International security has never suffered from a shortage of expertise. What it often struggles with is perspective.
At a time of renewed strategic competition, growing nuclear risk and increasingly contested ideas about what security itself means, understanding how others perceive threat has become more, not less, important. Military capability, deterrence and emerging technology dominate much of the contemporary security debate. Yet each also depends on interpretation, that is, how states read one another’s intentions, how partners understand shared interests, and whose perspectives are taken seriously when policy is made. In this sense, the ability to listen, interpret and understand perspectives beyond our own is not simply good diplomatic practice. It is a security capability in itself.
This idea sat beneath much of the discussion at Women in International Security Australia’s inaugural South Australian event, held in partnership with Adelaide University. While the conversation traversed Pacific security, nuclear proliferation, regional partnerships and careers in international affairs, a common thread emerged: good security policy requires more than knowing your own position. It requires understanding how the world looks to others.
One way of thinking about this is through Claire Yorke’s concept of strategic empathy, the deliberate effort to understand the experiences, motivations and perspectives shaping another actor’s behaviour.
Understanding another actor is not the same as agreeing with them. In international security, that distinction matters enormously.
The contemporary nuclear environment provides perhaps the starkest example. Nuclear weapons are again assuming greater prominence in national security strategies, while concerns about escalation, miscalculation and weakening arms-control mechanisms are growing. In that environment, accurately interpreting another state’s intentions, fears and assumptions is not simply an academic exercise.
Deterrence relies on signals being sent, received and interpreted as intended. Where assumptions diverge, the risk is not merely disagreement, but miscalculation.
Strategic empathy therefore asks decision-makers to resist assuming that another actor will interpret an event, threat or signal in the same way they do. Understanding another state’s worldview does not require accepting its behaviour. It requires understanding that worldview well enough to anticipate how it may interpret our own.
That principle also matters in how Australia engages with its regional partners.
Maima Koro reflected on strategic empathy alongside the Samoan principle of Soalaupule, an approach to decision-making grounded in dialogue, humility, shared authority and mutual respect.
Soalaupule challenges an approach in which one party enters a relationship already confident that it possesses the expertise or answers needed by another. Instead, it recognises that better decisions can emerge when different perspectives are genuinely valued and ownership is shared.
For Australian engagement in the Pacific, that distinction is significant. Strategic debates in Canberra may centre on geopolitical competition, defence posture or regional influence, while Pacific governments and communities may also understand security through climate, economic resilience, social cohesion, development or local wellbeing.
Listening, then, cannot simply occur after strategic priorities have already been decided. If the parameters of a security problem are fixed before partners are invited to contribute, consultation leaves the underlying assumptions largely untouched.
Soalaupule asks something more difficult: whether different perspectives can influence what counts as a security problem in the first place.
This matters when relationships across the Pacific are increasingly discussed through the language of strategic competition. If regional engagement is viewed primarily through Australia’s concerns about influence or geopolitical rivalry, Pacific priorities risk being interpreted through Australian strategic anxieties rather than understood on their own terms. Engagement grounded in soalaupule would require Australia to involve Pacific partners earlier in defining the problem itself, rather than seeking their views only after strategic priorities and policy options have already been set.
Strategic empathy and soalaupule therefore offer complementary lessons. The first asks us to understand another perspective; the second asks whether that perspective has genuine influence over the decisions that follow.If perspective matters between states and within regional partnerships, it also matters inside the institutions making security policy.
Diversity within the security profession is therefore not peripheral to good policy. It influences which assumptions are challenged, which experiences are recognised and which questions are asked in the first place.
Maria Rost Rublee’s research into gender diversity and inclusion in security studies has documented continuing disparities in representation and experiences within the field. Her message in Adelaide was about more than encouraging women to have confidence in their careers. It was a reminder that the discipline loses something when knowledgeable people hesitate to contribute, or when institutions fail to create environments in which different perspectives can meaningfully shape debate.
Joanne Wallis made a related point about expertise. Credibility is built through rigorous work, curiosity and a willingness to keep learning. But expertise also means being willing to question the assumptions that shape how security problems are understood.
Some of the most valuable contributions to security debates begin with questions: What are we assuming? Whose conception of security is shaping this policy? What perspectives are missing? These questions are not peripheral to good security policy. They are part of how institutions test whether they are genuinely listening or simply interpreting new perspectives through assumptions they have already made.
These are not signs of indecision. They are part of rigorous security thinking.
That may be the thread connecting discussions as seemingly different as nuclear deterrence, Pacific partnerships and women’s participation in international security.
In nuclear strategy, misunderstanding another actor’s intentions can contribute to escalation. In regional engagement, assuming that partners understand security in the same way we do can undermine genuine partnership. Within our own institutions, limiting whose expertise is heard narrows the assumptions we are capable of challenging.
Listening will not resolve strategic competition, prevent nuclear proliferation or overcome regional insecurity on its own. But a security community that cannot understand how others perceive threat, power and partnership will struggle to respond effectively to any of them.
In an increasingly contested world, strategic empathy should not be mistaken for softness. The capacity to listen, question our assumptions and allow other perspectives to shape how we understand security is itself a strategic capability.
Security may not end with listening, but it should start there.
Emma Gerhardy is the Lead Program Officer for South Australia’s countering violent extremism intervention program within the Department of Human Services. Drawing on experience across frontline policing, government policy and prevention practice, her work focuses on how societies recognise and respond to vulnerability before violence occurs. Emma is also Secretary of Women in International Security Australia (WIIS-A) and an Industry PhD candidate at the University of Adelaide, where her research brings coercive control scholarship into dialogue with violent extremism prevention to examine how coercive and relational vulnerability are recognised within an increasingly complex digital landscape.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of her employer, the University of Adelaide, or any affiliated organisation.
This blog is part of a joint series between AIIA and WIIS-A, which aims to elevate the work of female and gender-diverse individuals in the field of international affairs.
This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.
