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U.S. PARTICIPATION IN INTERNATIONAL S&T COOPERATION 9 



1. Cost Sharing— avoid unnecessary duplication of effort particu- 

 larly in the case of research facilities or instrumentation requiring sub- 

 stantial amounts of capital. 



2. Concept Development — formal cooperation can build on the 

 invisible colleges of science to speed the identification and exploitation 

 of new research approaches. 



3. Acceleration of New Technologies. 



4. Enhancement of Scientific and Engineering Competence — a 

 particular concern at the end of World War II. 



5. Political Considerations — S&T cooperation may provide an at- 

 tractive means of projecting national influence or of encouraging 

 other forms of contact between nations (e.g., the United States-Peo- 

 ple's Republic of China bilateral S&T agreements, Antarctica). 



Clearly, U.S. policy has encompassed all of these objectives at various 

 times, although the emphasis accorded to each has shifted over the 

 years. 



In the period immediately following World War II, a chief U.S. con- 

 cern was the rebuilding of the European science apparatus which had 

 been largely disrupted or destroyed. U.S. assistance was particularly 

 important in some of the faster moving disciplines such as molecular 

 biology and high energy physics. During the 1950s, the United States 

 supported a number of initiatives to promote international S&T coop- 

 eration, some of which were intended further to promote the redevel- 

 opment of European scientific infrastructure and some to benefit the 

 United States itself. These included U.S. support for the creation of 

 the specialized technical agencies of the UN, such as the World 

 Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Educational, Scientific, and 

 Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Later in the decade, the United 

 States was instrumental in an effort, launched through the NATO Sci- 

 ence Committee, to establish an International Institute of Science and 

 Technology. ° 



Perhaps the most enduring example of U.S. involvement in interna- 

 tional S&T cooperation during this period was the organization in 

 1957-1958 of the ICSU-sponsored International Geophysical Year 

 (IGY), involving representatives of 67 countries with worldwide net- 

 works or surveys in 14 scientific disciplines in all aspects of the earth's 

 environment. The IGY opened up the Antarctic and initiated the space 

 age. The organization of the IGY itself spawned new ways of conduct- 

 ing science for large-scale problem solving that had profound effects 

 on the disciplines involved (e.g., oceanography) and on the manner in 

 which individual scientists approached their fields. It introduced 



