Emeritus Professor Paul Dibb AM
Chairman of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University
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Emeritus Professor of strategic studiesBiography
Paul Dibb is Emeritus Professor of strategic studies and Chairman of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre in the College of Asia and the Pacific at The Australian National University. He was Head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre from 1991 to 2003.
His previous positions include: Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence in the Department of Defence, Director of the Defence Intelligence Organisation, and Head of the National Assessments Staff in the National Intelligence Committee. As Deputy Secretary of Defence, he was responsible for managing Australia’s strategic policy and chairing the Force Structure Committee, as well as oversighting the Defence intelligence agencies (including the Defence Signals Directorate and Australia’s policy on Pine Gap and Nurungar.
He is the author of 5 books and 4 reports to government, as well as more than 150 academic articles and monographs about the security of the Asia-Pacific region, the US alliance, and Australia’s defence policy. He wrote the 1986 Review of Australia’s Defence Capabilities (the Dibb Report) and was the primary author of the 1987 Defence White Paper. He was awarded a PhD for his book “The Soviet Union: the Incomplete Superpower” which was published by the IISS London in 1986, reprinted 1987 and second edition in 1988.
On behalf of DFAT he has represented Australia at eleven meetings of the ASEAN Regional Forum’s Expert and Eminent Persons group, most recently in Canberra in February 2017 where he chaired a meeting of 24 countries of the ARF-EEPs.
