Scientists, Engineers, and Track-Two Diplomacy A Half-Century of U.S.-Russian Interacademy Cooperation (2004) / Chapter Skim
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1. U.S.-soviet Scientific Cooperation in the Age of Confrontation
1. U.S.-soviet Scientific Cooperation in the Age of Confrontation
Pages 1-14
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From page 1... ...
Henry Kissinger, 1976 _ ' n 1955, with East-West political relations temporarily on the mend, I the heads of state and then the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union, France, England, and the United States met in Geneva, where they discussed a program for increased contacts with the Soviet Union. The Soviets rejected the Western emphasis on multilateral approaches, but suggested that some ofthe proposals might be transformed into bilateral programs, and particularly cultural exchanges of individuals and groups.
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From page 2... ...
In that year, as discussed later in this chapter, adjustments were made in the program because of the internal exile in Russia of nuclear physicist and dissident Andrey Sahkarov, but the program continued nevertheless uninterrupted.] Soon, the Bolshoi and Kirov ballet companies became familiar attractions in the United States.
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From page 3... ...
A specific example of the coupling of government ancl academy interests occurred in the early 1970s when Secretary of State Henry Kissinger successfully promoted a decade of expanded bilateral intergovernmental scientific ancl technological cooperation as one of the centerpieces of U.S. efforts to improve relations between the two countries.
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From page 4... ...
Also during this period when secrecy cloaked many scientific activities in the Soviet Union, the program provided an important channel through which American scientists could gain access to Soviet colleagues, facilities, and databases and through which Soviet scientists could make personal contacts with Americans whose names they had frequently seen on Western publications. In December 1977 a review panel established by the NAS (often referred to as the Kaysen panel in recognition of its chair, Carl Kaysen of Princeton University)
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From page 6... ...
TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER AND NATIONAL SECURITY . In response to increased interest, particularly by the Soviet government, in acquiring insights through exchanges revolving around the application of technologies to industrial problems, the interacademy program slowly expanded from basic research to encompass technological research and engineering innovations.
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From page 7... ...
At the same time, American visitors to the Soviet Union continued to report that Soviet security officials were interfering in the visitors' activities.3 During the early 1 980s, many voices in Washington argued that scientific cooperation with the Soviet Union made little sense when that country was using every means at its disposal to gain a technological edge in all aspects of military science and technology. These advocates of scientific isolation of the Soviet Union, who were housed primarily in the Department of Defense, caused considerable confusion both within Congress and throughout the government about the appropriateness of scientific cooperation (Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, 19851.
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From page 8... ...
The two academies designated groups of specialists with extensive personal experience in international security affairs to hold an exploratory meeting in lune 1981 about the desirability of undertaking discussions on significant aspects of international security and arms control. The specialists agreed on the importance of the proposed initiative and developed the initial framework for a series of closed interacademy meetings dealing with substantive scientific and technical issues.
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From page 9... ...
Some American activists urged American scientists to refuse to cooperate with Soviet colleagues until the problems of the dissidents and refuseniks were resolved satisfactorily, and these activists clearly had an impact on the willingness of at least a few American scientists to receive Soviet visitors under the interacademy exchange program. Moreover, at times, leaders ofthe NAS appealed to their ASUSSR counterparts for information on the status of specific scientists believed to be imprisoned, and these formal appeals became a significant element of interacademy relations.
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The decision immediately affected activities planned in physics, science policy, and experimental psychology, and it placed a general damper on developing new workshop proposals that were in the formative stages (NRC, 1980: 11. At the same time, however, the Council agreed that decisions about individual scientific visits were matters properly left to the consciences of the participating individuals, and the interacademy program of individual exchanges continued unabated.
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From page 11... ...
Russian security services will continue to have the upper hand in cases involving alleged espionage, but the RAS will nevertheless be a significant channel for expressions of Western concerns about human rights violations. REVIEWING THE EARLY RECORD During the 1970s and early 1980s, more than 25 evaluations of U.S.Soviet cooperative efforts in science and technology activities were carried out by the U.S.
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From page 12... ...
· The stable and open channels of communication played a very valuable role in efforts to stay abreast of Soviet achievements and to identify Soviet scientists who could contribute to overall international scientific efforts. · In general, the leakage of militarily sensitive technology, or knowhow, to the Soviet Union through bilateral scientific exchanges was minimal, largely because there had been little cooperation in areas of military significance.
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From page 13... ...
The Soviets were found not to be grossly stronger than the United States in any of these fields. Source: OSTP (1985: 18~.
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From page 14... ...
In the well-known Siberian science city of Akademgorodok, for example, the schools were able to find a few computers only because concerned parents employed at the Computer Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences diverted to the schools computers that would not be missed during inventories (NRC, 1988c: 31. In short, Soviet political and scientific leaders became painfully aware that their centralized planning system was not in tune with the more effective approaches to managing technologies that were fueling economic growth around the world.
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