Jun 11, 2026 · 45 min · 13 segments
*Can national security be fully understood through hard power alone?* *Is it time for Australia to have a broader national security strategy – one that goes beyond defence and brings in federal…
Elyse StephensonGuest
Valerie HudsonGuestSharryn ParkerHostWhat are some of the things that women see regarding security, national security, and how can we interplay what their experience into the more traditional or realist perspective of national security?
Again, coming from the American perspective where these things have become very stark, you may know that the current administration in the United States is very much focused on power, and what they mean by power is a dominating power.
And the idea that this is a very classical realist ideal, that, that the, the national interest is defined in terms of power, maintaining it, increasing it, displaying it, balancing it, using it directly to coerce and compel others.
It is not clear to me that Trump has a, a glowing record of success in defining the national interest solely in terms of power.
And I think that what women would be able to suggest in a broader sense, not just to Donald Trump, but to those who believe that the national interest revolves around power, is that power without persistence is defeat, and that persistence is actually now in play.
As I spoke about in a presentation I gave this week at ANU, 95 countries in the world now have sub-replacement birth rates, and many of those have what we call extremely low birth rates, that is below one point five children per woman.
And we have never in human history seen a group recover from extremely low birth rates.
Well, as I, you know, I've said before, how is Palantir Technologies gonna help you with that? How is the new golden naval fleet that Trump intends to build, how is that gonna help?I, I think that those ideas, very constrained ideas of what the national interest is, stands impotent before, if you will, one of the, the largest, most important national security issues that many nations face.
In the year 2025, Japan had a net loss of over 900,000 persons, a net loss of almost a million, and what that's doing to their society has incredible national security ramifications.
But I'm sorry that the, the, the, the laser focus on power over doesn't give you any leverage on that.
So power without persistence is defeat, and that's a challenge I think that women, women broach with classical IR realists.
We also see some really interesting data coming out of the National Security College, who ran a major study just recently, which was launched a bit earlier this year, communi- community consultation of over around 20,000 Australians.
What was really interesting about that was actually you break down the data kind of by gender and you see some really interesting trends to that data which relate back to some of the things that Valerie's been mentioning.
So for instance, what we tended to see out of that data was that those who thought themselves as authoritative on national security in Australia tended to be men, so about 46% compared to only 23% of women.
But it wasn't just that women were, you know, f- like they felt perhaps less credible, but they actually demonstrated much more credibility in terms of au- and authority and-
... understanding of national security issues, which was absolutely fascinating.
So they were, in general, able to expand in quite some detail on the various national security issues that were seen, going to a le- level of depth that perhaps we didn't see as much from some of the men respondents, which tended to be, you know, s- perceiving national security in more abstract terms, thinking much m- more broadly about concepts of war and, and so on.
We also sort of saw some really interesting things about kind of the national security risks that women tended to kind of note as some of the most significant or important to them were things like climate change, for instance-
What are some of the things that women see regarding security, national security, and how can we interplay what their experience into the more traditional or realist perspective of national security?
Again, coming from the American perspective where these things have become very stark, you may know that the current administration in the United States is very much focused on power, and what they mean by power is a dominating power.
And the idea that this is a very classical realist ideal, that, that the, the national interest is defined in terms of power, maintaining it, increasing it, displaying it, balancing it, using it directly to coerce and compel others.
It is not clear to me that Trump has a, a glowing record of success in defining the national interest solely in terms of power.
And I think that what women would be able to suggest in a broader sense, not just to Donald Trump, but to those who believe that the national interest revolves around power, is that power without persistence is defeat, and that persistence is actually now in play.
As I spoke about in a presentation I gave this week at ANU, 95 countries in the world now have sub-replacement birth rates, and many of those have what we call extremely low birth rates, that is below one point five children per woman.
And we have never in human history seen a group recover from extremely low birth rates.
Well, as I, you know, I've said before, how is Palantir Technologies gonna help you with that? How is the new golden naval fleet that Trump intends to build, how is that gonna help?I, I think that those ideas, very constrained ideas of what the national interest is, stands impotent before, if you will, one of the, the largest, most important national security issues that many nations face.
In the year 2025, Japan had a net loss of over 900,000 persons, a net loss of almost a million, and what that's doing to their society has incredible national security ramifications.
But I'm sorry that the, the, the, the laser focus on power over doesn't give you any leverage on that.
So power without persistence is defeat, and that's a challenge I think that women, women broach with classical IR realists.
We also see some really interesting data coming out of the National Security College, who ran a major study just recently, which was launched a bit earlier this year, communi- community consultation of over around 20,000 Australians.
What was really interesting about that was actually you break down the data kind of by gender and you see some really interesting trends to that data which relate back to some of the things that Valerie's been mentioning.
So for instance, what we tended to see out of that data was that those who thought themselves as authoritative on national security in Australia tended to be men, so about 46% compared to only 23% of women.
But it wasn't just that women were, you know, f- like they felt perhaps less credible, but they actually demonstrated much more credibility in terms of au- and authority and-
... understanding of national security issues, which was absolutely fascinating.
So they were, in general, able to expand in quite some detail on the various national security issues that were seen, going to a le- level of depth that perhaps we didn't see as much from some of the men respondents, which tended to be, you know, s- perceiving national security in more abstract terms, thinking much m- more broadly about concepts of war and, and so on.
We also sort of saw some really interesting things about kind of the national security risks that women tended to kind of note as some of the most significant or important to them were things like climate change, for instance-
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