Desmond Ball

Desmond John "Des" Ball AO (20 May 1947 – 12 October 2016) was an Australian academic and expert on defence and security. He was credited with successfully advising the US against nuclear escalation in the 1970s.

Des Ball attended the Australian National University in 1965, shifting from being a promising student in economics to security studies. He completed a PhD supervised by Hedley Bull, on the global nuclear strategies of the United States and the Soviet Union. He was based for several months in the USA at the Institute of War and Peace. He joined ANU as a lecturer in 1974, later becoming Special Professor in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific in 1987.

Ball was an opponent of the draft for the Vietnam War in Australia (although not the war itself, at the time), and was arrested for protesting it. He won an appeal in the Supreme Court against his conviction. From 1966 he was a "person of interest" for ASIO, particularly following his inquiries into the Pine Gap secret tracking facility and Nurrungar in Australia from 1969, and was taken to court after the publication of A Suitable Piece of Real Estate in 1980. He held ASIO in disdain, for its inability to recognise aspects of defence co-operation with the US infringed Australian national interests by remaining entirely secret.

Ball was diagnosed with incurable cancer and died on 12 October 2016 at the age of 69. Despite his illness, he continued writing and working until his death.

Ball was a political realist, and a believer in liberal institutions and solid defence strategies. He used an inductive, investigative approach to security studies.

During the Cold War, Ball was invited to critique US nuclear defence plans—his analysis persuading the US that its plan to destroy selected Soviet targets in a limited strike would not work in practice and would lead to all-out nuclear escalation. His analysis has been acknowledged by President Jimmy Carter.

Ball worked on Australia's signal intelligence and exposed Australia's secret history of cracking diplomatic cables.

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