1829 



commercial relations as both engine and expression of detente was fore- 

 seen as a possibility a quarter century or more ago by some of the same 

 political leaders who were responsible for charting the U.S. course in 

 the cold war.*^^ The prospect was then largely speculative and hedged 

 about with many qualifications. Vincent P. Rock's analysis and pre- 

 scription of 1964 in A Strategy qf Interdependence was reasoned and 

 constructive, but it too was ahead of its time. Events have since 

 caught up, and U.S.-Soviet Commercial Relations could address some 

 real, if hesitant, developments toward the establishment of United 

 States-Soviet ties with constructive implications for global inter- 

 dependence. The management of these ties in such a way as to fulfill 

 their constructive potential, however, presents many unresolved 

 problems in the organization of the U.S. Government (including the 

 question of executive-legislative relations), and the formulation of 

 appropriate U.S. policies, for carrying out a global "strateg^'^ of 

 interdependence. ' ' 



402 



ISSUE one: the evolution of international technology'-'^ 



Technology is "a powerful force — perhaps the most powerful of all 

 forces" *^^ — for growth and change in the world. A principal aim of 

 The Evolution of International Technology was to document the inter- 

 relationship of technology and diplomacy. Technology was seen as 

 both an ingredient of the conditions which call upon diplomacy and a 

 source of diplomatic strength: 



The objective of diplomacy is to reconcile or resolve issues and establish 

 agreements to advance the national interest in a constantly changing world. 

 Changes within the jurisdiction of each member of the world community alter 

 its relations with others. No source of change is more potent than an alteration 

 in a nation's technological condition. It produces changes of many kinds of many 

 levels of impacts and interactions: military, commercial, cultural, political, and 

 scientific; these changes involve many agencies of government, the academic 

 world, private business, and the pubUc at large. Famiharity with technology, and 

 with the nature of its impacts, is thus an indispensable tool of the diplomat. 

 Moreover, the skill with which a nation manages and advances its own technology 

 contributes to the status of its diplomats, and to the options with which they can 

 negotiate. In both senses, national technology confers diplomatic power."* 



Developments in U.S. technology bear on the attainment of such 

 national and international objectives as peace, reduced tension, in- 

 creased trade, and improvements in the lot of the developing countries: 



Accordingly, the Department of State has a cause for concern with the health 

 and vigor of U.S. technology, both generally and with specific reference to tech- 

 nological fields that can be identified as contributing most directly to diplomatic 

 objectives of the United States. The future direction of U.S. technological ad- 

 vances, no less than the Nation's general level of technological competence, has 

 far-reaching consequences beyond its borders. Of great importance also are the 

 uses made of this burgeoning technology, and the organizational arrangements — • 

 domestic and international — for overseeing these uses. In these senses, technology 

 is an important basis for national power.^^^ 



"I The director and associate director of this study series recall discussions in the executive branch in 

 the late 1940s and early 1950s, involving interpretations by consulting scholars and Government analysts 

 of the likelv tendencies of the Soviet Union as the aging leaders of the revolutionary period were replaced 

 by a generation of managers and engineers. In some of the discussions the present trend toward detente 

 and economic relationships was predicted— though always with the proviso; "Assuming a nuclear staud- 

 on . . . ." 



<92 Huddle, The Evolution of International Technology, vol. II, pp. 60/-680. 



"3 Ibid., p. 680. 



«4 Ibid., p. 366. 



«5 Ibid. 



