Francois Heisbourg
François Heisbourg is an eminent French strategist and author, currently senior adviser (Europe) of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and special advisor of the Paris-based Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (FRS). He has served in government (the foreign ministry’s policy planning staff, international security adviser to the Defence Minister), industry (Thomson-CSF, today’s Thales; Matra, now in Airbus), academia (professor of the world politics course at Sciences-Po Paris) and the think-tank world (as director of the IISS and subsequently the FRS). He has sat on blue-ribbon bodies, notably the French government’s White Paper on terrorism (2006) and the Defence and National Security White Papers (under President Sarkozy in 2007-8 and President Hollande in 2012-3); the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament; the International Commission on the Balkans). He chaired the council of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) from 1998 to 2018, and of the IISS (2001-2018), and was a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Bosch Academy in Berlin (2015-2017). He dealt with defence and national security issues as part of Emmanuel Macron’s presidential campaign. He has written extensively on defence and security questions. His latest book was published in June 2020 : Le Temps des prédateurs : la Chine, les États-Unis, la Russie et nous, éditions Odile Jacob, Paris.
Twitter: @FHeisbourg
