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20 SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL COOPERATION 



Thus, it must be recognized that certain tensions or mismatches do 

 exist between the needs of science and the exigencies oi foreign poHcy. 

 While these conflicts are probably inevitable and not altogether coun- 

 terproductive, they do raise profound questions about the future 

 scope and direction of S&T cooperation. 



There are, in addition, other types of pressures or conflicts extant 

 within the U.S. S&T policy environment. For example, many ana- 

 lysts-^ have noted the imbalances that exist between the priorities of 

 the mission-oriented agencies (e.g., the National Aeronautics and 

 Space Administration, the Department of Energy, etc.) and the objec- 

 tives and competencies of the Department of State. While the State 

 Department maintains a comprehensive view of the U.S. role and in- 

 terests in the international context, it is poorly equipped to provide 

 the same high level of staff competence and mission focus on S&T 

 fields as other line agencies. This problem is mitigated to some extent 

 by the existence of the Office of Science and Technology Policy within 

 the White House. But, in some respects, the lack of effective State De- 

 partment involvement relegates the formulation of international S&T 

 policy to an ad hoc "turf battle" between the mission agencies. 



Less significant but nevertheless important are pressures that ema- 

 nate from within the scientific community itself. Given both their ac- 

 cess to the highest levels of government decision making and their 

 need for government funding, scientists often function as formal or 

 informal pressure groups for particular projects. On some occasions, 

 groups of scientists within a discipline are able to brmg pressure on 

 intergovernmental or nongovernmental organizations to support a 

 certain type of cooperation for which they themselves may be among 

 the beneficiaries. Governments besieged by multiple competing de- 

 mands for scarce resources have sometimes viewed the impassioned 

 exhortations of the scientific community for additional research sup- 

 port not so much as "common good" but as a form of "special plead- 

 ing" from yet one more interest group. 



Costs and Benefits^^ 



The importance of achieving "critical mass"— as measured in terms 

 of capital, human expertise, and facilities— in an area of scientific en- 

 deavor stands out as a major benefit of cooperation. The synergistic 

 economic effect of multiple funding for a particular line of research is 

 obvious, but collaboration in fields such as environmental science or 

 geophysics also can facilitate the coordination of numerous modest 

 projects into a major global program of lasting significance. By the 



