Australian National University Professor Des Ball has been recognised for his massive contribution to global defence and security.

Once credited by United States president Jimmy Carter with saving the world from nuclear annihilation, Professor Ball has been appointed an Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia “For distinguished service to international relations as an academic, author and researcher, to Australian Defence policy formulation, and to the security architecture of the Asia-Pacific region”.

Professor Ball said that despite feeling honoured and privileged to receive the award, he was also a little surprised.

“Over the decades of my work, I have also dedicated myself to critiquing Australia’s defence and intelligence communities.

“This has inevitably earned me the enmity of a very influential and powerful element of that establishment. In some ways that makes this award even more rewarding.

He added that accepting the award from Peter Cosgrove would give him great pleasure.

“I have known Peter for a long time and hold him in the highest respect,” Professor Ball said.

“I have always regarded myself as a nationalist. Therefore, so much of my work on national defence has been designed to make sure we have the requisite capabilities for Australia’s defence.

Professor Ball began studying Economics at the ANU in 1965 and became a member of staff in 1974.

Despite his outspoken criticism of US government policy, he was personally invited by Carter to critique the US’s nuclear defence plans during the Cold War – his analysis persuading the US that its plan to detonate selected Soviet targets would not work in practice.

A 2012 book of essays honouring the iconoclastic scholar quoted Carter saying Ball’s ‘'counsel and cautionary advice, based on deep research, made a great difference to our collective goal of avoiding nuclear war''.

ANU Vice-Chancellor Ian Young described Professor Ball as “a living treasure of the university, and he has helped Australian governments and all Australians better understand the nature of the defence and security issues affecting the country and the world.”

Last year the ANU established a $1.5 million endowment in his honour.

Professor Ball's career has included working on Australia’s signal intelligence, exposing Australia’s secret history of cracking diplomatic cables, and examining first-hand south-east Asia’s “shadow wars”.

He’s also spent much of his academic career being a “person of interest” for ASIO – an organisation for which he holds utter disdain.

He accepted a chair as Special Professor within the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific 25 years ago and has knocked back many an offer from prestigious international universities.

Professor Ball has recently returned from Thailand where his newest body of work is focusing on local level security issues in south-east Asia, particularly the Thai/Myanmar border.