Copyright © 1999
by Robert G. Morris
CHAPTER 4. Multilateral Science and Technology Cooperation
"Diplomacy is to do and sayThe Nature of Multilateral Cooperation
The nastiest thing in the nicest way."
Isaac Goldberg
Multilateral cooperation achieved signal success during the International Geophysical Year and in that program's fruitful aftermath, the Antarctic Treaty (see also Chapter 2). In general, however, the United States has been more reluctant to enter programs of multilateral than bilateral cooperation. First because, as only one of many participants, the United States has less say concerning the conduct of the programs of cooperation than in the bilateral case even though it may pay a disproportionate share of the expenses. Second, cooperation in the framework of a multilateral organization can be controlled by that organization's staff or secretariat even in the face of member countries' dissent or opposition. Positions in the secretariat are often filled according to quotas for member countries rather than expertise.
One early example of multilateral S&T cooperation is U.S. membership in the benign International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Paris, subscribed to by every advanced country. The Bureau assures that every country uses the same reference standards in international trade. With similar degrees of success and benefit, the United States government cooperates with international organizations that operate international telecommunications systems, regulate taking of whales, oversee civil air traffic, monitor ocean dumping and grapple with the problem of fishing rights.
Despite its wariness the United States has frequently proposed multilateral cooperation in its own initiatives, notably at the United Nations in the 1970s (of which more is described in Section II); at the OECD, for example in the U.S. proposal for the International Energy Agency (IEA) with its research arm, the Committee on Research and Development (CRD); and in the new dialogue with Latin America at the OAS (See also Chapter 21).
Three other dramatic international initiatives undertaken by the United States since the Second World War were multilateral in scope and high in S&T content. We have already alluded to two of them in Chapter 2: the Acheson-Lilienthal initiative in international control of atomic energy (1946) and President Eisenhower's atoms for peace proposal (1953), both taken at the United Nations (Chapter 7). The third major multilateral initiative was President Reagan's strategic defense initiativeStrategic defense initiative launched in 1985. In the SDI the United States proposed developing technical means of defense against ballistic missiles. Not originally designed as a multilateral venture, SDI nevertheless became one in which the United States sought foreign participation. At the urging of France the Europeans set up an R&D program of the European Research Coordination Agency (EUREKA)European Research Coordination Agency (EUREKA) as an alternative or parallel to some SDI multilateral research. The multilateral emphases were on computers, electronics, space science, biotechnology and environmental protection. Chapter 6 includes a description of multilateral efforts led by the United States to control technology exports to bloc countries.
Multinational cooperation undertaken on the basis of dramatic new initiatives has not always had the success its proponents hoped for. Multilateral projects compounded the difficulties encountered in bilateral cooperation: geographical separation of participants, language and cultural differences, hasty definition, perfunctory monitoring and evaluation and perhaps political instead of scientific motivation. Besides, it is far easier to propose something brilliant, useful or necessary than to achieve it. Administrative organization at home for execution and follow-through have been difficult for the United States in the case of many of its multilateral initiatives, particularly those in the 1970s at the UN and the OAS (see also Section III and Chapters 20 and 21). Still, there are times when a multilateral initiative is the only way to address an issue arising in a multilateral forum.
United Nations
Established in 1945 with fifty-one members, the United Nations, by 1997 with 185 members, has no clear mandate or program of S&T cooperation as such, but many of its specialized agencies such as the IAEA have technical assistance programs involving science and technology. From time to time science and technology occupied center stage at the United Nations when there were special sessions or meetings at which S&T issues were especially debated. Most notably these were two meetings: one on the application of science and technology for the benefit of less developed areas (UNCSAT), held in 1963, and the successor UN Conference on Science and Technology for Development (UNCSTD), in 1979 (Chapter 14). Two UN conferences on the environment -- in Stockholm in 1972 and Brasilia in 1992 -- addressed science and technology as well as economic issues related to the environment (Chapter 9). At UN conferences on population in Mexico City (1984), Bucharest (1974) and Cairo (1994), the scientific aspects of birth control were far overshadowed by arguments over development economics and abortion (see also Chapter 9).
United Nations agencies with an S&T component such as IAEA and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) command U.S. support. The U.S. particularly lays great store by the IAEA programs that involve inspections safeguarding against manufacture of nuclear explosive devices (Chapter 7). The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) pursue their goals in conditions relatively free from political considerations, although both have suffered from the image of bloated, unresponsive secretariats. To the UN World Food Conference at Rome in 1974 the United States, an original proponent of the conference, sent a strong delegation from both the executive and legislative branches, led by the secretary of agriculture. Of proposed S&T initiatives on the part of the United States, one was world crop surveys by U.S. space, agriculture and weather agencies, all greatly suspect by LDCs. What were they looking for? No doubt for their benefit? The United States also pledged dedication of its scientific talent to finding new solutions to nutritional problems with the aid of the National Academy of Sciences.
Considerable political polarization of S&T issues at the United Nations took place in the 1970s when the positions of Raul Prebisch, the Mexican economist, helped crystallize a number of positions of lesser-developed countries (LDCs) that dominated development agendas for a decade. These eventually advocated import substitution and autarky, nationalization of foreign subsidiaries, R&D targets for development (by industrialized countries), patent appropriation and elimination or even compensation for the brain drain.
North-South confrontations (or confrontations between industrialized and nonindustrialized countries) were contentious and unproductive in the special sessions of the UN general assembly devoted to LDC issues in 1974 and 1975, the 30th and 31st UN general assemblies in 1975 and 1976 and the Nairobi meeting of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1976 (Chapters 11-13). After a long struggle this political agitation by less-developed countries (LDCs) resulted ultimately in nothing -- or very little at the most. Too often, the same result came from the countries' own domestic improvement projects. For example, even after independence of nearly all African states by the 1970s, war and conflict extended into the 1990s severely limiting economic development.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), established in 1964, held a series of conferences to promote trade between asset holders and their customers. At the third meeting in Santiago in 1972 the organization adopted over U.S. objections a controversial Charter on the Economic Rights and Duties of States (CERDS) put forward by Mexican president Echeverria. This 34-article document caused dismay among American economists and diplomats alike; U.S. amendments were rejected; finally, the United States opposed. The grounds: because the charter recommended terms for foreign investment that ignored international obligations; it endorsed producer cartels; and it called for indexation of prices.6
The charter may have been a diplomatic coup for the LDCs but it was an absolute nonstarter as an initiative for any positive contribution by the developed countries to the undeveloped.
Another crucial meeting was the one at ministerial level at Nairobi in 1976. Defusing of issues certain to arise at this conference was surely a main ground for the promotion by France of the Conference on International Economic Cooperation (CIEC) 1975-7 (see Chapter 20).
To square away their UNCTAD goals the so-called Group of 77 LDCs caucused in the Philippines and issued the Manila declaration: nothing short of indexation or fixation of the prices of raw materials with respect to those of finished goods; a common fund to promote higher prices for commodities by the formation of buffer stocks.
These very issues were subsequently debated without outcome at the CIEC meetings in Paris. The Nairobi meeting was also largely without results. Nevertheless, Secretary of State Kissinger presented a number of U.S. initiatives to UNCTAD IV, including some in the field of science and technology: the International Industrialization Institute (III) that grew out of a study by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (see also Chapter 13) and an International Energy Institute to aid energy studies in and for LDCs. Kissinger's key proposal, for an International Resources Bank to promote LDC resource development, was killed in a vote where both the absences and abstentions individually exceeded either the yeas or the nays. It was hard for the United States to make serious proposals or undertake initiatives in the face of such apathy and opposition. Unfortunately, the U.S. experience in similar forums has often been that a genuine offer of aid has been rebuffed as not possessing the required "political commitment," which may have meant contribution from one government to another.
The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) was established by the United Nations in 1966. It became a specialized agency in 1985. Its mandate is to promote industrialization of developing countries. Pertinent to a discussion of north-south S&T relations is the so-called Lima Declaration, the result of a UNIDO conference in Peru in 1975. This second UNIDO Conference further polarized the international north-south dialogue. It set a goal of twenty-five percent of the world's industrial production by LDCs by 2000. The green pamphlet summarizing the outcome of the Lima conference, so widely distributed by the United Nations and UNIDO, failed to note the abstention and opposition of the U.S. and other delegations. The declaration as adopted was not, of course, binding on the United States. The organization also held general conferences in 1980 in New Delhi and in 1984 in Vienna, the latter further urging use of science and technology for industrial development.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was established very early, in 1946, to promote collaboration in the named fields among United Nations members. Scarcely anything could have appealed to scientists more. The organization fell upon hard times within a few decades of its founding. A secretariat perceived to be overpaid, bound to Paris and unresponsive to criticism -- right or wrong -- plus a "politicization" of issues such as information dissemination, hardly a key issue in its mandate, caused the U.S. government to consider its membership in the organization. In its view serious deviation of UNESCO from stated goals was cause for the United States to withdraw from the organization, which it did in 1984. The United Kingdom and Singapore also left UNESCO.
The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) began in Helsinki in 1973; it continued in Geneva 1973-5 and concluded August 1, 1975, in Helsinki, when representatives of western and eastern European countries, the United States and Canada signed the final act.{\super 7 Since 1995 it is established as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), with fifty-four member states and headquarters in Vienna.
The contentious final act, signed by President Ford, was designed to obtain certain concessions from the Soviet Union and its bloc partners in return for a de facto yet unmentioned recognition of Soviet and satellite boundaries with the West. The USSR and its associated countries would live up to certain provisions conveniently collected in so-called "baskets" of the final act.
Key among these were issues such as respect for sovereignty, refraining from the use of force, inviolability of Eastern European frontiers, territorial integrity and similar "political" issues. Also included were provisions for respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief.
Science figured in the CSCE as a result of almost throwaway provisions of the Helsinki final act. Basket two of the accord called for cooperation in the field of economics, science and technology and the environment among all signatories. Cooperation was specifically mandated in agriculture, energy, new technologies, rational use of resources, transport technology, basic sciences, computers, space and the environment. Modes of cooperation were the customary ones like exchanges of persons and information and holding of conferences.
Basket three was the human rights basket. Also included were provisions for cooperation and exchanges in the fields of culture and education, with science a specific subheading under education.
In the United States there was strong political opposition to the CSCE. Opponents focused on its recognition and normalization of the bloc-country borders in Eastern Europe. Others in the West seized on CSCE as a positive mechanism to liberalize if not liberate Eastern Europe. Soviet dissidents led by physicist Yuri Orlov monitored their government's compliance with great effect (see Chapter 18). On balance the CSCE performed a most useful task, and its successor, the OSCE, has been constructive in post-cold war international relations.particularly in the Balkans.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was formed in 1961 as the successor to the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), the organization that administered the U. S. Marshall Plan. Enumeration of its twenty-nine member countries (1998) -- twenty-two in Europe, plus the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and South Korea -- often leads to its being termed as a "rich man's club." The OECD has undoubtedly strengthened the economies of member countries -- and hence the world. It has also coordinated development aid to members like Turkey, half-members like Yugoslavia, new members Hungary, Mexico, Czech Republic, Poland and South Korea and even a host of nonmembers in Africa and Asia who have close ties with the organization.
Founded in 1949 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was a political-military organization to defend Western Europe with U.S. and Canadian help against threat from the East. Its sixteen members in 1997 were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States. Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, the same three new European members of the OECD, have been invited to join in 1999.
The scope of cooperation between the members was broadened in 1958 with the creation of a directorate for scientific affairs under an assistant secretary general. Later, in 1969, NATO further extended its scope and expanded nonmilitary cooperation by establishing a program abbreviated CCMS: Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society. In practice, CCMS has emphasized environmental issues.
The United States has been a conscientious member of NATO science programs. Early on, the position of assistant secretary general for science was held by prominent American scientists including John Ramsey, Frederick Seitz and William Nierenberg. The United States relinquished this position in 1966 in order to fill the post of assistant secretary general for defense support on a continuing basis. Until 1976 the deputy assistant secretary generals for science were Americans, usually career science officers from State. Later, other countries sometimes filled the position.
Edward DavidEdward David , a former U.S. presidential science adviser, was a long-time U.S. delegate to the NATO Science Committee, which did especially good work in establishing research fellowships for scientist exchanges and programs to build up science and technology in lesser-developed NATO countries like Greece, Turkey, Spain and Portugal.
Economic Summits of the Group of Seven (G-7)
The leading industrial countries in the "Group of Seven" held their first summit to coordinate economic policy at the invitation of France in 1975. (Members were the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada. Russia took part beginning in 1997.) Member governments urged on by their S&T foreign policy bureaucracies added S&T issues to the agenda of annual meetings beginning in 1982, when cooperation was discussed. Indeed, a U.S. initiative was among the first to be considered: international cooperation in the space station, promoted at the meeting in 1984 (see also Chapter 8). Other G-7 initiatives have treated new technologies and environmental protection.
Vienna is the home of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) , a nongovernmental organization founded in Vienna during the Cold War as one of the few multilateral organizations where the Soviet Union and its Eastern European partners were major scientific players along with western countries. The institute was private but funded for the most part by government S&T agencies. The institute became a continuing lightning rod in U.S.-USSR relations, no less than the bilateral program. Some American scientists raised the objection that substandard research was supported for political reasons. United States government officials identified Soviets using the institute for espionage, and the Defense Department objected in the strongest manner to continued U.S. participation and support. Most U.S. support came from the National Science Foundation, which found itself harshly criticized by American scientists, some of whom may have seen in such support a threat to their own funding. The Defense Department was scarcely less critical of the value of the institute's research, but also it vehemently claimed that there was undesirable technology transfer from the United States to others via the institute.
In 1986 DOD escalated the IIASA affair to high administrative levels objecting to U.S. participation in IIASA on foreign policy grounds as well as scientific. *
The United States is not, of course, a member of the European Union, successor organization of the European Communities of 1951 and 1958, later referred to as the Common Market. Nevertheless, it has a formal program of S&T consultations and even cooperation with the EU in such areas as science policy and environment. United States firms with subsidiaries in Europe have participated in EU research programs. Liaison between Brussels and Washington is also of great importance in consistently administering bilateral S&T cooperation between individual EU member countries and the United States.
Multilateral Cooperation in "Big Science"
With the rising costs of science, governments began to seek ways of sharing expenses. The principle is well known in the United States, where universities have banded together to support a joint facility like the Brookhaven National Laboratory for expensive high-energy physics research. The Centre Européen de Recherche Nucléaire (CERN) is a similar institution in Europe.
The United States proposed in 1984 an eight-billion-dollar project to place a manned platform in space by 1994 and invited cooperation from Europe, Canada and Japan. By 1998 the space station counted Russia and Brazil among the participants. The cost has risen to $40 billion and the first of forty-five missions to take equipment and personnel aloft began only in 1998. Completion date is now set for 2004. The International Space Station, called "the biggest international science project" or "the largest international civil venture into space," is clearly a multilateral project of great significance in U.S. foreign affairs. The station is also treated in Chapter 6.
Several countries are working on gene identification and mapping projects. There are 100,000 genes -- fundamental carriers of heredity information -- in the human chromosomes or gene carriers. In these chromosomes are three billion "base pairings" between fundamental blocks called nucleotides. This totality is referred to as the human genome. Gene sequencing and mapping do not require knowledge of more than a small fraction of the pairings, but identification of even a few million base pairings is very expensive and time consuming. The amount of work is daunting, but scientists, always optimistic, believe they can finish the project with several years of hard work, improved techniques, work-sharing, automation and ingenious short-cuts.2
The expense may be enormous: $100-200 million a year for ten to fifteen years.3 The Human Genome Organization (HUGO) facilitated international scientist-to-scientist cooperation in the project, and its consequent cost savings. Joint efforts included major collaboration between U.S. scientists and those from the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan and France. Most cooperation appears to have sprung up spontaneously among the participating scientists, without support from international organizations.
Superconducting Super Collider
Where the human genome project was a cooperative endeavor whose importance many countries recognized at about the same time, the superconducting super collider (SSC) was a U.S. initiative like the space station. The United States subsequently invited foreign participation in the $10-billion project.
The SSC is an accelerator of fundamental particles like protons and mesons, an example of machines long called atom-smashers, whose design utilizes magnets coiled from superconducting wire; that is, wire with zero resistance to electric current. Thus the high fields necessary to direct the fundamental particles of interest could be produced in magnets having no resistance to the excitation current. Construction began near Waxahatchie, Texas, of the gigantic device fifty-four miles in circumference. Electrically-charged particles were to be accelerated to the point of having energies corresponding to moving across voltages of more than ten teravolts (10 trillion volts). The state of Texas pledged a billion dollars to the SSC.
The U.S. government hoped to obtain at least a third of the cost from overseas. Europe, Japan, Russia and Canada held back. The SSC faced opposition annually in Congress similar to that faced by the space station. In 1994, despite preliminary expenditure of around a billion dollars, Congress killed the project, in part, at least, for lack of foreign participants.4
End of Chapter 4.