How to Defend Australia
Hugh White
La Trobe University Press

I have always admired Hugh White for his clarity of thought, his pellucid prose and the way he “shows his work”, explaining the assumptions that shape his conclusions. His latest book, How to Defend Australia, is true to form – seeking, as he puts it, to lay out “what risks we are trying to manage, then what role we expect armed force to play in managing them, then what kinds of operations our forces would need to undertake to perform those roles, then what capabilities can best conduct those operations, and, finally, how they could be built and maintained, and how much they would cost”.