CHAPTER 12.  Science and Technology for Development at the United NationsUnited Nations United Nations 1974-6
 

"The world state is inherent in the United Nations as an oak tree is in an acorn."
Walter Lippmann

Sixth Special Session of the UN General Assembly (1974)
The sixth special session of the UN General Assembly in 1974 was devoted to raw materials and development.  It produced a program of action to establish a new international economic order (NIEO).  Under the NIEO, food production was to be increased, restrictive business practices eliminated and the main purveyors of technology -- the multinational corporations (MNCs), the bÍtes noirs of the LDCs -- subjected to regulation.  Although the session adopted the program after limited debate, the United States and other developed countries expressed numerous reservations.

After the unsatisfactory sixth special session came a rancorous twenty-ninth regular session of the General Assembly.  The developing-country caucus (Group of 77 or G-77, a traditional name despite its eventual membership of over one hundred) promoted adoption of their charter of economic rights and duties (CERDS).  Both NIEO and CERDS resulted from ideas proposed on the G-77's first staging ground, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).  The charter provided that each country had the right to exercise full and permanent sovereignty over its natural resources, regulate foreign investment and nationalize foreign property.  This was too much for the United States, which joined the minority opposition in a vote of 120-6.

The United States remained on the development defensive at the second plenary session of the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) at Lima early in 1975.  This conference issued the Lima Declaration and Plan of Action.  Among its science and technology goals, it called for a rise in the LDCs' share of world industrial output from seven percent to twenty-five percent by the year 2000; establishment of an international industrial technological information facility (data bank); structural adaptation of industry in developed countries to allow mature industries (like shoes or consumer electronics) to move to developing countries; and creation of a special international industrial development fund.  The United States reserved on several individual paragraphs of the Lima Plan.

Late in 1974 the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) voted to set up a commission on transnational corporations.  In 1975 UNCTAD added to its structure a new committee on the transfer of technology.  This committee pressed for a binding code of conduct under which national governments would monitor corporations doing business with developing countries.  It also called for a revision of the Paris Convention on Industrial Property, which sets international standards for patent and trademark protection.  The committee then added an item to its continuing agenda: improvement of the technological capacity of developing countries."1

Such S&T-related issues were coming to the fore in many forums at about the same time.  They caused anxiety in the State Department and elsewhere as the agencies prepared the U.S. response.  The code of conduct and industrial property issues were largely straightforward economic development issues.  The new item on technological capacity, however, raised questions on infrastructure development; education and training and indigenous research and development; the availability of books, journals and scientific information services; and the relation of national S&T policy to overall national planning in LDCs.  Experienced U.S. development hands were available, but there was no clear indication of how best to go about meeting some of the developing countries' new demands for improving their abilities to utilize science and technology for their economic benefit.  As mentioned earlier, in Chapter 10, developed countries had no clear picture of this for themselves, let alone for LDCs.  One common opinion in the government was that the United States had already tried all reasonable schemes to help LDCs.  Except in a few special cases where certain areas of agriculture could be profoundly influenced by a Green Revolution, or in special countries like Korea, "one could do little."

It was in this atmosphere of growing confrontation between north and south on development issues and of continuing bureaucratic pessimism that the United States prepared for another special session of the UN General Assembly in September 1975.  Its theme was development and international cooperation.

Seventh Special Session (1975)
Secretary of State Kissinger believed that the United States could no longer play a simple defensive role in the face of mounting G-77 pressures.  His speech to the seventh special session signaled a new approach to the problems of developing countries.  "Let us put aside the sterile debate over whether a new economic order is required or whether the old economic order is adequate," he said.  His speech went on to ask for cooperation to ensure basic economic security, accelerated growth, opportunities for LDCs in the world trading system, improved trade and investment in key commodities and special attention for the poorest countries.2

With this speech the United States passed from the defensive to the offensive, or at least from negative to positive, in its approach to developing countries.  Kissinger made specific suggestions for new institutions and new approaches in energy, food, resources and industrialization.3  Much of what he proposed came as a surprise to the rest of the government, including offices of the State Department.  For example, he proposed an international center for the exchange of technological information, having the effect of seizing the initiative from UNIDO and its vague data bank initiative.  Such a center could fill an obvious need, but the concept was so undeveloped that few if any in the State Department had any idea what Kissinger meant, if, indeed, he himself knew.

The Secretary also suggested an international industrialization institute to sponsor and conduct research on industrial technology and policy.  This proposal resulted from a careful study in 1973 by the National Academy of Engineering financed by AID.  But it was put into the speech by Kissinger's staff, not by AID.4

Kissinger was not a scientist but he was fascinated by technology.  A self-taught expert in the intricacies of missilery, weapons and surveillance, he recognized the important economic part American technology might play in foreign affairs.  He had already held out U.S. uranium enrichment and research in alternative energy sources as inducements for cooperation with the United States on nuclear nonproliferation and reduction of oil imports.  In 1972 Kissinger had made four agreements on scientific cooperation part of the package that accompanied the strategic arms limitation agreement he negotiated as SALT-I at the Moscow summit.  He followed these up with seven more agreements at the 1973 and 1974 summits.  He made other promises of U.S. technology to Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia during his diplomatic shuttle in 1974-5.  Technologically sophisticated detection and surveillance were keys to the settlement by which observers finally kept the Mideast peace in Gaza.

The final resolution of the seventh special session endorsed both the old UNIDO data bank and Kissinger's new S&T information center; it also supported increased research on development problems, but without specific budget targets; it considered the possibility of an international energy institute proposed by Kissinger at the Conference on International Economic Cooperation (CIEC).  (CIEC is treated in Chapters 13 and 20.)  Further work on the code of conduct was endorsed, along with the long-pending review of patents and trademarks.  There was also pro forma support for the UN Conference on Science and Technology for Development and a mild commitment to policies to prevent the loss of trained personnel from LDCs.  The resolution omitted the U.S. proposal for the international industrialization institute because of suspicions that it would rival ineffective UNIDO, which it certainly would have done.

Follow-up in the General Assembly
Perhaps the most intriguing of the U.S. S&T initiatives to survive to that point was the information center.  In order to take this proposal the next step at the thirtieth general assembly, the Department of State convened an informal group with members from the department, from other agencies and from outside the government.

These latter came from groups like the Council of the Americas, the Licensing Executive Society and the Industrial Research Institute.  The government agencies learned a lot from their participation.  Government-industry interaction fostered by the sudden concentration of S&T issues in the new dialogue, at the United Nations and at CIEC drove government and private sector personnel together in a common pursuit of the broad national interest that could have become exemplary for interaction between the two on other issues later.  It is obvious that government participants must remain aware of the private sector's own needs and interests while reserving the right to decide issues on the basis of the total national interest.

By November 1975 the government-private group had conceived and designed the basic and rather obvious features of an international information centerInternational information center International information center International information center International information center International information center : it should concentrate on forming new links between existing national and international facilities, public or private, setting up new facilities only where none at all existed.  But above all it should not be just a new centralized data bank, for which the uninitiated often hold out unrealistically high hopes.

The United States supported or even introduced resolutions at the general assemblies in 1975, 1976 and 1977 trying to establish further work along these lines.  But when in 1977 the foreign service officer working on this initiative was transferred abroad, the United States stopped promoting the information center.  In retrospect it appears particularly unfortunate that LDCs missed a chance to get in at the beginning of the so-called information superhighway with its international Internet, E-mail addresses and websites, all of which bloomed in the 1990s.

Still, as 1975 drew to a close the United States seemed to have regained some forward motion in north-south relations.  The tone at the seventh special session and the thirtieth general assembly had been far less contentious and the accomplishments somewhat more substantial than in 1974.  The United States had proposed real solutions to LDC problems in the areas of industrialization strategy, information exchange and infrastructure development.  Whether they would have worked seems less important now than the fact that the United States had taken interest in the plight of the LDCs and was suggesting concrete, innovative ways to help them.  It appears likely that these initiatives had a far better chance of working than the purely political solutions advanced by the LDCs in their caucuses at the time.