Catherine P Ailes - Cooperation in Science and Technology: An Evaluation of the U.S.-Soviet Agreement

The U.S.-USSR Agreement on Cooperation in the Fields of Science and Technology (the S&T Agreement), a major program of scientific and technical cooperation with the Soviet Union, brought about a broadening of the scope of cooperation and an increase in the number of scientists participating in such exchanges. This book takes a retrospective look at the U.S. experience under the agreement. The background, objectives, organizational arrangements, and evaluations of specific projects are examined within the context of the scientific community and the concerns of the two governments. The authors discuss the relative success of the agreement and propose ways in which the scientific and political benefits could be increased.

Catherine P. Ailes is a senior science policy analyst with SRI International where she heads the Science and Technology Policy Program in the International Policy Center. Arthur E. Pardee, Jr. , is a consultant for international science policy at SRI International and former head of the U.S.-USSR Joint Commission Support Staff at the National Science Foundation.

An Evaluation of the U.S.-Soviet Agreement

Catherine P. Ailes and
Arthur E. Pardee, Jr.

First published 1986 by Westview Press

Published 2018 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 86-50849

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-00612-9(hbk)

Dealing with the Soviet Union has been at the top of America's foreign policy agenda for more than forty years and will remain there indefinitely. In a relationship dominated by competitiveness and the constant threat of lethal confrontation, the few and rare examples of mutual, cooperative undertakings invite especially careful analysis.

This evaluation by Catherine Ailes and Arthur Pardee of Soviet-American cooperation in science and technology provides a detailed account of one of the largest collaborative efforts between the two countries. Launched in 1972 after the Nixon-Brezhnev summit meeting as one of eleven bilateral agreements, the S&T agreement involved participation by more than a thousand American scientists before it lapsed in 1982 as a result of U.S. sanctions against the USSR in connection with events in Poland.

While it lasted, the cluster of exchanges of which the S&T agreement was a part, and the S&T agreement itself, constituted an unprecedented effort to symbolize the respite in the cold war by broadening the scale of professional-level cooperation between the two systems.

Where did the S&T activities fit in the larger range of Soviet-American contacts in science and technology, and what did we learn from the experience?

It is important to remember that the overall volume of contacts with the USSR is very small indeed, especially taking into account that the two countries not only have combined populations of half a billion people but can claim the largest scientific, educational, and technological establishments to be found anywhere. Despite what, in a different world, would look like a natural partnership, the number of Soviets and Americans involved with one another in formal exchanges never exceeded a few thousand a year even during the heyday of the post-summit years, and, at that, typically for short-term stays measured in weeks, if not days. By the mid-1980s, the numbers dropped back into the hundreds, mostly in the humanities and social sciences, leaving only a handful of participants in science and technology. (Even the casual, undocumented flow between the United States and almost any small country in Western Europe probably exceeds the present movement of scientists between the two superpowers.) So the experiences recounted and evaluated in this report constitute a substantial fraction of the entire cumulative experience of the American scientific community with the USSR. They therefore are of great significance.

Of course, it is no accident that contacts have been so limited. Given the strained relationships between the superpowers, any Soviet-American exchange is likely to carry with it some heavy diplomatic baggage. But the complexities go deeper: patterns of principle, practice and expectation on both sides are often so at variance that an immense bureaucratic-political barrier separates the scientific communities of the two countries even under the best of circumstances. Many of these issues are illuminated in this volume, making it useful not only to scientists concerned with evaluating the practical record of cooperation, but also to students of the Soviet Union, and of Soviet-American relations.

Nevertheless, as we also see from this book, the exchanges do workwhen they are intelligently conceived and diligently managed. At their best, they do precisely what scientific exchanges are supposed to do: push back the frontiers of knowledge by bringing together talented and well-trained specialists who otherwise would not have the opportunity to work with one another. And even at their worst they are not so much bad as wasteful. Although one certainly would not want to repeat some of the less effective experiences described here, even they provided something of value: direct insights into the functioning, or malfunctioning, of Soviet science and technology.

In any event, it is most unlikely that these exchanges will be reestablished in their old form or, at least in the foreseeable future, at their original volume. While some revival can be expected in a period of warming relations, a certain caution and reserve has replaced the somewhat euphoric expectations that accompanied the original round, and there is no reason to expect either side to rush into a wholesale renewal of the short-lived experiences of the 1970s.

Still, some level of Soviet-American cooperation in science and technology is both essential and inevitable despite difficulties and setbacks. There is plenty of room for joint, mutually advantageous work that does not impinge on sensitive areas of technology transfer and where both sides can bring something of value to field and laboratory. In the long run, the question is not whether there should be Soviet-American exchangesthe internationalization of scientific knowledge simply demands some contactbut what forms it should take. The Ailes-Pardee analysis provides us with solid and well-founded conclusions that all who are involved in exchanges, or who will plan or administer exchanges in the future, would do well to heed.