440 



1022 Waller A. McDougall 



know-how. But an equitable international division of labor is definable only in 

 political terms. American corporations also proved to be something other than 

 promoters of progress, seeking at times to inhibit exploitation of satellite technology 

 that competed with their oceanic cables. Space applications in general have sparked 

 vigorous European and Japanese rivalry with American space industries, as much 

 for political as economic reasons. And, rather than joining a global communications 

 network, the Soviets established their own INTERKOSMOS system for the Eastern 

 Bloc countries. This, and perfunctory visits by guest cosmonauts to Salyut space 

 stations, hardly constituted genuine sharing of technology. The Europeans, in turn, 

 have had uneven success with their international space agencies.^" Participants 

 often viewed cooperative programs as a means of hastening national technological 

 independence, as the French and Japanese cases illustrate.^' Even as advanced 

 technology united the world in some respects, the financial, military, and organiza- 

 tional demands of "big science" tended to reinforce the national state as the most 

 efficient age7it of technological change. 



Given this history we may well ask why statesmen and pundits of the early Space 

 Age expected the conquest of space to alter the traditional behavior of states. 

 Perhaps the technological enthusiasm of the 1950s and 1960s had an element of 

 self-justification. Hiroshima and the subsequent absorption of nuclear weapons into 

 the international order were technological faits accomplis. But after Sputnik I 

 statesmen again proved unable or unwilling to control the accelerating advance of 

 technology; in.stead they groped for formulas in which technology itself would do 

 the work of the human agency — that is, fashion prophylactics against its own 

 misuse. They professed to see in space exploitation or mutual assured destruction 

 or some other effluence of rocketry an integrative force that would solve its own 

 political problems en passant. The evidence suggests rather that nothing in the 

 technology necessarily drew countries together. The poor record of the Atoms for 

 Peace program and later of the International Atomic Energy Agency understand- 

 ably inclined the pivotal United States toward a conservative policy on space 

 cooperation.'" The Soviet Union has shown little interest in open sharing at all, and 

 superpower cooperation — most notably, the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz rendezvous — has 

 been the result, not the cause, of political detente. '^ 



'*' The European Launch Development Organization (ELDO) and European Space Research Organization 

 (ESRO), founded in the early 1960s to ensure a role for European governments and business in space, were 

 models of how not to promote international research and development. Recently, the formation of the 

 European Space Agency (1975) has given European space cooperation a new lease on life, but only by acting as 

 an umbrella for nationally managed programs. 



" Waller A. McDougall, "The Struggle for Space," Wilson Quarterly. 4 (1980); 66, 7 1-82. On European space 

 programs, see note 56, below; and United States House of RepresenUtives, Committee on Science and 

 Technology, World Wide Space Programs (Washington, 1977). 



'^ Frutkin, International Cooperation in Space. 28-35. 



" Writers of the 1970s regarded the spate rate, like the Cold War, as a thing of the past, see, for in- 

 stance. J C. D. Blaine, The End of an Era in Space Exploration: From Competition to Cooperation (San Diego, 1976). 

 Edward C. and Linda N. Ezells The Partnership: A History of the Apollv-Soyuz Test Project (Washington, 1978) 

 includes an excellent summary of the efforts to establish ccxjperation with the Soviet Union in spate and of the 

 technical difficulties of the joint manned mission. As an othcial history, it does not attempt to evaluate the 

 charge that the ASTP was a "giveaway" of American expertise. Dodd L. Harvey and Linda Citcoretti's U.S.- 

 Soviet C<joperation in Space (Miami, 1974) is a thorough political history benefiting from access to the papers of 

 NASA administrator James E. Webb. 



