1722 



agreements for controlling the hazards of proUferation while expanding 

 the benefits of peaceful uses. Here too, as in the case of the Baruch 

 Plan initiative, there was lacking appropriate governmental machin- 

 ery for bringing political leaders and technical experts together for a 

 sustained dialog and thorough investigation of the problem. ^^^ 



CASE three: the political legacy of the international 



GEOPHYSICAL YEAR 



This study deals with a nongovernmental science initiative. The 

 author suggests that this initiative led "substantially" to the success- 

 ful negotiation of three important treaties, and provided a possible 

 model for wider cooperation among nations as well as a succession of 

 follow-on scientific endeavors of a multilateral or global character. He 

 concludes : 



Perhaps an even more persuasive testament to that power is to be found not 

 in the symbolic, formal language and protocol of treaties but in the quickened 

 pace and broadened scope of the many international meetings to exchange both 

 basic knowledge and technological know-how which can trace their origins to 

 the IGY example. It was 50 years between the First Polar Year and the Second, 

 and 25 years from that to the IGY. Today hardly a year goes by without one or 

 more major conferences addressed to phenomena and problems of the environ- 

 ment, the oceans, energy, or new aspects of mankind's relationships with regard 

 to outer space. To say that the IGY was responsible for these developments to 

 advance the human condition would be gross overstatement, since the phe- 

 nomena and problems themselves are ultimately responsible simply by their 

 existence. But human perception of them was furthered by the IGY; international 

 good will in collaborating to explore them was fostered by it; and it seems quite 

 possible that the IGY conferred on political leaders of most of the world's nations 

 an enlarged appreciation of the potential of constructive international collabora- 

 tion for solving political, as well as scientific and technological, problems.'^^ 



Reference might appropriately be made here to the National Acad- 

 emy of Sciences, where the IGY had its inception. In a later stud}'^, 

 Science and Technology in the Department oj State, there were a num- 

 ber of references to the potentially useful role of the Academy in 

 support of the Department of State. For example. Dean Harvey 

 Brooks of Harvard is quoted as suggesting that it w^ould be "desirable 

 if State could provide the Commission [on International Relations, of 

 the Academy] with some relatively unencumbered funds in order that 

 it could explore and develop new initiatives in the international science 

 and technology area, rather than merely respond to Government re- 

 quests in a problem-solving mode." ^^^ 



32« There was, to be sure, the rather elaborate machinery of the National Security Council as developed 

 under President Eisenhower. However, as a study of that period put it, "there is a . . . serious weakness in 

 the NSC staff machinery: the absence of any staff element which is concerned exclusively with long-range 

 planning from a national perspective. The concerns of the immediate future are enough to keep the NSC 

 Planning Board fully occupied. Board menibers are backstopped by a system of Board Assistants and 

 departmf^ntal staffs— the State Department's representative, for example, is Director of the Department's 

 Policy Planning Staff with a strength of ten or eleven personnel— but here again there is a . . . preoccu- 

 pation with current and pending developments. Though long-range planning was the original function for 

 which the Policy Planning Sta?'' was established under George Kennan, this apparently came to be re- 

 garded as an insupportable luxury in terms of the urgency of issues and the scarcity of highly qualified man- 

 power." ( Warren R. Johnston, A National Plan for the Long Haul, Army War College, 1955, pp. 39^0.) As 

 noted at the beginning of this essay, the initiative mode requires longer-range planning and analysis than the 

 reactive. 



"'U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Foreign Affairs, The Political Legacy of the International Geo- 

 physical Year, a study in the series on Science, Technology, and American Diplomacy prepared for the 

 Subcommittee on National Security Policy and Scientific Developments by Harold Bullis, Science Policy 

 Research Division, Congressional Research Science, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. U.S. Govt. 

 Print. Off., 1973: vol. I, p. 358. 



'28 U.S. Congress, House, Committee on International Relations, Science and Technology in the Department 

 of State, a study in the series on Science, Technology, and American Diplomacy prepared for the Subcom- 

 mittee on International Security and Scientific Affairs by Franklin P. Huddle, Senior Specialist in Science 

 and Technology. Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. U.S. Govt. Print. 

 Off., 1975: vol. II, p. 1499 (footnote 282). 



