1822 



during the three decades since it was unleashed, but its constructive 

 potential has barely begun to be realized. If the world's peoples are 

 spared the military and environmental hazards of fission for another 

 two or three generations, the foreseen technology of nonrailitary fusion 

 may follow. Though it is to be recognized that nuclear power has 

 been, and continues to be, employed by some countries to promote or 

 safeguard their national independence, it seems likely that by that 

 time no development in human history will have done more to bring 

 about global interdependence and the abandonment of outmoded 

 assertions of sovereign independence than the scientific discovery and 

 technological application of nuclear energy. But it is not too soon to 

 chart the implications of further additions to nuclear technology on 

 the structure and course of interdependence, 



CASE three: the political legacy of the ixterxational 



GEOPHYSICAL YTiAR 



As a study in cooperative interdependence, the International 

 Geophysical Year was an almost ideal model translated into action. 

 Most of its scientific achievements and constructive political legacy 

 resulted from the coordinated efforts of scientists from 67 countries, 

 stationed in every part of the globe. Their acts of cooperation required 

 no special orders or persuasion, beyond the dissemination of an idea 

 and some organizing to carry it out; in the main they posed no insoluble 

 problems of intercultural communication or accommodation. As 

 author Harold Bullis observes: 



. . . Scientists tend inherently to recognize the interdependence of their efforts 

 and accept that interdependence as one of the basic conditions of the environment 

 in which they work. It is then relatively easy for them to accept the extension of 

 this principle to the environment in which they live.*''* 



The author carries this thought a step further to suggest that pos- 

 sibly a pattern of interdependence in the scientific sphere may carry 

 over into the diplomatic. He sees a political legacy left by the IGY 

 in the form of international agreements, treaties, and working rela- 

 tionships. His assessment of the IGY, given as part of the earlier 

 commentary on Case Three, ends with that thought, attributed to 

 the scientists themselves: 



Several factors help provide at least some degree of optimism that the scientists 

 may be justified. One is the great importance of first perceiving and assessing, 

 and then communicating, technological impacts. Scientists and technologists are 

 likely to comprehend the possible consequences of new discoveries and applications 

 in the fields of energy or of ecology, for example, more immediately or fully than 

 are politicians. Partly because of the IGY, both technological developments and 

 political (or institutional) developments which significantly affect the human 

 condition can be more readily appreciated and utilized today. First, they can be 

 brought to the attention of both political leaders and the public within countries 

 (it is becoming increasingly difficult for leaders to withhold them even in dictator- 

 ships) ; secondl}'', they can be shared among the countries of the world far more 

 readily than was possible just two or three decades ago. Wider public understand- 

 ing of technological impacts and a stronger institutional framework (governmental, 

 professional, and the press) for increasing that understanding still further are in 

 large part responsible in the first instance; technological advances in rapid com- 

 munications and transportation are among the factors responsible in the second.*^* 



"8 Bullis, Tlic Political Legacy of the Interntttional Geophysical Year, vol. T, p. 349. 

 <7» Ibid., p. 350. 



