Copyright © 1999
by Robert G. Morris
CHAPTER 1. The Nature of Science and of Foreign Affairs
"Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another."Science and Technology
-Thomas Hobbes"...Foreign affairs is an art and not a science."
-Dean G. Acheson
"Science" is organized, measurable knowledge about the world around us and the conclusions that may be drawn from this knowledge. Its collection is carried out according to rules that permit anyone employing them to reach the same conclusions. Thus ideally science is free of opinion. Besides collection of facts, science is the arrangement of facts into patterns, relationships, dependencies and consequences. One sees causes and effects. Laws appear, then truths. The whole procedure leads to methods for discovering and testing new patterns and relationships.
Science is highly quantitative in its description of the world around us (that is, it uses measures and numbers). It is more: science also allows us to predict on the basis of previous experience and tests what may happen in the future. It is not magic or infallible. Science weighs evidence, compares it with theories and predicts outcomes. It generalizes on the basis of a few observations. It says, for example, that the density or electrical resistance of all copper metal is a basic property of copper that can be determined from the density and resistance of any representative sample if the measurements are carried out under the same rules.
Science is the study of the material world: it is physics, chemistry, geology and astronomy; and of the living world: biology, psychology, sociology and economics. Physics is the easiest: all its subjects are inanimate: solids, liquids and their motions and behavior under heat, light and electric and magnetic fields, gravity and subtle nuclear forces. Chemistry deals with more complex structures and reactions, and the number of variables to keep track of in biology, psychology and sociology is so great as to render their pursuit a tremendous challenge.
All science is provisional -- conclusions are only true until further notice. It is nevertheless substantial. The "great truths" of science have withstood the test of time but remain "true" only until further notice. Thus, on repeated glance, Newton's laws of motion, velocity and acceleration hold for all common experience and probably always will. This does not mean that Newtonian laws and logic are permanently valid in all circumstances. For example, they do not hold for the tiniest of particles outside our present direct or even future experience. And they certainly have no application to foreign affairs.
"Technology" is the application of science to fulfilling human needs. It is roughly the same as "engineering." "Research" is the pursuit of science or technology through investigation, study and experiment directed toward discovery. When used in the context of science, technology and research, "development" is the same pursuit but with a particular useful application in mind, a useful result or discovery. The scientist is usually directed by curiosity; the technologist by need.
Distinction is often made between basic and applied science, basic and applied research. Basic science is the pursuit of knowledge without immediate thought of application, perhaps "pure science." One discovers x-rays or penicillin. Applied science differs little from technology: there is an application in mind: one devises a nuclear power reactor or duplicates the body's insulin in the laboratory.
For the sake of brevity here
"science" can mean "science" or "technology" or even "science and technology."
Sometimes the abbreviation for "science and technology" (or "scientific
and technological") will be "S&T." "Research and development"
may become "R&D."
Few human activities are more universal than science (or technology or research or development). By its detached, neutral and objective nature, science transcends artificial barriers such as national boundaries. Ideally a discipline of trials, facts and proofs, science broadly speaking is beyond politics in the practical sense, in a way that economics can never be, dealing as it does with ownership, wealth, labor and other factors whose measurement and interrelationships are more ambiguous than scientific factors.
This universality or neutrality makes science a likely subject for use in foreign affairs. Who can object on policy or political grounds to cultural exchanges, trading of scientific counterparts, joint research into the secrets of the universe?
No country has a monopoly in science. Talent and facility are present in the poorest, most backward countries as well as in the mightiest industrial and economic superpowers. Like the love of painting, music and even freedom, the dedication to scientific inquiry seems to be a fundamental human urge, not an acquired talent. Mathematics, the language of science, is as universal as music. Along with cultural pursuits and sports, science offers a universal or fundamental international activity readily understood and widely practiced despite ideological and economic differences. There is no Japanese science or South African science or Israeli science or Russian science -- no capitalist, no communist science. There is just science.
Scientists seize on a new idea, theory or measurement with an objectivity that ignores national boundaries, language, politics and religion. Scientists, like opera singers, rock stars and orchestra conductors, are truly international citizens. They may live in Urbana, Monte Carlo, Buenos Aires or Cairo, but their professional realm is the universe of ideas that knows no artificial strictures. Scientists meet in international conferences and publish in international journals, piecing together communications with scraps of unmastered French, Russian, English and Japanese. They are all on the Internet, Scientists rally to the support of colleagues oppressed by their governments, restricted in their communication and movements. Western scientists played a decisive role in buoying up the spirits of the Soviet intelligentsia since World War II, helping to keep alive the concepts of support, objectivity and free exchange of ideas.
The universality of science
makes its role in international affairs inevitable. The growth of
U.S. science at the time of the Second World War, together with the worldwide
pursuit of technological solutions for the problems of national security,
economic development, environmental protection and human welfare, suddenly
promoted science as an issue, almost a cause, in foreign affairs.
It took its place with the traditional intergovernmental relations and
consular matters along with tariffs, trade and finance. This work
describes some of the ways science achieved this importance and how United
States institutions organized for its application.
"Foreign affairs" means the conduct of business between governments for themselves and for their citizens. An example of the first would be a trade agreement and of the second an agreement on work permits for the citizens of each in the other country. "Affairs" are not limited to business in the commercial sense, but rather include dealings, transactions, negotiations, alliances, arrangements, agreements, doings, exchanges of views, extraditions, admissions and expulsions and many other actions carried on between governments.
"Foreign affairs" means essentially the same thing as "foreign relations." One emphasizes the business, one the mechanisms. The essential overlap is apparent in the names of the committees in the United States Congress treating the same subject matter: the International Relations Committee in the House of Representatives and the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate. "Foreign affairs" is preferred in this book as being somewhat more inclusive of the actions -- or affairs -- between countries that have relations.
The president, under the general executive powers granted by the Constitution and his specific powers to make treaties and to appoint and receive ambassadors, conducts foreign affairs. Presidents delegate this conduct to the Secretary of State; the degree of delegation depends on the two officials. Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson said that a president can't be his own secretary of state but that he could prevent anyone else from being it. The secretary of state is assisted by a small circle of political appointees, foreign service officers (FSOs) and civil servants. The workers at the Department of State in Washington are grouped in bureaus that address foreign affairs continent-by-continent and country-by-country (the geographic bureaus), and others that handle issues that affect more than one country: among others, economic issues, drugs, arms control -- and, beginning after World War II, science and technology.
Although foreign affairs are, of course, conducted with individual countries through their embassies in Washington, the bulk of the intercourse takes place through our embassies in the countries concerned. Embassies are headed by an ambassador appointed by the president as his personal representative to the foreign government, his personal delegate in the conduct of foreign affairs with that country. All foreign service officers serving in embassies or in Washington are career employees appointed on the basis of merit, approved by the Senate and confirmed by presidential writ. They are immune to capricious dismissal. While many FSOs become ambassadors, the president may, and often does, appoint noncareer persons as ambassadors.
The embassy abroad is almost feudal in its organization and operation. The ambassador is the supreme power in matters not only of foreign affairs but of housing, working assignments and conduct. He is also in charge of all U.S. government employees (except military forces) in the entire country. Nevertheless, the State Department supplies only a fraction of U.S. government personnel abroad, and those from other departments are spread across the world carrying out their own duties under instruction from their own superiors, with varying degrees of coordination in Washington and in the country in question.
Legitimate foreign affairs functions of other departments that are difficult to coordinate. These include promotion of U.S. commercial interests by the Commerce Department, cooperation in scientific and cultural activities of interest to many departments and agencies like the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), military liaison by the Defense Department (under the ambassador in the embassy), drug control by the Drug Enforcement Agency and information dissemination and cultural exchanges by the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) .
The purpose of foreign policy as evidenced in U.S. foreign affairs is the advancement of U.S. national interests: military security, promotion of economic prosperity, safeguarding and improving public health, regulation of foreign visitors and immigrants to the United States and protecting the rights of U.S. citizens and businesses abroad. Within this wide spectrum of interests are many generally shared by other nations, and in constructive foreign affairs each one tries to maximize his own benefits by overlapping with interests of others. Part of these shared interests depend on science and technology: science cooperation, environmental protection, nuclear nonproliferation and economic development.
End of Chapter 1