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The overwhelming donestic orientation of the American R&D enterprise is 

 often a surprise not only to scientists in other countries, but also to 

 Americans used to the view that science is basically an international, or at 

 least a non-national, enterprise. Though science is non-national in its 

 substance, nations do support science and technology for national purposes, 

 and the institutions of government providing support are necessarily oriented 

 to national goals. In the U.S., the development of governmental institutions 

 has historical, cultural, geographic and security roots that results in a 

 policy process that weights domestic interests and concerns to a much greater 

 extent than is the case in most other industrial countries. The separation of 

 powers between the Executive and the Congress is a major factor in continuing 

 this dominance of domestic interests. Moreover, the yery scale of science and 

 technology in the U.S. coupled with the geographic position of the country, 

 have tended to make scientists and engineers as a whole less knowledgeable 

 about and less interested in what is happening outside the country. 



The result is a policy and budget process geared so automatically to 

 domestic purposes for the use of funds that necessary adjustments for 

 international projects, e.g., extra initial costs for project development or 

 funds for needed travel, almost always have to be dealt with aa hoc and are 

 usually viewed with skepticism (or worse). Nor is there a general climate in 

 the Government that recognizes the value to the U.S. of international 

 cooperation, nor widespread interest and pressure from the scientific 

 community at large advocating more international cooperation as a major policy 

 goal. It is anomalous in an era in which high-quality R&D capability exists 

 (and is growing) in many countries that share U.S. interests, in which the 

 problems facing these societies are increasingly common and intertwined with 

 those of the U.S., and in which the costs of R&D increase so as to limit the 

 ability of any one country, even the U.S., to seek answers entirely on its 

 own, that so little of an international perspective is in evidence. 



To begin to develop that perspective, to take more advantage of the R&D 

 benefits of international cooperation, and to realize the potential value to 

 the U.S. of an international approach to the problems that loom so large in 

 all societies will not develop naturally. Agencies and particularly the lower 

 levels of R&D management, would have to be sure not only that there is 

 high-level Executive Branch and Congressional interest in developing 

 international activities that support the agencies' R&D objectives, but also 

 that international programs, if competitive, would be welcomed within their 

 overall program and that the likely greater uncertainties encountered in 

 evaluation of new proposals would be sympathetically taken into account. 



From this would also have to follow some changes in the funding process 

 that reflected the fact that international projects cannot be treated 

 identically to a typical proposal that is wholly domestic. Up-front funding 

 may be necessary to explore opportunities and to allow initial development of 

 proposals that may be harder to formulate because of differeing research 

 styles or institutional practices. Some risks may have to be taken for 

 situations in which there could be serious political costs if a 

 jointly-developed proposal is ultimately rejected. Recognition of the 

 importance of being a reliable partner may also sometimes require longer 



