1 - Introducing the insurgent intellectual

Summary

Denis Healey, the former British Labour MP and one of the founding fathers of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), observed in his memoirs that “from the middle fifties Australia has contributed far more to international understanding of defence problems than any country of similar size”.Healey was almost certainly referring here to the likes of Coral Bell, Hedley Bull, Paul Dibb and Robert O'Neill — all of whom Professor Desmond Ball has worked closely with at various times during the course of his illustrious career. Yet it would be difficult to contest the proposition that Des was actually foremost in Healey's mind as he made this observation, writing as he was in the late 1980s. As the Cold War began its unexpected retreat into the shadows of history, Des Ball stood as the leading Australian Strategic Studies scholar of his generation. Or as Brad Glosserman and Ralph Cossa more eloquently put it in their contribution to this volume, Des had by this time earned the respect of “every high church in the nuclear priesthood”.

Those who know Des most intimately will readily anticipate how he would respond to such acclaim. On the one hand, he is a scholar who is quietly proud of his momentous achievements, and justifiably so. At the same time, one can imagine the manner in which the man who colleagues affectionately refer to as a “gentle giant” would bashfully wince at such flattery. This is just one of the many contradictions to Des Ball, more of which are drawn out in this volume. Some of the contributors write, for example, of a scholar possessing a remarkable grasp of the ‘big picture’ who at the same time is almost obsessively preoccupied with the devil in the detail. Others characterise him as a realist and slightly hawkish scholar with strong idealistic, dovish proclivities. Some policy elites have routinely detested his work, while others describe him as an “academic gem” and have forged longstanding friendships with this “insurgent intellectual”. Amidst these apparent contradictions, one constant in Des’ career has been his longstanding association with the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre (SDSC) at the Australian National University. As O'Neill details in the next chapter of this volume, Des was appointed at the SDSC in the early 1970s and became its first tenured academic in 1980.