International Institute for Strategic Studies

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) describes itself as 'the world's leading authority on political-military conflict.Based in London, IISS is registerd as charity in UK, US and Singapore. Founded in 1958 the IISS has strong establishment links, with former US and British government officials among its members. The Foreign Office contributed £100,000 towards the setting up of its headquarters in central London, and the opening was attended by Thatcher and Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, then secretary general of Nato. Its early work focused on nuclear deterrence and arms control and was by its own account "hugely influential in setting the intellectual structures for managing the Cold War."

Origins and history

Initially known just as the Institute for Strategic Studies, IISS was launched in November 1958 with the intension that it would be, as The Economist put it, ‘a Chatham House for Defence’. It was incorporated as a limited company and a registered charity on 20 November 1958. Its launch was announced on 27 November 1958. Reporting on it’s launch a day later The Guardian headline read, ‘Institute for Defence Study, British Members, U.S. Finance’.

The British members

The ‘British members’ were a collection of 20 politicians, journalists, academics, and former military men; as well as a few figures from the Church of England. Many of the founding members were members of a Chatham House group which was studying disarmament issues.

The decision to form the group stems from a Chatham House pamphlet On Limiting Nuclear War. The pamphlet had been produced by Pat Blackett, a Nobel physicist who had advised the UK government on ‘operational theory’ (e.g. game theory); Denis Healey, then Labour spokesman on Foreign Affairs; Richard Goold Adams, a journalist turned businessman; and Rear-Admiral Sir Anthony Buzzard, the former head of Naval Intelligence. They subsequently organised a conference ‘The Limitations of War in the Nuclear Age’ at the London office of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs. There it was agreed that they should establish a think-tank modelled on Chatham House, but focused solely on military-strategic issues. Pat Blackett was replaced by the Chatham House expert Professor Michael Howard who founded the Department of War Studies at Kings College London, and along with some figures from the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, these men started putting together the personnel for the would be think-tank.

The US finance

The ‘U.S. finance’ behind the new institute was a grant of $150,000 from the Ford Foundation to fund the institute for its first three years. The International Affairs Division of the Ford Foundation which provided this funding was at that time headed by an important post-war propagandist called Shepard Stone. A former New York Times journalist, Stone had joined the Ford Foundation in 1952, prior to which he had worked as the Director of Public Affairs of the American High Commission in Germany. There his main task had been to channel secret payments to editors and journalists to ensure they propagated American interests. At the Ford Foundation Stone worked with Joseph Slater who according to The Times was the driving force behind supporting the Institute. Slater – who later set up the Aspen Institute – had worked at the High Commission with Stone where both men had served under John J. McCloy, who was now chairman of the Ford Foundation. The aim of these former state propagandists was to win over Europeans who sought independence from Soviet and American control. According to one author, Stone hoped to ‘consolidate the Atlantic alliance, above all by abolishing the weak link in the West’s armory - the “neutralists,” those intellectuals who were disaffected by the Soviet Union but who were unwilling to align themselves with the United States’.’

The first director

The British man who was appointed to head this operation was Alistair Buchan, the diplomatic and defence correspondent of The Observer. His father John Buchan was a novelist, barrister and MP who had worked for the British War Propaganda Bureau during the First World War, as well as a war correspondent for The Times. Alistair Buchan was an Old Etonian and Oxford graduate who had worked as assistant editor of The Economist from 1948 to 1951 when he became the Washington correspondent for The Observer. In Washington Buchan had made ‘a wide range of contacts in American political, academic and journalistic circles which were to prove a valuable asset when he became the first Director of the Institute’. As head of the Institute Buchan developed a reputation for being ‘one of the few Englishmen who can “make himself at home” in the Pentagon’.

The moral question disappears

The Institute had been founded at least partly on the ethical concerns raised by the nuclear arms race; as suggested by the involvement of several church figures. However, the ethical dimension to the Institute’s work proved to be dead at birth. Professor Michael Howard, one of the key figures behind the Institute later recalled that:

Although Kenneth Grubb remained chairman of our council and Alan Booth our secretary [both of whom were involved in the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs], we quickly found that we could not sustain our obligation to study both the political and the moral dimensions of our subject, as had been our intension.

Early years

The Royal College of Arts off the Strand where the Institute rented a small office

The Institute initially had a ‘tiny staff’ and was based at ‘rather dinghy offices off the Strand’ at 18 Adams Street which the Institute rented off the Royal College of Arts. Though dingy they were close to Britain’s major centres of power. As one founding member later recalled, they were ‘conveniently situated between Fleet Street and Whitehall.’

There the Council held an evening reception on 17 February 1959 to mark the inauguration of the Institute. The reception was attended by several foreign diplomats and British military figures, as well as government Ministers.

The Institute initial focus was on the publication of its annual report on the Soviet and NATO military build-up, which it called The Military Balance. Reporting on the publication of the first issue The Times wrote: 'The sources on which the institute have based their estimates are not given, but they appear to be authoritative. There is however one estimate - that Russia still maintains 175 effective divisions - which is very doubtful. This figure has been used by N.A.T.O for so long as a stick to encourage their members to increase their contributions to the shield force that its accuracy is suspect'. In fact it was privately pointed out to Buchan by a CIA man who had joined the Institute that this first issue was ‘replete with errors, having been put together from published sources of widely varying reliability’. Buchan therefore made a point of checking each publication with the British government.

The Institute also published its quarterly magazine Survival which IISS still publishes today.

In 1959 The Instiute recruited Hedley Bull to act as a rapporteur. Bull, who was then an assistant professor at LSE, had just returned from a two year visit to 'the main centres in the USA of new thinking about arms control' - funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Bull worked at The Institute between 1959-60 and produced a book The Control of the Arms Race (1961). In 1965 he was appointed by Harold Wilson to head a new Foreign Office research unit on arms control and disarmament.

In 1959 the Institute also published a book by the military historian and former Intelligence Corps officer Michael Richard Daniel Foot which included a foreword by Alistair Buchan.

In 1962 The Institute published The Spread of Nuclear Weapons, which was the first serious book-length study of nuclear proliferation. It was co-authored by John Maddox and Leonard Beaton the defence correpondent of The Guardian. Beaton had been in touch with The Institute since its start and in 1963 he became the Institute's first designated director of studies. After two years he gave up the post to become a senior research associate, freer to concentrate on his own work.

In 1965 the Institute was awarded another $550,000 by the Ford Foundation and it announced that it would expand its staff, ‘particularly by recruiting from the Commonwealth, and the United States and Europe and…will become a private international organization’. In May 1966 the Institute added International to its name and became the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Francois Duchene

In 1969 Buchan left the Institute and was replaced as Director by Francois Duchene who headed IISS until 1974. Duchene like Buchan was a former journalist at The Economist, and he had also worked as a Fellow at the Ford Foundation for two years immediately prior to his appointment. He had also worked in military intelligence during his national service and was posted to Austria in 1948, then a hub of post-war espionage.

Selling the Iraq War

IISS played a key role in furnishing the pretexts for the invasion of Iraq by publishing a dossier on Iraqi WMDs, on 9 September 2002, which was edited by Gary Samore, formerly of the US State Department, and presented by Dr John Chipman, a former Nato fellow.

The dossier was immediately seized on by Bush and Blair administrations as providing "proof" that Saddam was just months away from launching a chemical and biological, or even a nuclear attack. Large parts of the IISS document were subsequently recycled in the now notorious Downing Street dossier, published with a foreword by the Prime Minister, the following week.

Unlike the British Government, IISS later claimed it made mistakes in its dossier about the extent of the Iraqi threat. It commissioned an independent assessment by Rolf Ekeus, a former head of United Nations arms inspectors in Iraq. Samore and Chipman now claim their dossier had caveats about Iraq's supposed WMD arsenal which the Government insisted on removing from intelligence assessments - leading to "sexing up" accusations. However, in his interview with BBC on the day of the publication of the report, such caveats are conspicuously absent.

Pushing the bombing of Iran

In April 2006 The Institute was involved in briefing the media in which the BBC reported that Iran was 'on course' to develop nuclear weapons in 'three years'. On being challenged the Institute backed down slightly. On 12 September 2007, IISS once again suggested Iran could have a nuclear weapon by 2009-2010, an estimate which is shared neither by the IAEA or US intelligence. It also went on to issue unsubstantiated warnings of a threat from a new and deadlier al-Qaida.

Funding

For its first 30 years IISS received no government funded and supported by American Foundations with an interest in maintaining US hegemony over its European allies.

The Institute was founded on an initial donation of $150,000 from the Ford Foundation to fund it for its first three years and between 1959 and 1979 it received a further $1.4 million from the Ford Foundation.

The Rockefeller Foundation also provided funding in the Institute's early years, reportedly donating £3,500 in 1960 and £44,600 in 1964.

In 1979 IISS sought government funding for the first time in order to support its move from its Adam Street offices to ‘a four-floor building on one of the many corners of Tavistock Street’. According to the Institute the funds were provided by “democratic governments”. Later when IISS again moved offices to its current location at Arundel House it reportedly received £100,000 from the Foreign Office.

Principals

• François Heisbourg - Chairman
• Fleur de Villiers - Chairman of the IISS Executive Committee
• Thomas Seaman - Honorary Treasurer and Investment Committee Chairman
• Peter Stormonth Darling - Audit Committee Chairman
• John Chipman - Director-General and Chief Executive
• Michael Draeger - Company Secretary

President, President Emeritus and Vice-Presidents

• Michael Howard - President-Emeritus
• Robert Ellsworth - Vice-Presidents
• Michael Palliser - Vice-Presidents
• Yoshio Okawara - Vice-Presidents

The council

• Hironori Aihara
• Ross Babbage
• Carl Bildt
• Dennis C. Blair
• Thérèse Delpech
• Fleur de Villiers
• Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank
• Rita E Hauser
• François Heisbourg
• David Ignatius
• Roy MacLaren
• Kishore Mahbubani
• Moeletsi Mbeki
• Edwina Moreton
• Pauline Neville-Jones
• Günther Nonnenmacher
• Thomas Pickering
• Lord Powell of Bayswater
• V R Raghavan
• Michael D. Rich
• Adam Roberts
• Yukio Satoh
• Thomas Seaman
• Lilia Shevtsova
• Robert Wade-Gery
• Theodor Winkler

other associates

• Peter Ackerman Visiting Fellow in 1990
• Yonah Alexander
• Brenda Stern

Contact, resources and notes

contact

• Arundel House
• 13–15 Arundel Street, Temple Place
• London WC2R 3DX
• Tel: +44 (0) 20 7379 7676
• Fax: +44 (0) 20 7836 3108