Scientists, Engineers, and Track-Two Diplomacy A Half-Century of U.S.-Russian Interacademy Cooperation (2004) / Chapter Skim
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2. Perestroika and Expansion of Scientific Cooperation
2. Perestroika and Expansion of Scientific Cooperation
Pages 15-29
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From page 15... ...
Soviet army troops had returned from Afghanistan, and excessive military expenditures had increasingly become the target of criticism from within the government and in the press. Private restaurants, bakeries, and repair shops were springing up in cities throughout the country, as the government heralded the establishment of small private enterprises as an important mechanism for absorbing some of the underutilized workforce within the country (Kaiser, 1988/891.
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From page 16... ...
In 1987 and again in 1990 several of his academic advisers accompanied him to summit meetings in Washington, and special sessions were arranged for them at the NAS. The agendas for these meetings, which were very rich, included highly informative discussions of economic reform, the legal framework for perestroika, international cooperation in space
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From page 17... ...
MacArthur Foundation to support activities with colleagues in the Soviet Union and China, and these funds enabled the NAS to consider a variety of new program approaches (NRC, 1983-1984a: 31. The funds were transferred to the NAS at the outset of the 10-year period, and their investment earnings eventually increased the available funding to over $5 million, with the bulk of the funds devoted to the Soviet engagement program.
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From page 18... ...
The promising young scholars who participated addressed a variety of interesting topics, including enterprise reform, environmental economics, the innovation process, internal currency markets, and price reform. Several of the participants kept in touch after the workshops, and they soon gained recognition from their American and Soviet peers within and outside government for their insightful views of the Soviet economic transition (NRC, 1990f: 51.
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From page 19... ...
Global ecology was a topic of interest to both scientists and engineers, and, within that context, biodiversity and the impending extinction of thousands of plant and animal species were popular themes for exchange visits by groups of specialists. In meetings attended by representatives of regulatory authorities, the academies addressed environmental monitoring, the health effects of pollutants, ecological resiliency, and global and regional-scale studies of environmental change.
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From page 21... ...
Concerned about other harmful incidents that could be produced by nuclear activities, the two academies began organizing workshops on nuclear topics, and such efforts continue to this day. Risk assessment and reactor safety received greater attention worldwide after the Chernobyl accident, and they became useful focal points for interacademy discussions.
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From page 23... ...
The people who work in such facilities are so accustomed to secrecy that they have little incentive to challenge security procedures no matter how much out of date. A new aspect of interacademy cooperation during the 1980s was the facilitation of bilateral projects developed and carried out independently by individual scientists or institutions in the two countries.
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From page 24... ...
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From page 25... ...
Department of Health, Education end welfare, which signed an array of agreements with the Soviet Ministry of Health to address the same issues as well as a few others. This onetime series of IOM exchange visits clearly helped to jump-start cooperation by focusing attention on both sides of the ocean on common problems of growing importance worldwide (NRC, 1988b: 21.2 The late 1980s saw an upsurge of interest within the two governments and in the U.S.
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From page 26... ...
companies such as Corning, Ralston Purina, and Monsanto that were particularly interested in the research activities of the ASUSSR and the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences participated in the NAS-ASUSSR workshops. REFLECTIONS ON THE EXPANSION OF COOPERATION The proliferation of cooperative activities through the interacademy channel and through many other channels clearly indicated that the days of central planning of bilateral cooperation had come to an end.
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From page 27... ...
Although the U.S. Department of State and the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs obviously remained significant organizations in the approval of activities, they had in large measure, but not entirely, become the scorekeepers rather than the controllers of cooperation.
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From page 28... ...
They included: · an emphasis on projects in fields in which both countries were world leaders · a new focus on scientific problems of global dimensions, particularly problems in the environmental and atmospheric sciences · concentration of activities in nonsensitive areas · greater access to unique data banks and scientifically important geographic areas · consistency of policies of counterpart organizations with the provisions of the Helsinki Accords (particularly human rights provisions) , with annual discussions of the means to foster cooperation within this framework · more active participation in cooperative endeavors by leading scientists, and particularly academy members, than in the past · more exchange visits based on invitations from foreign colleagues, in contrast to the earlier system of nomination of exchangers by the respective academies (NRC, 19874: 61.
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From page 29... ...
Advocates of scientific cooperation argued that the objectivity and openness of scientific research were characteristics that would contribute to such positive changes. But this political motivation for engagement never supplanted scientific benefits as the primary rationale for contacts (U.S.
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