for our security. And so if China's challenge succeeds, if China takes America's place as the leading power in East Asia and the Western Pacific, then in the longer term, Australia will be more vulnerable to aggression from China, or for that matter, from other countries, than we have been over the long decades, indeed centuries, of Anglo-Saxon domination. So it's what you might call a second-order effect, but quite a significant second-order effect. Australia has always believed that we could not defend ourselves independently, that we had to rely on what one of our former prime ministers called a great and powerful friend to keep us safe in our strange, anomalous position on the margins of Asia. And so even Australians who don't believe that China threatens Australia directly still understand that China's rise and its challenge to the United States, if it succeeds, will constitute a fundamental change in our strategic environment and require us to think about our security in very different ways. #M2 So, in a sense, it's less a perception of a direct threat and more a deep-seated insecurity about what's going to come that emanates. #M3 Yes, that's exactly right. Now, whether that insecurity is rationally based or not, of course, only history will judge. And much depends on what kind of hegemonic power China turns out to be if it does indeed succeed in achieving a degree of hegemony in East Asia and the Western Pacific. I think it will, as a matter of fact. So I think we have to take these challenges very seriously. But whether that will materialize as a direct threat to Australia in the more distant future depends on, well, two things. First of all, on what kind of hegemonic power China turns out to be. Now, hegemonic powers come in lots of different varieties. You know, one variety, one might say, at the more congenial, less alarming end of the scale, is the way the United States exercises hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, which has been generally -- 3 of 16 -- fairly benign. Obviously, there have been episodes in which America's Western Hemispheric neighbors haven't felt it to be all that benign. I imagine the people in Cuba wouldn't regard U.S. hegemony as very benign, but generally, U.S. hegemony has been pretty benign. Countries in the Western Hemisphere have gone about their business in their own way, often rather erratically, and America has let them get on with it. And if China chooses to take what one might call the sort of Monroe Doctrine model of the kind of hegemon it chooses to be if it achieves hegemony in East Asia and the Western Pacific, then Australia, particularly because we're quite a long way from China, you know, we could live with that. But if China, the further China moves along the spectrum away from the Monroe Doctrine towards Joseph Stalin and the kind of very radically intrusive hegemony that Stalin imposed on Eastern Europe in the years after 1945, well, that would be a very different proposition. It's also worth bearing in mind that even the most benign hegemons, and again, I'd take America as an example, do use armed force occasionally against countries that don't do what they want. And so I think we'd have to say even the least alarmist of assessments of the kind of Asia that we'll find ourselves living in if China's challenge to U.S. primacy succeeds, even the least alarmist assessment would have to acknowledge, I think, that the risk of Australia facing a direct threat from a major power is not this year or next year, maybe not even this decade or next decade, but the decades pass pretty fast. You've got to think a fair way ahead in this business. That would be higher than we have known it since the rise of Japan. And that's something that Australian policymakers have to take pretty seriously. The other point I'd make is that in the Asia that we're envisaging, an Asia in which China's challenge succeeded, the United States no longer plays a role in Asia that has played for so long and so much to Australia's benefit. The potential for challenges to offer threats to Australia arises not just from China itself, but from other Asian powers in an Asian order which is no longer possible, framed and made safe for us by American power. And there are two other powers I'd mention in particular. One is India. It's very common, including in Australia, to see India's rise to great power status purely as part of the business of balancing China. I think that's a big mistake. I think India is a great power in its own right. It has the ambitions of a great power in its own right. It seeks its own sphere of influence in its own near abroad, in South Asia and the Indian Ocean. Australia, of course, is an Indian Ocean country as well as a Western Pacific country. And I think the most likely trajectory for Australia is for us to find ourselves sitting on the boundary between a Chinese sphere of influence and an Indian sphere of influence. And we should be worried, I think, not because India threatens Australia right now, not at all, but that in a future age in which India is as much a great power as China and conducts itself with all of the assertiveness that great powers traditionally do, we'll end up having to focus on the kind of pressure India wants to impose upon us as well as China. -- 4 of 16 -- And the third country is Indonesia. People find it very hard to keep a focus on Indonesia, and there are good reasons for that. But the fact is that, in all probability, Indonesia will, well before the middle of the century, be the fourth biggest economy in the world. It will be a great power in its own right, or at least it will have the material attributes of a great power. Whether it will b