9 - Rumblings in regional security architecture

Summary

One of the many reasons why Des loved his mother Dot was that she had a knack for capturing complexity in a few sharp words and, even when it was unpopular or controversial, speaking her mind. Certainly the local lads in the dressing room of the Timboon football club could verify the latter, especially if they were losing the game to another country town. Des either inherited or learnt Dot's knack because he applies it to his academic world of strategic studies. The title of his famous Adelphi Paper, Can Nuclear War Be Controlled?, captured a complicated and controversial question of the nuclear age. Likewise the title for his book A Suitable Piece of Real Estate made ordinary Australians aware that they had a dilemma in their security relationship with the United States: to support the joint United States-Australian intelligence and communications facilities in their country and risk being a target in a nuclear exchange; or play a potentially important role in deterring nuclear war by communicating early-warning information to the guardians of the United States arsenal. Getting to the essence of an issue and embracing the old adage of “speaking truth to power” seemed to be in the bones of the Ball family.

For Des, the essence of security in the Asia-Pacific region is still to be found in Dot's view on the matter: that “good neighbours have strong fences”. Shifting the maxim across to the theoretical language of international relations, a move Des colourfully rejects when it came to esoteric abstractions of theory, he nonetheless understands himself as a “realist”, a believer in strong (de)fences. But he is, by his own admission, “a realist with a difference”. It is this depiction of Des’ thinking, activism and policy advice that I believe explains his significant contribution to the study of Asia-Pacific security and architecture over the last two or more decades.