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or worse, "science for national security," Is capable of doins great violence 

 to science and its longstanding tradition of internationalism by positing 

 cooperation in science as a threat to national competitiveness. This is a 

 false opposition. Participation in multilateral organizations creates access 

 for scientists in many fields inside and outside the ICSU family. Limiting 

 that participation limits access. Isolating a nation's scientists. 

 Furthermore, as the record of protectionism has shown. Isolation is hardly 

 conducive to long-term competitiveness. 



What Is at the source of this new intellectual protectionism and of the 

 accompanying impatience with international science here in the United States? 

 One of the problems Is that international science is difficult to manage . 

 Without taking the position that "domestic science" is easy to manage, I 

 believe it is safe to say that the resources available for the task 

 domestically are both more ample and more concentrated in terms of the 

 geographic and disciplinary areas in which the scientific tasks are to be 

 carried out. International science resources within the U.S. science 

 establishment (government, foundations, universities, associations, 

 publishers, manufacturers of equipment, corporate research and development 

 departments) must cover all of the same Intellectual territory as do our 

 domestic resources. As a result they are spread thinner and their 

 constituencies are less powerful: most exponents of international science have 

 commitments to their discipline and to internationalism; these commitments are 

 not always mutually reinforcing, nor are they always of equal priority. In 

 addition, much international science suffers (I believe that is the correct 

 word) by having to move through diplomatic channels. 



It would be useful here to draw a distinction between intergovernmental 

 science programs (Including specific megaprojects such as CERN, multilateral 

 institutions like UNESCO, and bilateral and regional agreements such as those 

 administered "by the NSF) and government support for scientific activities with 

 an International dimension. The difference lies not only in the average size 

 of the projects Involved, but also in the relative locus of authority for 

 setting the research agenda. The larger the project, and the higher the level 

 of authority Involved in administering it, the slower the project is likely to 

 move along. 



I believe this problem of the pace of multilateral undertakings, 

 compounded by the absence of handy measures of return on the U.S. investment, 

 lay at the root of this country's withdrawal from UNESCO. During the 

 withdrawal process, the Department of State relied on a set of five goals 

 guiding the administration's relations with multilateral organizations. The 

 first of these was to "reassert American leadership in multilateral affairs." 

 We believe that it will always be difficult to pursue this goal successfully 

 without a sufficiently strong concomitant commitment to the agonizingly slow 

 process of international cooperation. (Progress in reorienting a U.N. agency 

 in which so many of the world's nations enjoy their ability to play the active 

 role they see as being closed to them elsewhere, and in which the 

 multinational bureaucracy has become so entrenched. Is bound to be difficult.) 



