Using Scientists as Diplomats

Scientific cooperation has long had a critical, if unsung, supporting role in international diplomacy, helping to rebuild economies from the ashes of World War II and eventually winding down the Cold War. But despite these successes, critics say Washington's record of integrating science and technology into foreign policy in recent years has been decidedly mixed.

That was one of the themes raised at the recent annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), where scientists lamented that Washington continues to short-shrift international scientific cooperation, which is increasingly regarded as a crucial tool of soft power for spreading prosperity and enhancing American competitiveness.

Critics say this is particularly unfortunate at a time when science is more than ever a truly global enterprise, especially for solving challenges such as energy and climate change. The latest example of this, they claim, is Congress' recent failure to appropriate any funds this year to the $20 billion multi-national fusion power project (ITER) being constructed in southern France. The landmark R&D project is aimed at demonstrating the scientific and technical feasibility of fusion power, and the U.S. has pledged to cover 10% of the cost over 10 years.

"That's unbelievable, a major international agreement, you worked on it for 24 years — that just confirms in people's mind our reputation as a really lousy international partner," said Norman Neureiter, who has had key roles in Washington's science and technology policy for over 40 years. "For the leading scientific nation in the world to have a reputation like that is really destructive in my view."

There is no reliable U.S. government figure on how much is spent on international cooperation — because it is dispersed at numerous federal agencies — but various experts insist it is dwarfed by the hundreds of millions being spent, in a more strategic way, by the European Union. A 2001 National Science Board report charged that the U.S. has the least well-coordinated science and technology policy among developed countries; a followup report to be released this month is expected to reinforce that judgment. And critics at the conference said Washington's neglect of this crucial area is exacerbated by its scientific spending at home; AAAS president David Baltimore, the winner of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Medicine, was particularly scathing about what he said would be a 13% real term decrease in the U.S.' health research budget from 2004 through the 2009 proposal, at a time when the "opportunities in biomedical research outstrip any other moment in history."

But it's not all bad news. International programs are in fact a growing part of some agencies' agendas, and these efforts are well received overseas. As Nina Fedoroff, the State Department's current (and third ever) science and technology adviser, told the AAAS meeting, "our science and technology are eagerly sought after, even by countries that have lost respect for our culture and our politics." Every year State dispatches roughly 30 Science Diplomacy Fellows around the world for one or two years service. Alex Dehgan, an evolutionary biologist, was sent to redirect Iraqi weapons scientists to civilian research, while Jason Rao, a John Hopkins molecular biologist, did the same in Russia, Georgia and Kazakhstan before moving to Pakistan, where he now tries to inculcate responsible research practices.

Scientific cooperation sometimes even precedes more traditional diplomacy. Despite the heated tensions between the U.S. and Iran these days, the two countries' scientific communities have enjoyed an increasingly active partnership since 1999. The program operates with the quiet blessings of departments of State and Treasury, even though the latter recently declared part of the Iranian government, the Revolutionary Guards, to be a terrorist organization.

There have been some 20 workshops and other exchanges and the pace and breadth of the agenda — widening to include cancer epidemiology, medical genetics, earthquakes (Iran is highly prone), and medical and bioengineering ethics — is picking up, according to the National Academy of Sciences.

In October, Joseph Taylor, a Princeton physicist and Nobel Laureate, lectured before a large Iranian university audience and was lavished with media attention fit for a celebrity. Five Iranian scientists who specialize in food-borne diseases spent three weeks this past November touring U.S. institutions, coast to coast.

Glenn Schweitzer, who oversees the program, says the exchanges are spreading trust and some transparency — including "insights into their intentions" — which is important given concerns about Iran's nuclear program. "When you deal with a country you label as an adversary you assume the worst, and the less you know the worse it gets," he says. "We don't claim we are having a major impact on solving the nuclear issue, the human rights issue or the Hizballah issue, but I think we would argue we may help a little bit."

One key argument for engaging scientific elites is that they are often socially integrated with other elites in the country and can influence them, he says, just as Russian physicists are believed to have helped shape the thinking of former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

There are numerous restrictions — on both sides — including as many as a dozen U.S. Executive Orders limiting activities with Iranians. But Schweitzer says it is worth the extra effort to work with Iran, which boasts a long history of prowess in such fields as mathematics and astronomy, and more recently physics, chemistry and electrical engineering.

Iran isn't the only unlikely American scientific partner. In January the U.S. signed a science and technology agreement with Libya — the first bilateral accord since Washington re-established diplomatic relations in 2004.

The center of the Libyan Desert (a.k.a. the Great Sand Sea) was apparently the very best place on Earth to study the total solar eclipse in 2006. The unprecedented visit by NASA scientists was recorded and the film is now going to be shown to the public across North Africa according to Robert Senseney, a senior State Department science advisor, who says there are a series of other private and governmental exchanges in the works.