International Strategic Studies Association

The International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA) is a Washington DC based non-governmental organization (NGO) with a world-wide membership of professionals involved in national management, particularly in national and international security and strategic policy.

Objectives of the Organization

The association was founded in 1982, with a key objectives to enable and facilitate forums at which professionals in these areas can meet in informal circumstances to exchange information and views, and to discuss issues of mutual concern.

The International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA) was formed in 1982, in Washington DC as a non-profit membership organization for professionals involved in the field of national security and international security policy from around the world.

Its founders were Gregory R. Copley and Dr. Stefan Possony, both recognized authors and experts in the strategic policy field. Dr Possony, who advised numerous US Governments and wrote several dozen major books on strategic issues, died in 1995, and had been called "the greatest strategic philosopher of the 20th Century". Part of his library was donated to ISSA and forms a core of the Association's collection of some 10,000 books on strategic, political, defense and sociological issues. Gregory Copley is currently President of the Association.

ISSA, in 1983, sponsored the first of its Strategy conferences: Defense'83 in Las Vegas. These conferences, held most years and involving national delegations from several dozen countries at a time, are all closed to the press, and are off-the-record (except for the formal papers cleared for publication in Proceedings). This enables ISSA to maintain the Strategy conferences as forums for the informal exchange of ideas and contacts between countries and officials, without facing concerns of a diplomatic nature.

Goals of the Organization

Among other issues, in recent years, ISSA focused some considerable research effort on the break-up of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, producing two ISSA books on the subject, by ISSA Director of Research and Defense & Foreign Affairs Senior Editor Yossef Bodansky. It has also published a variety of other books, and in 1998 took over publication of the Defense & Foreign Affairs series of publications. All directorships and officer posts at ISSA are held by volunteers, and all funding is plowed into research projects. ISSA in 1998 moved into permanent quarters in Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia, a few minutes drive from the Pentagon (US Defense Department), the US Congress, the State Department and White House, and most diplomatic offices in Washington DC.

The Chief of Administration for ISSA, Defense & Foreign Affairs and GIS is Pamela von Gruber, who is a Director of the Association and Publisher of the journals, books and websites.

Membership

ISSA today is a worldwide membership organization, incorporated in the US State of Virginia, and recognized by the US Internal Revenue Service as a non-profit, tax-exempt educational foundation [501(c)(3)] . It publishes books and papers on various topics.

ISSA recognizes Outstanding Contributions to Strategic Progress through Awards to key individuals worldwide.

Recipients of ISSA awards

*Hon. Caspar Weinberger
*HM King Kigeli V of Rwanda
*Prince Ermias Sahle Selassie of Ethiopia
*Hon. Sir Geoffrey Pattie
*Vice Admiral Ko Tun-hwa

External links

* [http://www.strategicstudies.org/ International Strategic Studies Association] website