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The International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA) is based in the Washington DC area in the United States, and is a worldwide membership Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) of professionals involved in national management, particularly in national and international security and strategic policy.
ISSA is registered with the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as a tax-exempt, non-profit educational foundation under 501(c)(3) status.
The Association, founded in 1982, has as one of its key objectives the creation of forums at which professionals in these areas can meet, or exchange information and views, in informal circumstances to discuss issues of mutual concern.
The Association regularly honors achievements in the field of international relations and peacemaking with its Awards for Outstanding Contributions to Strategic Progress.
The Association, in 1998, took over publication of the Defense & Foreign Affairs publishing and information group, which began in 1972 providing strategic information and analysis to governments worldwide. It also incorporates the Global Information System (GIS), an encrypted on-line intelligence service for governments.
Background: A Global Resource for Professionals in National Policy
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
ISSA recognizes Outstanding Contributions to Strategic Progress through Awards to key individuals worldwide.