Mr. Bastian Giegerich, Director of Defence and Military Analysis at the International Institute for Strategic Studies addresses the GPODS fellows
Mr. Bastian Giegerich is the director of Defence and Military Analysis at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and in this session of the fellowship he closely shared the background of the institute, its functioning and some insights and findings about his field of study of ‘defence and military analysis’.
The IISS he revealed, was established in 1958, and the core mission of the institute has revolved around the idea to provide accurate or more information to people so that people are able to make better decisions. They provide objective information on military, geopolitical and geo-economic developments that could lead to conflict. The IISS helps to shape the strategic agenda for governments, businesses, the media and experts across the world. They earn revenue from the sale of the databases and publications, host nation support for conferences, corporate sponsorship, research work, consultancy and donations from private individuals and foundations.
In terms of what the Institute does, their research focuses on “War, Power, and Rules”. On the war side they measure and assess the military capability, cyber, space and future conflict, conflict, security and development. On the side of power they work on geo-economics and strategy, China’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI), statecraft and influence networks. On the rules front they work on statecraft, strategy and law, climate change and security, changing alliance structures, arms control and proliferation in the new technological age.
They have 50 to 60 researches in the defence and military analysis department that Mr. Giegerich heads. They have first-hand experience in career of areas like the Armed Forces, diplomacy, journalism and many more.
They have also convened a number of International Security and Defence summits like:
· Shangri-La Dialogue — Singapore — Forum for Asia’s defence minister to talk about the pressing security challenges.
· Manama Dialogue — Bahrain forum for government ministers to debate the Middles East’s most pressing security challenges.
What does the Defence and Military Analysis Programme do?
Mr. Giegerich shared with the fellows, that the military balance has the database of defence and military information like military holdings, defence spending data etc. for 171 countries in the world, which provides comparisons over times and also assess the military power.
Aside from all the extensive working, they have a yearbook and have also published multiple research papers around. One of the most important programme is the “Mission Dialogue” that looks at missile development, arms control around the world. Their main focus in to research on a recent book that they published, which was called the “Russia’s military modernization”.
Some of the very useful findings and insights that he shared from his work was where he spoke about the defence spending around the world, and how China is raising lower security and defence Sector , proliferation of some new technologies and how they might affect the arm conflict and warfare in the future.
Mr Giegerich spoke about to what extent the Covid-19 pandemic has affected the defence establishments around the world. The troops they had deployed to help the civil authorities, some of the procurements were delayed, some were canceled and and had to face many more issues. He spoke about how the armed forces have adapted to the situation and how they have tacked all of this.
He explained the relation between the defence spending growth and GDP growth from 2008–2020 with a graph. The graph clearly showed that even though the GDP growth was poor during the year 2020 around the world, the defence spending has been relatively still high. He spoke about the defence spending of Asia and Europe. The defence spending of Asia has been growing faster as compared to the others. This is because of China’s spending on defence in 2020, which was 12 billion. They are continuously procuring new equipments and replacing the old ones and investing more on R&D.
He spoke about the UAVs and loitering munitions in 2020 Armenia-Azerbaijan war. He also showed a chart, which they added to their 2020 magazine titled “The spread of land-attack cruise missile”.
This was just a glimpse of the work that Mr. Giegerich and his team do at the IISS. People from wide range of backgrounds like NGO, journalism, intelligence, armed forces, private sector etc. work here, and not just from the defence or military backgrounds. They have their HQ at London and also have offices in Bahrain, Singapore, Washington DC and are very soon about to open an office in Berlin. They are also working on the “intersection of climate change and defence and conflict” which was something deeply intriguing for the fellows. The session ended with a questionnaire and with the fellows participating in a question & answer round, exchanging their thoughts with the speaker.
About the GPODS fellowship:
The Global Policy, Diplomacy and Sustainability (GPODS) is a program for public policy practitioners, business professionals, energy and climate change experts, entrepreneurs, Academicians, scholars and strategic analysts to act as a Launchpad for their careers. Currently we have fellows from five different countries namely USA, France, UK, Israel, Italy and 40+ world leaders as mentors from 15 different countries.
About the speaker:
Mr. Bastian Giegerich is the Director of Defence and Military Analysis at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, where he leads the team that produces the flagship publication ,The Military Balance and the online defence analysis platform, the Military Balance plus. A Former researcher with IISS and Bundeswehr Institute of Social Sciences, he holds a doctorate in international relations from the London School of Economics. An Expert in the fields of International Relations, Foreign Policy and Policy Analysis, he served as a Policy Advisor with the Federal Ministry of Defence, Germany. Bastian regularly contributes to research and consultancy work in his areas of expertise.