1681 



Anyone who is reasonably well informed in public affairs and familiar 

 with the machinery and processes of government, including specifically 

 the State Department, will recognize the enormous difficulty of relat- 

 ing these and other contemporary technological developments to 

 national interests, both domestic and diplomatic. Nevertheless, failure 

 to relate national policy to such developments — and where possible 

 to anticipate where they are tending and to direct them into construc- 

 tive channels — would represent a surrender to technology as an 

 uncontrolled force. One result of such surrender could well be the 

 erosion and ultimate disappearance of social and political democracy 

 in those countries where they now prevail; another would probabl3^ 

 be a further deterioriation in the quality of life for all peoples every- 

 where, beyond what may be due to already foreseeable factors, most 

 of them related to growing population pressures. 



In short, there Avould appear to be no more important issue of 

 foreign policy for governments to cope with than the behavior of 

 international technology. If this is the case, there is no more important 

 issue confronting the State Department. 



How the Issue Developed; U.S. Involvement 



Preceding studies in this series have dealt with the evolution of 

 international technology in general, and the circumstances of a variety 

 of special instances of it, as they affected the United States. This 

 section will not attempt to tell the story of how U.S. diplomacy has 

 responded historically to the growing influences of science and tech- 

 nology, but will give some attention to related developments involving 

 the State Department since 1950.^*- 



OFFICIAL U.S. CONCERN WITH SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



Under the influence of men like Franklin and Jeffei^on, science and 

 technology were closely interrelated with American diplomacy in 

 the early years of the Republic. After the Presidency of John Quincy 

 Adams, however, "interaction of diplomats— and Government officials 

 generall}^ — with science and technology appears to have diminished. 

 In the main, the modern concern of the Department of State with 

 science and technology dates from the close of World War II. It was 

 from here in 1946 that the Acheson-Lilienthal Report was drafted, 

 proposing a diplomatic initiative to bring the newl}'^ developed tech- 

 nology of atomic energy under international control." ^^ 



Other positive factors besides atomic energy compelled the atten- 

 tion of international diplomacy, and in the United States that of the 

 State Department, to the importance of science and technology. 

 Among these factors were the ci'eation of such U:N.-affiHated inter- 

 national institutions as the World Health Organization, the Food 

 and Agricultural Organization, and the United Nations Educational, 

 Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); the impulse to 

 restore the global network of scientific societies, disrupted by war; 

 early recognition of the need to mobilize technology to repair war 

 damage, restore the economies of devastated countries of Europe, and 

 assist m the development of poor countries everywhere ; and the expec- 

 tation, nourished by awareness of the many important contributions 



2*2 Readers seeking a more detailed historical perspective are referred to pages 1335-1395 of Science and 

 Technology in the Department of State (op. cit.) 

 2S3 Ibid., p. 1335. 



