CHAPTER 19.  Case Study B -- U.S.-Spain Science and Technology Cooperation
 

"Scientists have it within them to know what a future-directed society feels like, for science itself, in its human aspect, is just that."
C. P. Snow

Summary and Introduction
Spain and the United States carried out a classic program of S&T cooperation from 1976 to 1989 within the framework of accords aimed at defense cooperation.6  Science and technology served as a direct tool to enable the United States to use Spanish military bases.  Over this period the United States contributed over $60 million for S&T grants, exchanges and cooperative research projects.  An executive secretariat in Spain operated the program under the direction of a binational joint committee.  Cooperation terminated when the two countries concluded the follow-up 1988 Defense Cooperation Agreement without provision for continuation of the S&T program.

Virtually every major U.S. government S&T agency and many leading U.S. universities participated in the program, which also attracted their Spanish counterparts.  Eventually support of basic science drew fifteen percent of the funding, and applied science eighty-five percent.

Program evaluations generally found the cooperative research to be of good quality and mutual benefit.  Administrative procedures were rated lower.

The Executive Secretariat wound up administration of the program on December 31, 1989.  Despite budget shortfalls and high severance expenses for secretariat members, some unspent money remained, which with accrued interest amounted in 1992 to over two million dollars.

Negotiations for a separate successor S&T cooperation agreement resulted in a provisional draft providing no bloc funding and no secretariat.  But agreement on an annex for the protection of rights to intellectual property produced under the prospective cooperation made little headway.

Cooperation Program
Spain and the United States entered into their formal S&T cooperation under terms of an agreement signed September 21, 1976. The instrument was Supplementary Agreement number three of the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation.  Spain requested that S&T cooperation play a role in obtaining use of what the United States regarded as essential military bases.  It was a component in the overall political-military program the United States carried out with Spain under the title of "The United States-Spain Program."

The political decision in 1970 to deal with Spain's discredited government under the leadership of General Francisco Franco in terms of a series of bases agreements of which science and technology became an appreciable part was in effect less an approval of Franco than an appropriate opening up of Spain and its people to international intercourse.  Cursed by centuries of self-inflicted isolation, Spain has only in the last decades become an open society and a responsible member of the international community.  Since its EU membership in 1986, it has done so with astonishing rapidity and skill.  Steps like U.S. "recognition" in 1970, followed by
military cooperation and scientific exchange, were undeniable aids to this desirable process.

Scientific exchange between the two countries actually began before 1976, and even U.S. government support of cooperation predates the 1976 treaty.  The U.S. Fulbright Program went to Spain in 1958, and the 1976 cooperation agreement was preceded by an accord in 1970 that provided for cooperation in culture and education, including science and technology.

The so-called "bases agreements" governed formal cooperation between the two countries, then, for fourteen years.  They set up the U.S.-Spanish Joint Committee for S&T Cooperation.  This group had a U.S. and a Spanish section chaired by State Department (OES assistant secretary) and Ministry of Foreign Affairs authorities and composed of representatives of different government departments.  It met annually, alternating between the two capitals.  The permanent secretary of the joint committee was a Spanish diplomat in Madrid.

An executive secretariat located in Madrid operated the program with a Spanish staff from 1977 on, under the guidance of the joint committee.  Since a Culture and Education Cooperation Agreement already existed under the previous 1970 bases agreement, in 1977 the administration of the S&T function was included under that agreement.  It was separated from it in 1979.  Also in 1979, a joint working group composed of U.S. and Spanish S&T agency program officers began to meet and screen proposals, passing their recommendations annually to the joint committee for approval.  The executive secretariat eventually had a staff of eight.

In terms of contributions, the United States put in cash, generally annually, in the form of so-called economic support funds.  Reports and audits 1983-9 gave the broad financial outline of the program as follows:
 
 

Period	U.S. Government Funding Millions of Dollars
1970 (1)	1.8
1976-81	23.
1981-2	3.
1982-3	3.8
------------	------------
1976-83	31.6
------------	------------
1983	7.
1984	7.
1985	7.
1986	6.699
1987	2.917
1988	1.850
1989	0
------------	------------
1983-9	32.466
------------	------------
TOTAL
1976-89	$64.066 million
------------	------------

NOTE (1)  Funds for S&T transferred from the 1970 Culture and Education Agreement ($1.8 million).

Expenditures (not shown) somewhat exceeded this cost figure due to transfers and interest on deposits.  In 1983 the Spanish section made a good faith attempt to estimate its contribution to the program.  This share included in-kind contributions, personnel costs and overhead, but no cash, and came to approximately $30 million for the period 1976-83.  This figure is likely inflated, and its similarity to U.S. funding for the same period ($31.6 million) is hardly coincidental.

From 1983 on the United States planned to contribute seven million dollars annually to the S&T program and five million dollars to culture and education.  The economic support funds came from the Agency for International Development (AID) through the Department of State and then to the Joint Committee.  Indeed, this seven-million-dollar figure was used for planning and awarding of multiyear grants.  Beginning in 1986 the United States could no longer keep to this payment schedule, and the contribution fell to just $1.85 million in 1988.  It dropped to zero in 1989, but by this time the agreement was being closed out.  Funding cuts resulted from budget limitations in the general U.S. economic support funds category.  Closing down the agreement did not reflect a perceived lack of value of the cooperation between the two sides.  Rather, Spain and the United States simply agreed to remove science and technology as well as culture and education from the new bases agreement signed in 1988 and in force from 1989.

During the first phase of the program from 1976-83 expenses were incurred for:

Institutional and direct research grants generally supported equipment and research costs in Spanish institutions only, and they were discontinued after 1980.  Fellowships and travel grants went primarily to Spanish scientists during this first phase.

Phase II of the program lasted from 1983-9.  After seven years of institution-building in Spain, the cooperative program was of demonstrated value to both sides.  The joint committee decided to split the seven-million-dollar annual U.S. contribution into two main parts for the second phase of the program: basic science, with fifteen percent of the funds, and applied science and technology, with eighty-five percent.

United States Government agencies that participated included the Departments of Health and Human Services, Interior, Energy, Defense, Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation and State, along with the Environmental Protection Agency, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and National Science Foundation.  Many if not most of the projects were initiated by American scientists proposing a research project involving a Spanish partner to one of these agencies.

On the Spanish side, the main government participants were (1992 titles):
National Research Council (CSIC)
Ministry of Education and Science
Ministry of Defense
Ministry of Interior
Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Ministry of Public Works and Transportation
National Oceanographic Institute
Ministry of Agriculture
Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism (incorporating energy and  telecommunications)

In addition, of course, Spanish and U.S. universities participated.  (Nearly all Spanish universities are owned and operated by the national government.)

The phase-II categories of effort and numbers of projects were:
 

Cooperative Projects	No.
basic science	86
applied science	132
	-----
TOTAL	218
Fellowships	200
Seminars	30

Evaluation
Annual reports and internal evaluations took account of the program's quality.  AID prepared an evaluation in 1984.  Another was prepared by State in 1986. With the help of participating agencies it identified a number of projects that had produced benefits for the U.S.  These included:

virus assay for African swine fever,
hybrid sugar beets,
food chain dynamics in waters off Galicia and aquaculture,
citrus fruit protection,
control of introduced species on islands like Hawaii and the Canaries,
wetlands management: DoÒana and Everglades,
water desalination,
ground water flow: Madrid basin and Great Salt Lake basin,
earthquake hazard assessment and
solar energy.

The results of these projects were either products of mutual benefit, like the hybrid sugar beet, or knowledge shared for mutual benefit, as in the project for the control of unwanted introduced species in island habitats.

Among the particular U.S. institutions that took part were
Stanford University
University of Arizona
Ohio State University
Virginia Polytechnic Institute
University of Virginia
Cornell University
Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University
University of Florida
University of Illinois
University of California-Berkeley
University of California-San Diego

Administration
By the beginning of phase II in 1983 the bureaucratic stresses on the program became identifiable as the amount of money committed mounted.  The AID evaluation in 1984, and subsequent assessments, questioned methods of recordkeeping, planning and funds disbursement.  This was largely due to an inexperienced executive secretariat in Madrid.  The U.S. NSF withdrew temporally from the program to protest poor management.

The U.S. side pushed for computerization of secretariat functions.  At the suggestion of the United States, consultants were called in.  They recommended new procedures.  A new IBM system eventually replaced an inadequate predecessor, but it is doubtful if all records were ever transferred to the new system.  Scientists received payments late and reports entered the system slowly, delaying assessment of work and renewals.  Administrative expenses rose.

Phaseout
As mentioned earlier U.S. government budget cutbacks drastically reduced the funding by 1988, when the new bases agreement was signed, without complementary agreements for science and technology or culture and education.  With no new money at all for 1989, and with no S&T agreement in place, the executive secretariat finished its work and disbanded on December 31, 1989.

One large unplanned administrative expense charged to the joint fund was severance pay for the six remaining Spanish members of the executive secretariat.  The U.S. Government finally accepted the necessity of paying this amount in conformity with Spanish labor law.  (For some time the United States thought that the secretariat was an international organization exempt from such laws.)  Payment was made to each person on the basis of twenty days' salary for every year of service, bringing the total bill to around $130,000.

Renewal Problems
From about 1986 on considerable thought was given to what form S&T cooperation should take in any new agreement both sides assumed would follow and how it should be financed.  The Spanish side particularly had a lot of ideas for funding by means of arrangements with private and government laboratories in the United States or use of an endowed foundation.  One especially ingenious Spanish idea was to finance the new program with a portion of the "fee" charged Spain by the U.S. Defense Department for including arms sales to Spain in its own orders to U.S. contractors to assure quality, prompt delivery and quantity discounts.  Instead of paying the fee to the Defense Department, Spain would use it to support the S&T program.  In the late-1980s era of financial austerity none of these schemes had much chance of being adopted, and none was.

A new stand-alone culture and education agreement was negotiated and signed June 7, 1989.  Provisional agreement on an S&T accord the same year was complete except for terms on the protection of intellectual property rights.  This issue was a very serious one with some members of the U.S. administration at the time and grew out of the fear that Japan had taken or might take unfair advantage of intellectual property developed under joint research programs with the U.S. and that other countries were likely to do so as well.

United States Executive Order 12591 of April 10, 1987, required all new or renewed international S&T cooperation agreements to include adequate protection of rights to intellectual property that might be created by joint research projects under the agreement.

Spanish (and EU) disagreement on this issue centered on

While these issues may have been fleeting and the outcome of little general interest, the fact that both countries allowed these considerations to block accord even though scientists on both sides, and even many government officials, agitated for resumption of cooperation, demonstrates the role science and technology may have in foreign affairs.  The lesson presented by the impasse is this: if S&T cooperation may be removed from a military bases agreement for political reasons and if a new independent agreement can be blocked on political grounds, the political nature of such agreements is thus well established.

Susceptibility of any agreement to political pressures may convince scientists to steer clear of cooperation under such agreements since the funding may be erratic and unpredictable.