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U.S.-Soviet Scientific Exchanges: A Case for Caution
| Article
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17855 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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3 / 1990 |
3,264 Words |
| Author
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Juliana Geran Pilon
Juliana Geran Pilon is executive director of the National
Forum Foundation. |
American officials expect the number of U.S.-Soviet scientific exchanges to grow in the new atmosphere of superpower cooperation. But some officials worry that too enthusiastic a quest for scientific cooperation may blind American participants into unwittingly compromising U.S. national security.
One of the last acts of the Reagan administration was the signing of a science and technology (S&T) agreement with the USSR on January 8, 1989 that paved the way to increased cooperation between the two countries in basic science research. And indeed last year this cooperation flourished. Among the principal bilateral projects is a space cooperation program. The United States and the USSR, for example have agreed to exchange feasibility studies of future unmanned missions for solar system exploration, including missions to the moon and Mars, opportunities to fly instruments on each other's spacecraft, as well as exchanges of scientists and scientific data.
The S&T agreement constituted the culmination of a process started in November 1985 when then Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze signed an agreement at the Geneva summit marking the resumption of official academic and cultural exchanges.
The new S&T agreement had been preceded in 1972 by a government-to-government pact on scientific cooperation that eventually led to 11 specialized agreements. But in response to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the 1981 imposition of martial law in Poland, and the 1983 downing of the KAL airliner, the United States curtailed seven of those agreements - on space, energy, transportation, and S&T - were allowed to
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