Hugh White (strategist)

thumb|Professor Hugh White Hugh White AO FASSA (born 1953) is an emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre of the Australian National University in Canberra, a longtime defence and intelligence analyst, and author who has published works on military strategy and international relations. He was the international relations advisor to Australian Defence Minister Kim Beazley and PM Bob Hawke between 1985 and 1991, Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence in the Australian Department of Defence from 1995 to 2000, and the first director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute with tenure from 2001 to 2004. He also been head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre from 2004–2011. Quotes "Powerless to stop him: The peculiar paradox of Trump’s grip on America" (2026) "Powerless to stop him: The peculiar paradox of Trump’s grip on America", Alternet (24 August 2026) Ever since that day in 2015 when Donald Trump announced his intention to run for president, he has been by far the most important figure in American politics. It is a remarkable record. Since George Washington, no figure in American history has dominated US politics so completely for so long except Franklin D. Roosevelt. But FDR worked his political magic through artful manipulation of Washington’s constitutional machinery and norms. Trump has dominated American politics by flagrantly and gleefully challenging and violating them.That is what gives his ascendancy the feeling of a second American Revolution.This revolution is also the product of discontent in the US electorate, fragility in key political institutions and turmoil in American conservative ideology.But Trump is at the heart of it. His remarkable character is the catalyst that gives those other factors their power and effect. And character is what the Trump phenomenon is all about. Over time, with endless repetition, Trump’s transgressions become familiar and cease to shock. But if we are to understand the world we live in, it is important not to lose our sense of bewilderment and dismay that this person leads, inspires and controls – indeed constitutes – a political movement which has seized control of the key instruments of national power in America and to which the US political system has, it seems, no effective antidote or response. He defies all we thought we knew about that system, and indeed about the whole way electoral democracies work around the world. Where does it all go from here? We do not know how resilient and robust the institutions of American government will prove to be in resisting and containing Trump’s revolution. It is still possible they will deliver him a decisive check. But the odds are against it. Ever since Trump’s era began in 2015, most of us have overestimated the capacity of those institutions to contain him.The Congress, the courts, the bureaucracy, the states and the media have at times been able to slow or deflect him, but they have been unable to stop his assault on the American state and its constitution and restore some semblance of normality to the conduct of American government.It therefore seems prudent to expect that in some form or other Trump’s revolution will continue. By keeping alive the myth that the 2020 election was stolen from him, Trump is preparing the ground to resist any future loss. We saw how far he and his supporters were willing to go in 2020 and 2021, and it is clear he was much better prepared to go even further had he lost in 2024. How much more prepared and more determined will he be in 2028? The stakes then will be much higher. Republicans will be even more driven to prevent or overturn a loss for fear that a Democratic president will attack them just as Trump has attacked his adversaries. Trump’s “revenge presidency” has set an example they fear victorious Democrats would follow, so they are even more motivated to do whatever it takes to keep them out of office. What are the chances, then, that Trump’s mysterious and momentous conquest of the American political system will be defeated at the ballot box? It is an extraordinary fate to befall what was one of the most robust and successful political systems the world has ever seen. Meanwhile, Americans suffer from a national government that is both cruel and incompetent. For the rest of the world, all this implies that we cannot expect America to return to anything like normal – to the America we have known – for a long time, if ever. External links Category:Academics from Australia Category:Government officials Category:University of Oxford alumni Category:1953 births Category:Living people Category:Non-fiction authors from Australia Category:Essayists from Australia