1333 



^eneralists? Might specialists be brought into the Service at appro- 

 priate levels as needed, on a teraporar}^ basis? Is it fair to specialists 

 to convert them into generalists in order for them to merit progress 

 lip the promotion ladder? Can the Foreign Service Officer be both? 

 There appears to be merit in the contention that the Foreign Service 

 Officer needs to know quite a lot to qualify, and to learn a lot more to 

 succeed. To expect him to be both broad and deep, adaptable and 

 authoritatively knowledgeable, is asking a good deal. 



PRESENT VERSUS FUTURE ORIENTATION 



Another allegation is that the- U.S. diplomatic community tends to 

 take problems as they arise, and has difficulty in projecting future 

 problems or opportunities. Schools of international affairs have 

 developed no diplomatic literature or predictive techniques that 

 compare w4th the extensive speculative literature of science and 

 technology, all the way from Steinmetz's forecasts of the early 1920s 

 to contemporary "Delphi" projects. The predictive' power of tech- 

 nology forecasting is significant and growing. But even though there 

 is an abundance of observations of the ways in which technological 

 change has altered the world of diplomacy in recent years, there are 

 few responsible attempts to derive from present-day technology 

 forecasts an idea of how the anticipated technological changes will 

 modify the future diplomatic world. Further, the Uterature on the 

 specifics of diplomatic adaptation to technology-induced changes in 

 the diplomatic world is singularly bleak. 



DIPLOMACY OF SCIENCE VERSUS DIPLOMACY OF TECHNOLOGY 



An issue that has not really surfaced in the Department of State is 

 that of distinguishing the diplomatic impacts of science from those of 

 technology. In the definitions presented above, a number of distinc- 

 tions were drawn between science and technology. From the point of 

 view of the diplomat, some of these distinctions may be useful. For 

 example, the diplomat has learned that he can make extensive use of 

 the international orientation and cooperativeness of the scientist to 

 help bridge across national cultural differences. The diplomatic impacts 

 of science seem to be mainly in human relations and largely intra- 

 disciplinary.'' On the other hand, the diplomatic impacts of technology 

 are more profound and broader: military weaponry and arms control, 

 technical assistance and technology transfers, international standards, 

 mineral resource exploitation and control, competition in computers, 

 international communications and air transportation systems, patent 

 policy, economic growth, energy embargoes, the green revolution 

 in plant genetics, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and many other 

 problems and opportunities in technological diplomacy come to mind. 



One possible difference between science and technology — in terms of 

 diplomatic impact — concerns timing and predictability. Since tech- 

 nology is usually based on known scientific phenomena, its impacts 

 tend to be more predictable and on a somewhat shorter time scale 

 than those of scientific discovery. On this basis, diplomatic attention 



' That is to say, the high energy physicists, geneticists, geophysicists, solid state scientists, and practi- 

 tioners of aU the myriad of other sub-disciplines of the sciences communicate freely across national bound- 

 aries — f)erhaps more freely than across disciplinary boundaries or from the field of science to the "other 

 culture." 



