The IISS is pleased to announce that its *th annual Global Strategic Review (GSR) will be held on 10-12 September 2009 at the Intercontinental Hotel Geneva in Switzerland.
The GSR is the principal international venue for policy-relevant analysis of global foreign, defence and security policy by IISS members, officials, diplomats, military personnel, academics, commentators, media and business. Interdisciplinary in approach and cosmopolitan in its participants, the GSR each year audits the forces that are shaping international security conditions and anticipates the new factors that seem likely to come into play. It provides assessments of where new tensions may arise, but also points to areas that contain the possibility of progress towards conflict resolution. It generates original and useful thinking about the tools and structures – diplomatic, military, economic and bureaucratic – that national security establishments, regional security institutions and supra-national organisations will need in order to effectively pursue their priorities and discharge their mandates.
The GSR will take place against the backdrop of a strengthening impression of a diffusion in the international distribution of power, in which some established powers are displaying signs of relative decline; other emerging major powers are seeking to occupy a fuller place on the world stage; and a number of regional and smaller powers are developing a sense of themselves as strategic actors with appetites for a more active and entrepreneurial diplomacy. At times of transition, however long or short the period over which they may play themselves out, at issue is how the stewardship of the international security system will be affected. In the contemporary setting,
