Rate My Professor Stephan Fruehling

Professor Stephan Fruehling teaches and researches at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at The Australian National University. His research specializations include Australian defence policy, defence planning and strategy, nuclear weapons, NATO, alliances, defence studies, Australian government and politics, and European security. He holds the title of Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA).

Fruehling has extensive career experience in academic leadership and policy advisory roles. At ANU, he has served as Interim Head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre in 2022 and 2025, Associate Dean Partnership and Engagement from 2021 to 2022, Deputy Dean from 2020 to 2021, and Associate Dean Education from 2016 to 2020 in the College of Asia and the Pacific. He was the inaugural Director of Studies for the ANU Master in Military Studies program at the Australian Defence Force’s Australian Command and Staff College from 2011 to 2013. Additionally, he acted as Managing Editor of the Kokoda Foundation’s journal Security Challenges from 2006 to 2014. Externally, Fruehling was a Fulbright Professional Fellow in Australia-US Alliance Studies at Georgetown University in Washington DC in 2017 and a ‘Partner across the globe’ research fellow in the Research Division of the NATO Defense College in Rome in 2015. He contributed as a member of the Australian Government’s External Panel of Experts on the development of the 2016 Defence White Paper.

His major publications include the authoritative book A History of Australian Strategic Policy Since 1945 (2009), Defence Planning and Uncertainty: Preparing for the Next Asia-Pacific War (2014), and Australia’s American Alliance: Towards a New Era? (2016, co-edited with Peter Dean and Brendan Taylor). Other key works encompass Is ANZUS Really an Alliance? Aligning the US and Australia (Survival, 2018), Nuclear Weapons, the United States and Alliances in Europe and Asia: Toward an Institutional Perspective (Contemporary Security Policy, 2017, with Andrew O’Neil), Managing Escalation: Missile Defence, Strategy and US Alliances (International Affairs, 2016), and Partners in Deterrence: US Nuclear Weapons and Alliances in Europe and Asia (2021). These contributions have shaped discussions on strategic policy, alliances, and deterrence in academic and policy circles.