1040 



30 SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL COOPERATION 



technological leakage, bureaucratic difficulties, ignorance of develop- 

 ments overseas, a commitment to leave R&D to the private sector and 

 the general domestic orientation of the U.S. government (of which 

 more below) — conspire to keep the number and scale of government- 

 supported international programs a quite minor proportion of total 

 R&D support. 



It was not always so. Even though international cooperation was 

 always a relatively small part of the budget, the present situation is in 

 fact poorer than in earlier postwar years. Following World War II, 

 and particularly after the Marshall Plan and the onset of the Cold 

 War, there was a substantial U.S. interest in science and technology 

 cooperation with Western industrial countries. Research was sup- 

 ported directly by U.S. agencies in Europe, and the climate was gener- 

 ally supportive for expansion of cooperation wherever possible. A 

 major program of cooperation was begun informally with Japan in the 

 late 1950s, and formally in 1961. The National Aeronautics and Space 

 Administration (NASA) legislation, passed in 1958, explicitly called 

 for an international approach, as had the National Science Founda- 

 tion (NSF) legislation in 1950. Early objectives in NATO included ma- 

 jor interest in joint research and production, and the NATO Science 

 Committee was started in 1957 with grand ideas of spurring coopera- 

 tive R&D. Even the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and De- 

 velopment (OECD), when it was reconstituted out of the former Mar- 

 shall Plan, included science policy cooperation among member 

 countries as an important segment. 



But the climate substantially changed. Absolute resources going for 

 international cooperation in science and technology may be larger to- 

 day, but relative to national budgets, the relative amount is surely 

 much lower. Certainly, the atmosphere in which cooperation must be 

 developed and funded is less supportive, notwithstanding the discus- 

 sion at the last three summits about international cooperation. (Per- 

 haps the formal agreement at the Williamsburg summit will spur a 

 change in attitude, but it is too early to tell.) 



From economic, budgetary, political, and scientific perspectives, 

 this is unfortunate. Public-sector goals in science and technology 

 could benefit from a different climate of receptivity toward interna- 

 tional cooperation, and certainly this nation's objectives in foreign af- 

 fairs and in technical assistance would benefit from much greater abil- 

 ity to tap American scientific and technological resources. 



Among the several reasons for the relative lack of support for inter- 

 national cooperation is one "family " of reasons that has received rela- 



