The IISS on 3 March concluded a year of 50th anniversary celebrations with a special Gala Dinner in Washington DC, featuring a discussion on ‘Geopolitics, Strategy and the Future’ between former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, IISS President Emeritus Sir Michael Howard and Former UN Undersecretary General Shashi Tharoor. The dinner gathered some 230 senior officials, military personnel, experts, journalists, and prominent members of the foreign diplomatic community at the Four Seasons Hotel.
In his welcoming remarks, Michael Rich, Chairman of the Board of the IISS-US, noted that the Dinner concluded ‘a year of commemorations that began last April at an unforgettable Dinner at Guildhall in the City of London. It gives the Institute’s supporters in America the chance to reflect on and salute the IISS’ half-century as a unique and valuable source of facts, ideas, publications, and dialogues – a truly important player in the world of international affairs’, he said.
There then followed a keynote speech by Sir Michael Howard that reflected on the Institute’s past work over 50 years and addressed the international security questions that warrant detailed policy analysis now.
As moderator of the discussion between Kissinger, Howard and Tharoor that followed the Dinner service, IISS Director General and Chief Executive John Chipman in his prefatory remarks said:
‘The reason the IISS chose to round out its 50th anniversary celebrations with this dinner in Washington, is precisely because we wanted to mark the very particular contribution that Americans and America have made to the intellectual life of the IISS and to its capacity effectively to insert itself at the highest levels of public policy on strategic questions’.
‘The IISS prides itself on its international perspective and international character, but that outlook and personality has been hugely defined by its American component. Indeed the structure of the IISS and the vital contribution that the US has made to its success since its inception stands as testimony to the persistent internationalism of mainstream American strategists’.
‘So to the many American IISS Council members, Trustees, IISS-US Board members, Directors’ of Studies, Editors of Survival, authors of Adelphi Papers, contributors to The Military Balance, Strategic Survey, Strategic Comments and other publications; to the US speakers at our conferences and summits, Research Associates and Senior Fellows, thank you all for the magnificent contribution you have made and will make to the Institute’s work’.
During the evening, the IISS presented Dr Kissinger with a bound copy of his 1976 Inaugural Alistair Buchan Lecture.
The IISS would like to thank all of our sponsors for their generous support of the evening.
For additional photos from the evening please click here.
