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NICHOLS: FOREIGN POLICY 195 



The U.S. Congress has been showing a strikingly broader alertness to 

 the international dimensions of scientific and technological activities. In- 

 creasingly, many committees explicitly relate the national to the interna- 

 tional R&D scenes. Congress and its supporting agencies have insisted on 

 trying to understand the national impacts of international technological 

 trends, especially, for instance, regarding trade and defense. 



In the U.S. Executive Branch, international research and development 

 has been an "orphan." It is quite difficult to obtain even crude data on 

 the scale of science and technology carried out with any international 

 purposes in mind. Recent legislation calls upon the State Department to 

 give much greater attention to the planning, the coordination, and the 

 training aspects of the Department's responsibilities for science and 

 technology serving American diplomacy. In the staffs of the National 

 Security Council, the Council of Economic Advisors, and the Office of 

 Science and Technology Policy, senior staff members focus on every one 

 of the issues mentioned so far. Nonetheless, the various mission-agencies 

 send and receive mixed signals about, and give a generally low priority 

 to, their activities in technology related to foreign policy. 



We could summarize all of this in a rather breezy way by noting that 

 the U.S. Government frequently tends to see technology as (a) "a trump 

 card," (b) "a last resort," or (c) "a scarce resource." Such headline- 

 phrases might characterize most of the major U.S. initiatives in recent 

 years concerning R&D with diplomatic implications. For instance, cruise 

 missile technology has been a "trump card" in defense; general exchange 

 agreements on scientific topics have been a "last resort" when other 

 diplomatic efforts have failed or must be nurtured; and advanced com- 

 puter technologies have been "a scarce resource" to be protected rather 

 than shared. Simplifications with new vocabulary introduce concepts 

 that require definition, which probably ought to be avoided in a subject 

 that is already plagued by ambiguities. But the phrases may help to high- 

 light the occasionally conflicting premises (or purposes) that most govern- 

 ments confront. 



It would be impossible to generalize reliably about the roles of indus- 

 try, organized labor, and universities in the technological relations of the 

 United States abroad. But it is fair to say that an entirely new set of 

 deeper tensions has emerged in the past decade. Competition from 

 around the world has meant that our manufacturers face new problems 

 and our workers face new insecurities. Protectionism is surely not the 

 long term answer. One reconcilation of the many current pressures is to 

 launch, as the Carter Administration has done and as the Ford Adminis- 

 tration did earlier, new initiatives in R&D that would help the United 



