"An effective instrument of peace" Scientific cooperation as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy, 1938-1950

Osiris

Volumn 21, Issue , 2006, Pages 133-160

  Miller, Clark A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

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EID: 33748572947     PISSN: 03697827     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/507139     Document Type: Article

References (91)

1. The United States initiated or actively promoted the creation of these organizations in a series of conferences beginning with the UN Conference on Food and Agriculture in 1943 and the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. By 1947, agreements had been signed constituting the majority of these organizations, although some would not come into force until the late 1940s or early 1950s.
2. On the institutionalization of postwar international organization, see, especially, G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars (Princeton, 2001);
3. and John G. Ruggie, Multilateralism Matters: The Theory and Praxis of an Institutional Form (New York, 1993).
4. The precise balance among diplomatic and expert delegates often varied, across fields and at specific meetings. In meteorology, for example, U.S. legal experts were present during the negotiation of the World Meteorological Convention, although the primary negotiations took place among the heads of national weather services. Subsequent to the creation of the World Meteorological Organization, U.S. representation to the organization was housed fully within the U.S. Weather Bureau, and the chief of the U.S. Weather Bureau served as the organization's first president. See Clark A. Miller, "Scientific Internationalism in American Foreign Policy: The Case of Meteorology (1947-1958)," in Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance (Cambridge, 2001), ed. Clark A. Miller and P. Edwards.
5. In post war arms control, by contrast, diplomats retained control over most activities, even as scientists began to join in meetings. Separate technical meetings became an important part of the arms control process, but even here diplomatic representatives kept a carefu leye on the proceedings. See Kai-Henrik Barth, "Science and Politics in Early Nuclear Arms Control Negotiations," Physics Today 51 (1998): 34-9.
6. See also Harold K. Jacobson and Eric Stein, Diplomats, Scientists, and Politicians: The United States and the Nuclear Test Ban Negotiations (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1966). By the late 1990s, scientists formed a large portion of the representatives to international environmental organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC. Even at meetings of international climate negotiators, where the U.S. delegation was headed by a representative of the State Department, the other twenty-plus members of the delegation were technically trained experts from other agencies of the federal government.
7. See Clark A. Miller, "Challenges to the Application of Science to Global Affairs: Contingency, Trust, and Moral Order,"in Miller and Edwards, Changing the Atmosphere (cit. n. 3);
8. and idem, "Climate Science and the Making of a Global Political Order," in States of Knowledge: The Co-production of Science and Social Order ed. Sheila Jasanoff (London, 2004), for detailed discussion of the role of science in the IPCC and the climate negotiations.
9. On the growing role of science, technology, and expertise in the transformation of early twentieth-century U.S. policy-making, see, e.g., Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency (Oxford, 1959).
10. Clark A. Miller, "The Globalization of Human Affairs: A Reconsideration of Science, Political Economy, and World Order," in Rethinking Global Political Economy: Emerging Issues, Unfolding Odysseys, ed.Mary Ann Tetreault, Robert Denemark, Kurt Burch, and Kenneth Thomas (New York, 2003);
11. and Miller, "Scientific Internationalism" (cit. n. 3).
12. See also Anne-Marie Burley, "Regulating the World: Multilateralism, International Law, and the Projection of the New Deal Regulatory State," in Ruggie, Multilateralism Matters (cit. n. 2), 125-56;
13. and G. John Ikenberry, "A World Economy Restored: Expert Consensus and the Anglo-American Postwar Settlement," International Organization 46 (1992): 289-322.
14. Olcott H. Deming, "In the Minds of Men: Speech Given before the Alumni and Faculty of Rollins College," Feb. 24, 1946, Folders - Speeches; Box #25; Reports; Project Reports, Quarterly; Library of Congress - Statistical Data; Entry #14; Subject Files, 1938-53; NARA-RG353.3 (hereafter cited as SCC Speeches).
15. James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, 1998);
16. Stephen Lansing, Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali (Princeton, 1991);
17. Vandana Shiva, The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology, and Politics (London, 1991);
18. James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Cambridge, 1990).
19. Merle Curti and Kendall Birr, Prelude to Point Four: American Technical Missions Overseas, 1838-1938 (Madison, Wis., 1954);
20. William K. Storey, Science and Power in Colonial Mauritius (Rochester, N.Y., 1997);
21. idem, "Plants, Power, and Development: Founding the Imperial Department of Agriculture for the West Indies, 1880-1914," in Jasanoff, States of Knowledge (cit. n. 3).
22. See, e.g., the discussion of the differences between the prewar International Meteorological Organization and the postwar World Meteorological Organization, in Miller, "Scientific Internationalism" (cit. n. 3).
23. See, e.g., the account of Roosevelt's prewar policies laid out by Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Welles. Welles, The Time for Decision (New York, 1944).
24. Sumner Welles, Henry Morgenthau, Frank Murphy et al., "Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Cooperation with the American Republics Together with the Program of Cooperation Endorsed by the Committee," Nov. 10, 1938, Folder - History and Development of the Committee, Box 1, Entry #13, Records Relating to the History and Development of the Council and its Predecessors, 1938-1953, NARA-RG353.3 (hereafter cited as Council History Documents). The report was signed by the secretaries of interior, agriculture, commerce, and labor, the assistant secretary of the treasury, the librarian of Congress, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, the vice-chairman of the U.S. Maritime Commission, the president of the Export-Import Bank, the executive director of the National Emergency Council, and the chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Authority.
25. CAR, "Description of the Program Endorsed by the Committee Together with Estimates of the Appropriations Required to Put the Program into Effect," Nov. 10, 1938, Council History Documents.
26. Welles et al., "Report" (cit. n. 11). Committee records unfortunately provide no direct evidence of how Latin American governments and citizens responded to the committee's activities. However, committee records contain no materials that would indicate that either governments or individuals in Latin America took exception to the committee. Moreover, there is plenty of evidence in the committee records that Latin American governments availed themselves extensively of the committee's programs. U.S. law required that all committee projects be initiated by requests from Latin American governments.
27. Appropriations for sixteen committee projects totaling $370,000 were legislated beginning in fiscal year 1940/41. In 1942, Congress appropriated $600,000 to the committee, and in 1943, committee appropriations grew again to $1,685,000. By 1944, congressional appropriation for the committee had risen to $4.5 million (more than $50 million in 2003 dollars).
28. CAR, "An Account of Its Organization and Present Activities," 1943, Council History Documents; "Act of May 25, 1938 as Amended by the Act of May 3, 1939 (Public Law No. 63, 76th Congress), Recapitulation of Statistical Data," Oct. 14, 1944, Council History Documents; SCC, "Program for 'Cooperation with the American Republics,'" Aug. 15, 1947, Council History Documents.
29. SCC, "Objectives of the Program of the Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific and Cultural Cooperation (SCC) and Criteria Which Have Been Used in Selection of Projects," Nov. 30, 1948, Folder - Memos #2-45. Box #30, Records of the Full Committee, Entry #26, Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific and Cultural Cooperation, NARA-RG353.3 (hereafter cited as SCC Memos).
30. "Administrative Relations of the Secretariat of the Interdepartmental Committee on Cooperation with the American Republics within the Department [of State];" Council History Documents.
31. Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, "Meeting of the Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific and Cultural Cooperation," Aug. 12, 1942, quoted in SCC, "Objectives" (cit. n. 16).
32. quoted in SCC, "Objectives" (cit. n. 16).
33. "The Interdepartmental Committee on Cooperation with the American Republics: An Analysis of Its Administration," 1944, Council History Documents.
34. SCC, "Program" (cit. n. 15).
35. Acting Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, "Report to the President on Closer Relationship between the American Republics," Feb. 21, 1944, House Document 474, 78th Congress,
36. quoted in SCC, "Objectives" (cit. n. 16).
37. United States Government Manual (Washington, D.C., 1945).
38. See also SCC, Activities of the Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific and Cultural Cooperation, Dept. of State, Inter-American Series, no. 31 (Washington, D.C., 1946).
39. Joseph Sullivan, with Paul Colton, Raymund L. Zwemer: A Register of His Papers in the Library of Congress (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress: Washington, D.C.), 1996. Zwemer's position as executive director was an important starting point for a long career in public service. After leaving the committee in 1947, Zwemer would go on to become executive secretary of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council, chief of the Science and Technology Division of the Library of Congress, and chief of the Division of International Cooperation in Scientific Research for UNESCO.
40. The historical importance of this mechanism can hardly be overstated. During the postwar era, interagency mechanisms would be used to coordinate U.S. policy vis-à-vis a wide range of international issues. Today, such institutions are legion and a key element of governance. At the time, however, it was one of the earliest such committees created and one of only a handful in existence.
41. Paul Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (Princeton, 1985).
42. Cited in Michael A. Dennis, "'Our First Line of Defense': Two University Laboratories in the Postwar American State," Isis 85 (1994): 427-55.
43. Daniel J. Kevles, The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America (Cambridge, Mass., 1987);
44. Dennis, "'Our First Line of Defense'" (cit. n. 26);
45. Stuart W. Leslie, The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford (New York, 1993);
46. James Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower: A Memoir of the First Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (Cambridge, Mass., 1977);
47. Etel Solingen, ed., Scientists and the State: Domestic Structures and the International Context (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1994).
48. Not until the mid-1950s would Eisenhower resuscitate the idea of international cooperation among atomic energy experts in his proposal for the International Atomic Energy Agency.
49. Lloyd Berkner, Science and Foreign Relations (Washington, D.C., 1951), 3.
50. Richard Hewlett and Oscar Anderson, The New World: A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, vol. 1, 1939-1946 (University Park, Pa., 1962), 328.
51. Alice Kimball Smith, A Peril and a Hope: The Scientists' Movement in America, 1945-47 (Chicago, 1965), 257.
52. Smith, A Peril and a Hope (cit. n. 31), 455-60;
53. Hewlett and Anderson, The New World (cit. n. 30), 531-54.
54. Chester I. Barnard, J. R. Oppenheimer, Charles A. Thomas et al., A Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy (Washington, D.C., 1946), 41.
55. Bush agreed. Countering the idea that scientists somehow were naturally inclined toward internationalism, he argued that active steps would have to be taken to ensure that atomic scientists maintained a truly international perspective if international control were to work effectively over the long term. (See, e.g., Elizabeth Hodes, "Precedents for Social Responsibility among Scientists" [Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Calif., Santa Barbara, 1982]).
56. Compare this attitude with that of U.S. assistant secretary of state Garrison Norton, at the opening of negotiations to establish the World Meteorological Organization, described below and in detail in Miller, "Scientific Internationalism" (cit. n. 3).
57. Hewlett and Anderson, The New World (cit. n. 30), 455-77.
58. Gregg Herken, The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb and the Cold War 1945-1950 (Princeton, 1981), 171-191;
59. Hewlett and Anderson, The New World (cit. n. 30), 531-619.
60. SCC, Activities (cit. n. 22). The opening paragraphs of this report state: "A fact demonstrated forcibly by the war just past is that international relations based on power politics offer no real security to any nation. Mankind is therefore faced with the choice of accepting a new basis for international cooperation or of risking annihilation. No nation can longer assure its safety by isolating itself or drawing apart from the rest of the world. As Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote on the eve of his death: 'Today science has brought all the different quarters of the globe so close together that it is impossible to isolate them one from another. Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to profit, we must cultivate the science of human relationships - the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, to work together in the same world, at peace.'"
61. Harry S. Truman, Speech to the United Nations, San Francisco, April 25, 1945.
62. Quoted in Raymond Zwemer, CBS Radio Broadcast, Adventures in Science, Sept. 8, 1945, SCC Speeches.
63. Ibid.
64. Deming, "In the Minds of Men" (cit. n. 6), 1-3.
65. Raymund L. Zwemer, "The Role of the Government in Assisting International Cooperation between Scientific Groups: Address at the Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Chicago, Illinois," Sept. 1946, SCC Speeches.
66. Ibid.
67. Although the Food and Agricultural Organization, Bretton Woods institutions, and the Provisional International Civil Aviation Organization had already been established, they would not formally join the United Nations as specialized agencies until a few years later.
68. It is unclear whether Parran ever served personally on the Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific and Cultural Cooperation. The U.S. Public Health Service, however, which he headed, was one of the principal agencies that sent technical experts abroad under the committee's auspices, and Parran would have been highly familiar with the committee's work.
69. United Nations World Health Organization Interim Commission, Minutes of the Technical Preparatory Committee for the International Health Conference, Held in Paris from 18 March to 5 April, 1946 (Geneva, 1947).
70. The Constitution of the World Health Organization (Geneva, 1946).
71. Garrison Norton, "Address of Welcome by Mr. Garrison Norton, Assistant Secretary of State" in International Meteorological Organization, Conference of Directors, Washington, September 22-October 11, 1947 (Geneva,1947), 372-6. By 1946, F. W. Reichelderfer - who headed the U.S. Weather Bureau, helped draft Norton's speech, and would become the first president of the World Meteorological Organization - was a member of the committee and was fully aware of its work. Reichelderfer's agency had sent several experts to Latin America under its auspices.
72. See also Clark A. Miller, "Scientific Internationalism" (cit. n. 3). Note also that there is no hint in Norton's welcome of the concerns expressed by the Acheson-Lilienthal report that scientists would have to work hard to overcome the bonds of nationalism and service to their governments in favor of internationalist sentiments.
73. For an explanation of how this worked in practice, see Ross B. Talbot, The Four World Food Agencies in Rome (Ames, Iowa, 1990).
74. See also n. 3.
75. Today, the U.S. government would establish an interagency task force or committee to prepare a U.S. position regarding the issue. Contemporary sources point to the SCC as one of the very first such committees. See Executive Committee on Economic Foreign Policy, "Proposal for Interdepartmental Participation in the Formulation of Policy for the Guidance of United States Representatives on International Economic and Social Organizations," Jan. 23, 1946, Box #32. Subcommittee Reports, 1943-49, Entry #29, Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific and Cultural Cooperation, NARA-RG 353.3.
76. Ibid.
77. He listed, specifically, the Executive Committee on Economic Foreign Policy, established April 5, 1944;the National Advisory Council on International Monetary and Financial Problems, established by the Bretton Woods Agreements Act of July 31, 1945; the Air Coordinating Committee, which coordinated aviation policies across the secretaries of war, navy, state, and commerce; and the Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific and Cultural Cooperation. Executive Committee on Economic Foreign Policy, "Proposal" (cit. n. 48).
78. Ibid.
79. Subcommittee membership included: the Department of Agriculture (responsible for the Food and Agriculture Organization), the Civil Aeronautics Administration (responsible for the Provisional International Civil Aviation Organization), the Foreign Security Agency (responsible for the World Health Organization), the Department of Labor (responsible for the International Labor Organization), and the Library of Congress (responsible for UNESCO). In addition to establishing this new subcommittee, membership lists for the committee were broadened to include specific subdivisions within member agencies that carried out committee projects. See SCC, "Activities" (cit. n. 22).
80. SCC, "Committee Organization," Feb. 25, 1946, Council History Documents. The committee had already played an important role in U.S. policy toward UNESCO. The United Nations proposed to create an Educational and Cultural Organization to foster intellectual and cultural exchange in late 1945. This new organization fell within the mandate of the committee, which was tasked with coordinating the creation of a national commission that would oversee the organization's activities in the United States. Immediately, the committee insisted that U.S. negotiators in New York insert language into the draft text to make the organization a United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, consistent with committee's own views on the relatively greater importance of scientific and technical cooperation.
81. CAR, "Memorandum on the Origin of the Cultural Relations Program, Its Geographic Growth, Broad Accomplishments, Major Projects, and Personnel," Oct. 22, 1943, Council History Documents;
82. Raymond L. Zwemer, "Interdepartmental Committee on Cooperation with the American Republics," Department of State Bulletin 9(274) (1944): 319, Council History Documents;
83. CAR, "Replies Received from Members of the Interdepartmental Committee in Regard to Proposed Expansion of the Program of the Interdepartmental Committee on Cooperation with the American Republics under HR-5350," 1944;
84. and CAR, "Meeting of Long-Range Planning Subcommittee," Folder - Subcommittees, Executive Subcommittee, Project Subcommittee, 1944, Box #27, Entry #17, Subcommittee Records, 1944-49, NARA-RG353.3.
85. SCC, "Policy Statement for the Guidance of Agency Members in the Preparation of Their Fiscal 1949 Budgets for 'Cooperation with the American Republics,'" May 22, 1947, Council History Documents.
86. Olcott H. Deming, "Summary of Remarks before the Mid-Atlantic Conference of the National Council of Jewish Women," Oct. 27, 1947, SCC Speeches.
87. SCC, "The Scientific and Technical Program under Public Law 402," Dec. 8, 1948, Folder - SCC Memos, Box #30, Records of the Full Committee, Entry #26, Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific and Cultural Cooperation, NARA-RG353.3.
88. Harry S. Truman, "Inaugural Address," Jan. 20, 1949, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1964).
89. SCC, "Implementation of Point Four Program of Technical Cooperation," Feb. 18, 1949, Folder - Memoranda and Documents Distributed to the Full Committee, Box #31 - Records of the Full Committee, 1947-1950, Entry #27, Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific and Cultural Cooperation, NARA-RG353.3.
90. The 1950 Act for International Development would ultimately authorize $35 million in funding through June 30, 1951.
91. Interdepartmental Advisory Committee on Technical Assistance, "Explanatory Book for the Presentation of the Development Cooperation Program," May 18, 1949, SCC Memos.