3 mars 1943
Born in Paris. Son of François de Montbrial (1912-1985), Bank of France inspector, author of political essays and poetry collections, and Monique Lécuyer-Corthis (1915-1990).
His paternal grandfather, Jean de Montbrial, was a colonial administrator. His maternal grandfather, Raymond Lécuyer, was a journalist and art critic, author of several works still sought out today, such as his History of photography published in 1945. His maternal grandmother, a novelist, published under the pseudonym of André Corthis (1885-1952; André being in the masculine). Her work was commended very early on by the Femina Prize (1906), followed by the Grand Prix du Roman of the Académie Française (1920).1963-1967
1963-1965. Student at Ecole Polytechnique, from which he graduated third in his class in 1965, giving him access to the “Corps des Mines”.
Summer 1965. Sojourn in the Middle East (Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan): his first major trip.
1965-1966. Second-lieutenant assigned to the War College (Ecole de Guerre), where he taught Operational Research to senior officers.
1966-1967. Student engineer of the Corps des Mines and student of Maurice Allais, Nobel Prize in Economics in 1988.
1967. Wedded Marie-Christine Balling.1967-1968
Student at the University of California, Berkeley, pursuing a PhD thesis in mathematical economics under the direction of Professor Gérard Debreu (Nobel Prize Laureate in 1983). Mathematical economics was then booming in the United States. The field was contemporary to the development of the second generation of American think tanks and leading institutions such as the Rand Corporation and the Cowles Commission.
1st September 1968: Birth of his son, Thibault.
1968-1970
1968-1969. End of studies at Ecole des Mines. At the same time, he became a lecturer at the Ecole Polytechnique and was actively involved in the discussions to reform it, following the “events” of May 1968. Convinced of the importance of philosophy and the history of sciences for truly polytechnical training, he advocated in particular for these disciplines to be included as part of the School’s curriculum.
Second Semester, 1969. Assistant to Professor Debreu in Berkeley. He taught courses such as mathematical programming at the graduate level.
1970. Mines Engineer in Metz. At the same time, he continued to teach mathematical economics at the Ecole Polytechnique and gave courses at the Faculty of Law and Economics in Nancy.
1971
Was awarded a PhD (PhD of Philosophy in Economics) for his thesis entitled: Intertemporal General Equilibrium and Interest Rates Theory. The aim of this thesis was to address the topic of time (and therefore potentially uncertainty, imperfect information, interest and money, etc.) in the very Platonic theory of economic equilibrium and optimality. This work was part of a broader reflection on time, which he has never ceased to pursue throughout his life. That same year, he published Economie théorique (Presses Universitaires de France), a book that emerged from his seminar at the Ecole polytechnique attended by mathematician Laurent Schwartz, Fields Medal Winner in 1950. Laurent Schwartz had been a member of Gérard Debreu’s thesis jury, from which his famous book Theory of value originated. Thierry de Montbrial then began to contribute to a profound renewal of the teaching of, and research in, economics in France.
1971-1973
While continuing his teaching activities, he was appointed as project leader at the General Planning Commission (CGP), the major institution created after the Second World War by Jean Monnet around the original concept of “indicative planning”. There, Thierry de Montbrial’s work pertained mainly to: (1) the introduction of money and international economics in planning methodology; (2) the degree of relevance of large econometric models and the question of whether it is possible to adequately represent the path between the “short term” and the “medium term”; (3) the concepts of forecasting and forecast error.
In 1973, he published in the Revue d’Economie Politique an article on monetary equilibrium, in which he continued his reflections started in Berkeley by linking them, in particular, to Jacques Rueff’s all too little-known research.12 November 1972: Birth of his daughter, Alexandra.
In 1973, at the age of thirty, Thierry de Montbrial was elected “full practice professor” at the Ecole polytechnique, the youngest, it seems, since the physicist and astronomer Arago, who succeeded Monge (the founder of descriptive geometry) in 1809, as a professor of mathematics. Arago was then 23. The same year, he was elected to the French Academy of Sciences. In the context of the 1970s, the election of Thierry de Montbrial responded to the strategic choice of the Ecole polytechnique to give economics the equal weight and importance of other major traditional scientific disciplines (mathematics, mechanics, physics and chemistry).
Also in 1973, Michel Jobert, Minister of Foreign Affairs under Georges Pompidou entrusted Thierry de Montbrial to set up a “Centre for Analysis and Forecasting” (CAP) within his ministry. Thierry de Montbrial, with his deputy Jean-Louis Gergorin, drew inspiration from the Policy Planning Staff (PPS) at the US State Department, set up after the war by General Marshall. The first leader of the PPS, George Kennan, was also the most famous. The PPS follows the same approach as do think tanks. Notably, it draws together approaches inspired by mathematics and the natural sciences on the one hand, history and human sciences or philosophy on the other, to clarify the thought-action couple.
1974-1992
Thierry de Montbrial became Chairman of the Department of Economics created at the Ecole Polytechnique under the impetus of Jean Ullmo, following the 1968 reforms. During these eighteen years, his courses were taught to the entire student body. He thus contributed to the training of a large part of France’s elites, for an entire generation, focusing on the fundamental models of microeconomics and macroeconomics, as well as on a critical approach to the fundamentals of econometrics. He introduced contemporary research in these areas in as unified a framework as possible, true to the spirit of the times. The resulting book was published in 1988 by Presses Universitaires de France under the title Economic Science or human strategy towards scarce resources – Models and methods. His originality was lauded by critics.
In 1992, he was elected to the Institut de France. He also continued to teach until 2008, although he considered the time had come to make way for professor-researchers who were more engaged in scientific life. Still, he taught courses first in international economics (1992-1995) and later on “strategy and international relations” (1995-2008), which were closely tied to his activities at Ifri.
1974-1979
At the head of the “brain trust” at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (the CAP), Thierry de Montbrial was behind what he called “intellectual diplomacy”, which led him to establish close ties in the United States, enabling him to meet some of the most prominent personalities of the time, as well as in Japan and other countries. In recognition of his actions in the 1970s and the next decade, the Emperor of Japan would later award him the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star. Highly involved in the Atlantic Alliance, he was particularly interested in European construction and Franco-German relations, and became an active member of Club Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission, two institutions from which France was essentially absent, due to the wariness shown by heirs to the Gaullist tradition toward these institutions deemed too close to the United States. He would be a member of the Bilderberg Steering Committee from 1976 to 2012. As part of the Trilateral, in 1982, he would write with Ambassador Nobuhiko Ushiba and Harvard Professor Graham Allison, a study entitled Sharing Global Responsibilities which in some respects heralded his further work on global governance.
Over all these years, the CAP’s work focused in particular on energy (the period was marked by the oil shocks of 1973 and 1978), the international economy, the détente in Europe as well as on the major strategic issues of the time and disarmament.
Drawing on his previous research, Thierry de Montbrial deepened his understanding of the work of American strategic thinkers, at a time when strategic thinking largely escaped the military, since the implementation of nuclear weapons and, more generally, weapons of mass destruction. Thierry de Montbrial therefore studied the mainly American literature on nuclear strategy and frequented major thinkers or experts in this field, a path harmoniously concomitant to the intellectual environment that he had uncovered at Berkeley. He also undertook his first trips to communist countries. After visiting both the USSR and the People’s Republic of China, he concluded that in order to understand the world, it was necessary to travel, observe, compare and meet others on their ground. This remains a precept in life for him.All this activity did not prevent him from continuing to focus on the foundations of economics. In 1974, he published a small book entitled Essais d’économie parétienne and published by the CNRS, two chapters of which are startlingly timely. One deals with the concept of ergodism in economics. Ergodism is an essential mathematical concept in statistical physics, which aims to compare trajectories in space and time. In the human sciences, the terms synchronism and diachronism are used. Thierry de Montbrial had the intuition that this concept could be just as fruitful in the social sciences and more generally in philosophy. The other chapter discusses a generalisation of utility theory, where the comparison focuses no longer on “baskets of goods”, but on “choice sets”. This generalisation opens up avenues for studying “temporary equilibria”, in the spirit of the author’s work at Berkeley. In 1976, Thierry de Montbrial also published a study entitled Thermodynamique et économie, written on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu by Sadi Carnot – the founder of the second principle of thermodynamics, behind the concept of entropy. Paul Samuelson, among others, had addressed this connection, but it was mainly the burgeoning thinking of the American of Romanian origin Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen who inspired this study.
For a wider audience, Thierry de Montbrial published in 1974 Le désordre économique mondial (publisher: Calmann-Lévy), translated into Spanish and Italian. In this book, the author examines the energy crisis and the problem of raw materials. He offers his reflections on “the strategic analysis of international relations”. He also deals with inflation and monetary problems, based on courses in “advanced economics” he gave at the Institute of Political Studies (now known as Sciences-Po). In this book, the author tried to put theory to work for action.
In 1978, at the time of the second oil shock, while still at the head of the CAP, Thierry de Montbrial published – as part of the Club of Rome and after the huge success of The Limits to Growth, the famous “Meadows Report of 1972 – Energie, le compte à rebours (editor Jean-Claude Lattès), translated into English under the title Energy: The Countdown. He used a method that would remain fundamental to him: the necessary complementarity between retrospective and prospective analysis, each of which is necessary for the intelligence of the other.
1979
Drawing on his previous experience and the reputation gained, Thierry de Montbrial founded the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri) , the first French think tank – legally independent from the government – which quickly became one of the most renowned, both in Europe and worldwide, in the field of international relations. He surrounded himself with experienced researchers such as Jean Klein, as well as a young and brilliant team, some of whom, such as Pierre Lellouche and Dominique Moïsi, and a little later Pierre Jacquet, would soon reach notoriety. In particular, Ifri publishes the quarterly review Politique étrangère, created in 1935 by the former Centre for Foreign Policy Studies (CEPE), as well as, each year since 1981, the report Ramses the first two editions of which were led by Albert Bressand. This report has nourished the minds of generations of French or French-speaking students.
Institutionally, three periods can be distinguished in the life of Ifri, as in that of its major counterparts and partners from the five continents. The first runs until 1990-1991, and thus covers a decade dominated by the intensification of the Cold War. The second ranged from 1990-1991 to 2007-2008, almost twenty years marked by the reunification of Europe, the enlargement of the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance; the deepening of the information technology revolution, the successes of emerging countries and globalisation; but also the rise of political Islamism and international terrorism, symbolised by the events of 11 September 2001. In 1995, Ifri found a “home” – entirely financed by private donations collected thanks to the action of its founder – which helped to consolidate its identity and allows it to suitably welcome heads of state or government and, more generally, high-ranking personalities and researchers or experts from all over the world.
The third period began in 2007-2008, with the world’s most serious economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression of the Thirties. The rise of China and tensions in East Asia, the ill-named “Arab Spring” and the worsening situation in the Middle East, the deterioration of relations between the Euro-Atlantic community and Russia, the revival of nationalism and the difficulties of economic cooperation are some of the characteristics of this new era, which is moreover dominated by the Internet civilisation.Convinced that there is no greater problem for the structural stability of the international system as a whole than that of global governance, Thierry de Montbrial created the World Policy Conference (WPC) , the first meeting of which took place in October 2008 in Evian, markedly in the presence of Presidents Sarkozy and Medvedev. In his opening address of the sixth edition of the WPC in Monaco in December 2013, he explains: “The mission of the WPC is to contribute to improving global governance in all its dimensions. These are not empty words, as the rapid increase in interdependence is both a threat and a benefit: a benefit in the sense that controlled opening is both spiritually and materially enriching; a threat since uncontrolled connectivity multiplies the risks of disaster. The challenge with respect to global governance is to maintain the likelihood of a reasonably open world and to do so by developing instruments that allow us to overcome economic and also political shocks, of all kinds.” In his introduction to the proceedings of the Monaco conference, Thierry de Montbrial also discussed an issue close to his heart, that of unity in diversity: “Not only can unity not be built against identities, but it presupposes, seemingly paradoxically, their deepening. This applies to political units at all levels.” With the foundation of the WPC, Thierry de Montbrial expressed his enduring belief acquired during his years at the CAP: in international relations as well as in ordinary life, peaceful coexistence, in the most profound sense of the word, entails both knowing oneself and an abiding willingness to reach out to others.
1981
Thierry de Montbrial became a member of the International Advisory Board of IBM-Europe. He would then be invited to join other advisory boards or boards of directors of large international companies. This type of experience would prove very useful for him to further his theoretical thinking and for his activities as the head of Ifri.
1983-2002
Member of the Board of Directors and then of the Executive Committee of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London.
1985
Publication of La Revanche de l’Histoire. While affirming that “history is the cemetery of prospective thinking”, this book, commended by the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques, “attempts to discern the directions of evolution of the international system and to make the distinction between continuity and change.” He dealt, as he did in 1974, with both economic and political issues. He drew on the method in the 1978 work, and introduced various concepts (gradual transformation, reform or revolution, structural stability, etc.), which the author would go on to elaborate.
1985-2015
President of the Austro-French Centre (CFA) for Rapprochement in Europe (ultimate name of this centre), an intergovernmental organisation initially created on the occasion of a meeting in 1976 between Chancellor Bruno Kreisky and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, to contribute to the détente then playing out. The project would not come to fruition until 1980, under the convoluted name “Franco-Austrian Centre for Meetings between European countries with differing economic and social systems” (in German, “Österreichisch-franzözisches Zentrum für Begegnungen aus europäischen Ländern mit verschiedenen wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Systemen”). The CFA’s partnership with Ifri began in 1983. Thierry de Montbrial was appointed Chairman in 1985. The initial partners to France and Austria were Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, with which Thierry de Montbrial was able to establish fruitful contacts from as early as 1983. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the enlargement of the European Union, the CFA entered a period of profound change. It owed its resounding success to Peter Jankowitsch’s personal commitment. Head of Bruno Kreisky’s cabinet at the time of the creation of the Centre, he was its Secretary General in Vienna for almost the entire period. The CFA enriched Ifri’s activities with Central and Eastern Europe.
1986
Co-directed with Bertrand Munier and Marcel Boiteux of Marchés, Capital et Incertitudes . The publication of this book, dedicated to the work of Maurice Allais, contributed to this economist’s being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1988. The chapter written by Thierry de Montbrial is entitled “Maurice Allais, an unheralded scholar”.
1988-1994
Member, then Chairman of the Editorial Committee of the Revue des deux mondes, the editor of which was the writer Jean Bothorel
1990
Publication of Que faire ?, a collection of texts in three parts, devoted respectively to international politics, economic policy and political philosophy.
First visit to Romania, a country for which Thierry de Montbrial immediately felt profound cultural affinities. He would develop strong friendships there. In 1999, he was elected Honorary Member of the Romanian Academy and would make a speech on that occasion about The Arrow of History. In 2002, he was alongside the President of the Romanian Academy, Eugen Simion, to launch an annual seminar in Bucharest entitled “Thinking Europe”. In 2012, he would publish a bilingual edition Journal from Romania / Jurnal Românesc relating to the 1990s-2011. In 2013, on his seventieth birthday, President Simion and Fundatia Nationala pentru Stiinta si Arta would give him as a gift a collection of his speeches made at the “Thinking Europe” seminar during the first decade of its existence, published in the form of a non-commercial edition. Thierry de Montbrial was named Doctor Honoris Causa of several Romanian universities. He is also Grand Officer of the Order of the Star of Romania.
1991-1992
At the request of Paul Germain – then Permanent Secretary (Secrétaire perpétuel) of the Académie des Sciences de Paris, who had been his colleague as a professor (of Mechanics) at the Ecole polytechnique – Thierry de Montbrial took over the presidency of the Fondation de l’Académie des Sciences pour le développement de la science et de ses applications. The work of this foundation would contribute to the creation, outside the Institut de France, of the Académie des Technologies, of which Thierry de Montbrial would be a founding member in 2000.
1992
Elected to the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques of the Institut de France, with an age record only beaten over more than a century by Jacques Rueff (the advisor to the General de Gaulle and future Chancellor of the Institut de France had been elected in 1944, at 48 years). Since his election, Thierry de Montbrial has presented numerous communications on current issues there, such as Eastern Europe Five Years After the Fall of the Wall or Turkey and Europe (2004), and more often on core issues such as What is a think tank? (2011), What is a power in the 21st century? (2013) or Forecasting (2014).
President of the Académie (and of the Institut de France) for 2001, Thierry de Montbrial – like many others – was convinced that “the Great Nation” had fallen ill due to its inability to reform. He thus chose a “France of the New Century” as the leading theme for the year, a title used both for his speech under the Coupole de l’Institut on 19 November 2001 and for the book published under his direction in early 2002. The speech on 19 November was preceded by one he made on 16 October 2001, during the public session of the five Academies under his presidency, entitled What future for France? Here is the first sentence of this speech: “The future of France is Europe. Not the ephemeral Europe of the great conquerors, that of Caesar, the Habsburg or the Bourbon, that of Charlemagne or Napoleon, but a free Europe, cemented by the consent of its components such as history has passed them down to us, Europe respectful of a cultural diversity that will be the foundation of its own culture and the source of fraternity based not on a Jacobin uniformising undertaking, but on the recognition of differences for all the value they bear”.Thierry de Montbrial also gave a foundational speech on Ecole polytechnique and thinkers of action, on the occasion of the bicentenary of this School, celebrated on 22 March 1994, and the reception speeches as foreign associate members of two great personalities: Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan (16 June 2008) and former President of the Italian Council Mario Monti (on 5 May 2014).
1993
Member of the Commission of the White Paper on National Defence (under the presidency of François Mitterrand and the government of Edouard Balladur).
1993-2001
In late 1992, Pierre Joxe, then Minister of Defence, asked Thierry de Montbrial to take over the chairmanship of the Foundation for Defence Studies (FED) from the Fondation pour les études de défense nationale (FEDN) created in the late 1960s by Michel Debré, and successively chaired by General Buis, General de Bordas, Admiral Lacoste, then Professor Pierre Dabezies. After a difficult start due to the circumstances surrounding its creation, the FED, soon renamed Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS) has become the leading French institution in its field, formally outside the administration.
1995-2008
In 1995, Thierry de Montbrial was elected Chair Professor at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM), a unique institution in French higher education, the origins of which date back, like the Ecole polytechnique, to 1794. In 2008, he became Professor Emeritus. Its Chair, entitled Applied economics, would soon be renamed Applied economics and international relations. In the first few years, his teaching focused exclusively on the foundations of economics and would lead to the release of a book, the first edition of which dates from 1999, co-signed with Emmanuelle Fauchart, university lecturer of his chair. The title of the book is Introduction à l’économie (publisher: Dunod).
The last period of Thierry de Montbrial’s teaching at CNAM, open to all, focused on the analysis of international relations. It was broadcast on France Culture radio. A few years beforehand, following a proposal by Alain Lancelot, then Director of the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, Thierry de Montbrial had introduced a course in this establishment entitled “Sketching a broad picture of the division of the contemporary world”. A summary of his course at the CNAM in this area was the subject of a small book in the collection Que Sais-Je ?, entitled Géographie politique, published in 2006.
1996
Publication of Mémoire du temps présent, which received the Ambassadors’ Prize, translated into German, Bulgarian, Polish, Romanian and Russian. This work was designed as the first part of a triptych, the second of which comprises the opening chapters of the annual report, Ramses, since 1989 and the third (published separately in 2002), which is mainly theoretical in nature. This approach is consistent with that of the author since the 1970s. In Mémoire du temps présent, Thierry de Montbrial immediately makes his position clear: “From the point of view of international relations as a whole, which is that of this book, the 20th century began with the First World War (1914-1918) and ended with the collapse of the Communist system (1989-1991). Thus, a short century. But also the most densely-charged in the history of humanity in the throes of global upheaval.” The purpose of the book is to “disassemble the workings of the international politics of a century coming to an end, in order to understand the ‘initial conditions’ of the first decades of the third millennium.” According to Thierry de Montbrial, “As this era draws to an end, we will not only remember the errors, the horrors and the woes as a pit can become a source of life, once planted. Thus, the 20th century will leave behind a set of achievements teeming with hope, to temper the follies of warring Man and improve his material conditions. However, it is still too early to expect a collective organisation, as elaborate as it may be, capable of preventing bloody conflicts, or of eradicating neediness.” The issue of global governance thus ensues.
2000
Publication of Pour combattre les pensées uniques. The “one-track thinking” criticised here is, first, the ideology of uniform globalisation without governance, and the ideology of the virtues of a market without borders; secondly, its opposite, the ideology of “economic horror” (Pierre Bourdieu, Viviane Forrester), the tightening of borders and the narrowing of interdependence, of the omniscient and omnipotent state. In this book, Thierry de Montbrial advocates for the reform of the State (in France and elsewhere), the organisation of interdependence (theme of governance) and the deepening of European construction – three subjects at the centre of the work of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques during his year as President, in 2001.
Publication of Dictionnaire de stratégie, as part of the “Presses Universitaires de France” dictionary collection. This collective work was carried out under the joint leadership of Thierry de Montbrial and Jean Klein, professor at the Sorbonne and researcher at Ifri, with the collaboration of Sabine Jansen, then lecturer at CNAM, attached to the Applied Economics and International Relations Chair. This ambitious editorial undertaking was based on an observation: the concept of strategy is widely misunderstood by most of its discussants. Moreover, experience has shown the public’s great difficulty, even when educated, in reasoning strategically in the face of current events. In other words, politics in the broad sense remains dominated by more or less overt interests, emotions and passions, and all the unintended consequences that result. Mainly devoted to military strategy, the Dictionnaire also opens up perspectives on the concept of corporate strategy and more generally in economics. Thierry de Montbrial himself wrote the articles “Strategy” and “Game Theory” of this book, which was translated into Arabic.
2001
On 13 January 2001, Thierry de Montbrial gave a lecture before the Société française de philosophie, entitled L’informatique et la pensée . In a reflection somewhat related to his reception speech at the Romanian Academy, he addresses three complementary themes in particular: (1) thinking transcends binary logic that underpins information technologies and their applications, just as consciousness does not emerge from a simple molecular combination; (2) no language, even that of mathematics, can remain strictly contained in formal logic; (3) in the long term, information technologies could contribute to human evolution (in the sense of evolutionary theory). More fundamentally, the question must be raised as to whether, in the coming century, man will not participate – in conditions inherently unpredictable – to his own evolution.
2002
Publication of L’Action et le système du monde (hereinafter referred to as the three letters ASM). This work, which constitutes the third part of the triptych (alongside Mémoire du temps présent and Ramses), takes up and extends Thierry de Montbrial’s previous work on praxeology, “the science of action”, particularly in the area of international relations and strategy. With regard to strategy, he draws in particular on an in-depth study of Clausewitz. His ambition is similar to that of Raymond Aron’s two classic works: Paix et guerre entre les nations (1962); Penser la guerre, Clausewitz (1976). ASM introduces a range of concepts (active units endowed with a culture and organisation, political units, praxeological problems – particularly political and international –, collective goods and public goods, etc.). Some of these concepts, such as collective and public goods, are traditional. However, they are addressed here in an original manner. For ASM, political units are active units that consider themselves sovereign, for example Al-Qaeda. All of this allows a conception of international relations that spills beyond the framework of States, but that does not identify itself with vague global sociology. ASM’s conceptual system also helps clarify the content of areas such as geopolitics, political geography, etc.
Presented with the Georges Pompidou Award, ASM was widely praised by criticism and was the subject of an exchange published in Le Débat (No. 128, January – February 2004). It has been translated into seven languages (English, Bulgarian, Chinese, Polish, Romanian, Russian and Serbian). The English version, published in 2013, bears the title Action and Reaction in the World System – The Dynamics of Economic and Political Power, and attracted this comment by Henry Kissinger: “A masterful new book … a meditation that considers some of the most profound questions of contemporary international order. It may well become a standard by which other works on global governance are measured”.2003
Thierry de Montbrial received the Grand Prix 2003 of the Société de Géographie for his life’s work, giving a conference entitled What is political geography?, based on ASM’s concepts. In his view, political geography appears to be a synthesis between two major disciplines, history and geography; both studied in the long term and “filtered” by praxeology (political issues, international problems). Strictly speaking, geopolitics is the part of political geography that focuses on territorial ideologies. Of course, we know that, for the general public, the word geopolitics is now used as synonymous with “international politics.” According to Thierry de Montbrial, certain economic assets, such as cultural or agricultural goods, which are geographically located, may, during certain periods, carry the dual character of private and public goods, which are at the root of a significant category of international problems.
Publication of Evénements et temps quasi-leibnizien, a study prepared as part of a working group of the Institut de France chaired by Bernard d’Espagnat on the philosophical implications of contemporary science. This study is part of the discussions that Thierry de Montbrial has long held on chronos and kaïros, both behind the scenes of his Berkeley thesis and his work on monetary equilibrium, and around his speech in Bucharest or his conference on IT and thought. For humans, time is first and foremost an element of our consciousness, as elusive as it is immediate. In an initial phase, the scientific approach made it possible to conceptualise time as a mathematical object which is in principle independent of any reference to matter or energy, Newtonian time. Unsatisfied with this shortcut, the Leibnizian approach is based on the human notion of an event, not in the sense of the theory of relativity, but in that developed by psychologists or historians. In this conception, a mathematical construct of time formally equivalent to Newtonian time – and naturally pre-relativistic – can be carried out based on a partial, intersubjectively-founded order relating event pairs. From a purely formal point of view too, this construct is of the same nature as, for example, that of cardinal utility in economics.
For Thierry de Montbrial, any representation of time holds a Leibnizian strain. In physics, calling into question in a “top-down” (general relativity) or “bottom-up” (physics of particles) manner presupposes a starting object, to which reference must necessarily be made. The time for general relativity is therefore locally approximately Newtonian. Ordinary language seems inevitably trapped in Leibnizian time. This raises questions about what was happening “before” the Big Bang, about the time that has elapsed “since” the Big Bang, about what we were “before” or what we will become “after” death, etc. The Old and New Testament speak of the Logos at the “start” of everything (and therefore “before” time), and also about what awaits humans “after” the end of time. Some Eastern philosophies make it possible to conceive the abolition of time, as in Nirvana Buddhism; or ideas like “eternity is in the moment.” In his laborious On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, Husserl implicitly uses time (Newtonian or Leibnizian) to “explain” the consciousness of time… All knowledge progresses in a spiral. With regard to time, to identify circularity, we first need to start from human consciousness to move towards Leibnizian time, then return to human consciousness and so on. For Thierry de Montbrial, the radically indefinable concepts of consciousness and time are inseparable. Knowledge has neither origin nor end.Publication of Quinze ans qui bouleversèrent le monde. This book, which is the second part of the triptych, is a chronicle of the events since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, based on the opening chapters which Thierry de Montbrial annually writes in July with a view to the publication of Ramses to come the following September. For the author, who responds in the heat of the events and refers to Mémoires d’outre-tombe by Chateaubriand, 1989 marks as much of a clean break as 1789. In the Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire , Raymond Aron writes that the art of the historian is “to return to the past the uncertainty of the future”. The uncertainty of the present, as well, due to the imperfection of the information available to those shaping “events” as well as to those witnessing them – on different scales, and for many reasons. Even more than the historian, the observer of his time adopts a point of view that is subjective and is very insufficiently – or at least very partially – informed. All of this stems from a living conception of history, such as that of the columnists of the past or, on a different time scale (this notion of time scale is crucial), that of today’s editorialists, trapped in instantaneousness. Unsurprisingly, there is a link between Quinze ans qui bouleversèrent le monde and the study on Leibnizian time, as history reasons on “events”, and that events themselves are often intellectual after-the-scenes elaborations that are formed and unravelled in turn. Thierry de Montbrial’s method (an annual synthetic review of the international system, repeated over a long period of time) also lends itself well to an extensive reflection on forecasting and the concept of forecast error.
2004
Publication of La guerre et la diversité du monde, a selection of articles published in Le Monde, where Thierry de Montbrial is an associate editorialist since 2002, after having been an editorialist and member of the editorial committee of Le Figaro between 1989 and 2001.
2006
Publication of Il est nécessaire d’espérer pour entreprendre. Like the 1990 book (Que Faire ?), this is a three-part collection, the inspiration of which is encapsulated in its title. The first part is a series of portraits of exceptional personalities most of whom the author knew personally, such as Louise Weiss, Maurice Allais, Michel Crozier, Louis Armand or Laurent Schwartz. The latter, one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, also played an important role in French society. Thierry de Montbrial, who knew him very well as a student and later as a colleague, draws on his study originally published in La Gazette des mathématiciens in 2003, to clarify his views in the field of discovery or invention, and more generally on the mechanisms used to understand major theories such as measure theory in mathematics or quantum mechanics in physics. Two chapters relate to historical figures, undeniably very different but who also inspired Thierry de Montbrial: Benjamin Franklin and Joan of Arc. The second part of the book deals with France, Europe and international relations. It includes an overview of François Mitterrand’s foreign policy. The third, finally, includes some of the studies already mentioned and texts written for specific circumstances.
2007
Member of the Commission of the White Paper on Defence and National Security (under President Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister François Fillon).
2008
Publication of Vingt ans qui bouleversèrent le monde. For Thierry de Montbrial, this was not simply a matter of adding five chapters to the 2003 book, pending the Twenty-five years, then the Thirty years… taking the point of view Mémoire du temps présent, according to which the 20th century ended with the fall of the communist system in 1989-1991, he deems that the rather muddled transition period that followed clearly ended in 2007-2008 with the advent of a major economic crisis (see above, in 1979, the third period in Ifri’s history).
First edition of the World Policy Conference (WPC) in Evian (5-8 October).
2009
On 7 May 2009, during a formal session organised in his honour at the Henri Poincaré Amphitheatre of the Ecole Polytechnique after four decades of teaching in this school, Thierry de Montbrial gave a “final lesson” entitled Geopolitics between war and peace. He observed: “Historically, geopolitics first took flight as an ideological instrument in the service of war. It is high time that it be put to work for peace; of an agreed peace […] understood as construction and not as a naïve endeavour.” This construction, which in essence is as fragile as grammar for languages, requires solid institutions. And thus returns the grand undertaking of the WPC – launched in 2008, which is to contribute to this construction, in which we can hope to see the organisation of the future “global village” announced by MacLuhan. Following on from this last metaphor, one could say that the European Union is destined to become a vibrant neighbourhood in this global village.
2010
Speech entitled Political Economics between Science, Ideology and Governance, given in Barcelona by Thierry de Montbrial when he was inducted into the Real Academia de Ciencias Economicas y Financieras, 18 March 2010. This text, presented as a series of reflections on the first major economic crisis of the 21st century, notably includes, from a purely conceptual point of view, an original analysis on the need to move beyond the Platonic view of models of economic equilibrium and their falsely temporal extension – a view that stems from what, in Chapter IV of l’Evolution créatrice, Bergson calls “the cinematographic mechanism of thought and the mechanistic illusion.” According to Thierry de Montbrial, Bergsonian time must be brought into the economic rationale, i.e. the notion of “latitude of creation”, which is not of the same nature as the “residue” of the econometric or theoretical equations, the value of which would be known if we were informed of “the state of nature”, in the precise sense that probability theory gives this term. In other words, we need to think the radical unknown, and all the more so the unknown for which no probability can be established. This radical unknown goes beyond Taleb’s black swans, which Thierry de Montbrial also discussed in his 16 June 2014 speech on forecasting to the Académie des sciences morales et politiques. This is what former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had in mind when he gave his memoirs the title Known and Unknown (published in 2011), thus suggesting that it is necessary to live with unknown unknowns… For Thierry de Montbrial, the “latitude of creation” in the sense of Bergson constitutes the most fundamental limit to the relevance of mathematical models in economics, well beyond non-linearity and the phenomenon of chaos. In L’économie politique entre science, idéologie et gouvernance, he thus continues his reflections on time and the concept of event. He also reflects on the concept of kaïros, very present in various forms in his previous writings, in particular ASM.
2011
At the request of Eugen Simion, Thierry de Montbrial wrote a preface for the Opere fundamentale collection (Fundamental Works) ahead of the publication of a new translation of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. He seized this opportunity to explore in greater depth his thoughts on time, space, matter and energy, memory or rather the various forms of memory and creation. After this publication, he continued his investigations by mobilising a scientific past of which he never lost sight, through readings or conversations with colleagues. The enhanced text resulting from the preface of 2011 is published in La Pensée et l’Action, released in 2015, under the title Vagabondages autour de Proust.
2012
Publication of Journal de Russie. 1977-2001. Thierry de Montbrial wrote in his foreword: “Frequently travelling far and wide as Head of the CAP, and then of Ifri, I began to keep a journal, which was at first brief and roughly written – as the reader of this volume will see. Anyone who cares to take guard against the “sins of memory” [reference to psychologist Daniel Schacter’s book, The Seven Sins of Memory], all the while seeing at least some appeal in the act of writing, keeping a journal is a rewarding exercise.” It is a testament for history, especially as the author met a certain number of the major actors of the time, and perhaps above all, a form of reflection on the human condition. Despite its five hundred pages, this work is only a very small part of the whole, including Journal de Roumanie also published in 2012. As regards to his travels, the next volumes planned are Journal d’Asie and Journal d’Occident.
2014
Publication in Le Débat of “Think tanks à la française”, co-signed with Thomas Gomart. “This article was penned with three purposes in mind. First, it aims to provide perspective to [the definition of think tanks given by Thierry de Montbrial in his 2011 speech to the Académie des sciences morales et politiques], not from an inclusive or exclusive perspective, but by highlighting the importance of context, in particular historical. Secondly, it etches out the profile of the think-tanker as a professional. It is a profession that abides by production rules and a social framework, the interactions of which need to be clearly understood. Lastly, it looks into the connections between think-tanks and civil society. Anyone who believes in the power of civil society to mobilise and convince – regardless of the political regime in which it operates – cannot look down indifferently upon think-tanks, possible embryos of a responsible global civil society”. This work is firmly in line with the perspective of think tanks of the fourth generation, which emerged in 2008. “Still in gestation, the fourth generation aspires to contribute directly or indirectly to global governance efforts. For the authors, any in-depth contemporary reflection on the concept of influence implies a serious interest taken in the topic of think tanks.”
2015
Thierry de Montbrial became the executive chairman of Ifri following a revamping of the statutes of the think tank, which he initiated in order to ensure the institute’s sustainability in the Medium- to Long-term. He entrusted Thomas Gomart with the position of director. In this new position, Thierry de Montbrial is notably responsible for the strategy and governance of the institute as well as is directly involved in certain activities, such as the organisation of major events, or in the co-direction of Ramses alongside Dominique David. He further chairs the World Police Conference.
Publication of Une goutte d’eau et l’Océan. Journal d’une quête de sens (1977-2014), released by Albin Michel. It is the third book derived from his journal and gathers thoughts and reflections around two acceptations of the concept of knowledge: a scientific understanding, based on objectified intersubjectivity, and one which stems from the internal spiritual experience combined to the power of credible testimonies. Due to the nature of this subject, this book is a significant testimony.
Publication in French of a first volume, gathering selected works of Thierry de Montbrial, in the collection Opere Fundamentale of the Romanian Academy directed by the literary scholar and critic Eugen Simion. Under the title La Pensée et l’Action, this 1700-page volume includes two main parts. The first contains “Action and the world system” as well as seven subsequent complementary studies. The second comprises four parts: the first focuses on questions linked to the notion of time; the second is entitled “Around France and Europe”; the third gathers diverse portraits and personalities, and the fourth, under the rubric of “Circumstances”, includes various texts pertaining to the thought-action couple. Moreover, the book contains a long introduction by Professor Simion and, in accordance with the established structure of the collection, a series of testimonies on the author and his work told over time.
2017
Publication in January, by Odile Jacob, of the collective work Notre intérêt national – quelle politique étrangère de la France ?, co-directed by Thierry de Montbrial and Thomas Gomart. This book is the result of a group effort including some of the most eminent French personalities in the field of international politics. This group met during part of the previous year, in anticipation of the upcoming April-May 2017 presidential elections, with a view of rehabilitating the concept of national interest. Such concept must be distinguished from Realpolitik. Although national interest can be narrowly construed, such as in the United States under the Trump administration, it may be more broadly defined, such as to include the promotion of human rights. National interest is shaped by geography, history, as well as the economy, that is, means. Indeed, the establishment of national interest needs to be realistic in order to remain credible. This book addresses all of these major questions in a concrete and pragmatic way.
Publication in October by Albin Michel, of Vivre le temps des troubles, an essay which aims to open the door to a better understanding of our time, after the disillusions of a “happy” globalisation: “For many observers, the world of today is indecipherable. Earth has been shaken to such extent that certain scientists refer to the current era as one of accelerated geology. The resurgence of barbarism and terrorism in the name of religion is perceived as a historical regression. Meanwhile, waves of technological innovations continue to wash over us, notably in the fields of energy and information, bringing economic, ecological and social transformations and allowing us to glimpse at an accelerated evolution of the human being. Never before has the present been subjected to such a tectonic shock between its future and its past, the consequences of which seem both difficult to predict and at times nerve-racking. Yet, lying between the naive belief in the endless benefits of technology and resignation to a cycle of disasters is room to learn of a world governance built within the confines of a geopolitics aiming to organise itself to extricate the best of the human experience.” Thierry de Montbrial also formulated this essay as a form of manifesto to support the World Police Conference.
[Publication of Les boîtes à idées de Marianne. Etat, expertise et relations internationales en France, written by Sabine Jansen and released by Cerf (preface by Georges-Henri Soutou). This 800-page book, result of an extensive academic endeavour (doctoral thesis to direct research in the field of history) mostly based on primary records and secondarily, on testimonies, recounts the origin and rise of think tanks in France, chiefly through the examples of the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, the Centre for Analysis and Forecasting of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and especially Ifri, the first years of which are analysed by the author.]
3 to 5 November 2017: tenth edition of the World Policy Conference in Marrakech. The event was notably acclaimed by the King of Morocco, Mohamed VI, and by French President, Emmanuel Macron.
2018
Publication, in French, of a second volume comprising selected works of Thierry de Montbrial, in the collection Opere Fundamentale of the Romanian Academy, under the title of Histoire de mon temps. This volume, of approximately 1700 pages (similarly to the first), encloses the 1996 book, Mémoire du temps present, and all the introductions of the Ramses books between 1984 and 2017. It thus corresponds to the two first sections of the triptych previously referred to (see below, 1996). The third section of this triptych constitutes the first part of the 2015 volume La Pensée et l’Action. In addition to the foreword by Professor Simion, Histoire de mon temps includes in its introduction a thorough methodological study by the author on immediate history and the notion of influence. It also comprises diverse reflections on think tanks. The “Comments” section of the volume holds three unpublished studies on Thierry de Montbrial’s life’s work, respectively signed by Georges-Henri Soutou, member of the Institut de Farnce and Professor Emeritus at the Sorbonne University; Alain Dejammet, Ambassador of France; and Siméon Anguelov, former research director in Solid-State Chemistry, former Executive Director of the Balkan Political Club, and Bulgarian Ambassador to France (1991-1997).
The 11th edition of the World Policy Conference took place in Rabat, Morocco, on October 26-28, 2018.
École Polytechnique (1963-1965)
Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris (1966-1969)
University of California, Berkeley. PhD in Mathematical Economics (1971) under the supervision of Professor Gérard Debreu (Nobel Laureate for Economics, 1983)