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Science Technology and the Economic Future edited by Susan Raymond
Jane Wales
Assistant to the President for International Security
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Based on remarks delivered at the New York Academy of Sciences, June 25, 1996.
I am going to discuss the changed security policy agenda, the forces that shape it, the logic that drives it, and the mechanisms for tying science and technology to its aims. I will then say a word about the obstacles to success.
The world has changed, and with it the threats to and requirements of security. The bipolar conflict that defined the Cold War no longer dominates. And, at least three interacting and largely spontaneous trends now challenge the capacity of states to govern and of nature to provide.
The first is the communications revolution and the attendant diffusion of military and other technologies, of information and ideas. Information technology has already had the effect of decentralizing decision-making and authority. It is fair to say we do not know the full consequences of this third Industrial Revolution. But we do know that it is powerful and transforming.
The second trend is the restructuring of the global economy; the redistribution of wealth, production, and power; and the exacerbation of income disparities within and among states. The combination of economic globalization and the information revolution has brought about a rapid shift in the structure of U.S. labor markets from manufacturing to knowledge-based jobs. And the income advantage of college graduates over high school graduates is widening quickly with real social consequences.
This would not look quite so unstable were it not for the third trend: population surges at the low end of the economy, adding almost a billion people per decade. This young, mobile population is moving to cities at the rate of a million per week, requiring water, sewage treatment, energy, transportation, and sources of employment. If fertility rates decline to replacement levels, we will have a world population of 10 billion in the year 2050, requiring a tripling of food and energy production over the next 50 years. We are not prepared.
Understanding these three forces and learning to manage the interactions among them have rightly become a preoccupation of scholars and policy-makers. We must rely on the promise of science and technology, not only to help us understand these forces, but also to contend with them—to expand both our knowledge and our options. Greater knowledge will help us to predict and prevent crises, to organize ourselves for decision-making and response, and to develop concepts of security that capture the synergies among the many contributors to conflict, so that we can treat them as symptoms of a syndrome, rather than separable, inexplicable, or unimportant events.
U.S. Government Organizational Innovations
The problems we face require cross disciplinary analysis and cross-sectoral action. But we are not organized that way, either in government or in academia. So we have had to invent mechanisms for cooperation, among states, among government agencies, and among disciplines. I will point to three such innovations within the U.S. government: the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), the program of comprehensive S&T cooperation known as "country strategies," and the creation of binational commissions led by the Vice President.
The NSTC is a Cabinet-level interagency body that is chaired by the President, managed by his Science Advisor, empowered to draft presidential directives, and mandated to set federal R&D budget and program priorities. Its members have hammered out interagency agreements on programs aimed at enhancing our security by advancing economic performance at home and sustainable development abroad. It has, for example, shaped investment initiatives in such areas as high-performance computing, environmental technologies, dual-use technologies, and the "clean car" initiative. It has developed integrated responses to specific problems, such as the threat of emerging and reemerging infectious diseases. An NSTC-crafted Presidential Directive establishes an international electronic network for surveillance and response to infectious diseases and establishes cooperation among state and local governments, international organizations, the pharmaceutical and other industries, the medical profession and other non-governmental players. This initiative is supported by another NSTC activity the development of strategies for comprehensive S&T cooperation with states that, by virtue of their size, geography, resources, economy, and politics have the capacity to either build or to undermine stability in the region. Countries such as China, India, Russia, South Africa, Argentina, and Brazil are poised to make decisions about how they will provide energy, transportation, communications, and food for their citizens. The development decisions they make can do irreparable environmental damage or reverse environmental decline, stabilizing both the physical and political environments. Each of these countries has a strong S&T community. This community is a force for political reform. Its participation in the economy is essential to economic reform. It will lead defense conversion efforts. It is frequently a voice for the protection of individual rights. And it represents the talent pool that will attract long-term trade and investment.
These "country strategies" have fed into and supported the third innovation that I will discuss the establishment of binational commissions under the leadership of the Vice President. These commissions bring Cabinet-level attention to S&T cooperation aimed at addressing problems ranging from reversing "brain drain" from economies in transition, to ensuring cooperation in the protection and control of nuclear weapons materials, to addressing broad problems of public health and food security, or to encouraging defense conversion by designing joint ventures. The Vice President co-chairs the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission with the Russian Prime Minister. He co-chairs the Gore-Mbeke Commission with the South African Deputy President. And he has recently launched a binational sustainable development initiative with the Chinese Minister of State Science and Technology.
Just as in the worst of times with the Soviet Union we had a mutual interest in arms control, so too in the worst of times with China we have a mutual interest in sustainable economic development. But this is not obvious to all, especially in a time of renewed isolationism and tremendous fiscal and political constraints. The sustainable development initiative with China serves as a reminder that security interests and scientific opportunities do not always align themselves with domestic political concerns.
Science and Technology: A National Security Asset
I left government thoroughly persuaded that our nation's scientific and industrial base is its greatest security asset. But we will not succeed in strengthening and preserving that asset if we continue to favor short-term procurement over long-term investment; if we act on a reflexive distrust of multilateral institutions and international cooperation; or if we succumb to an ideology that worships the market as the all-knowing distributor of burdens and benefits and views governments not only as unable to solve problems, but also as being their primary cause.
Let me close by saying simply that the NSTC, the country strategies, the binational commissions, and other mechanisms for S&T cooperation have served us well. But the intellectual and institutional frameworks for linking science, technology, stewardship, and security are in their early stages, are personality-driven, and could therefore be short-lived.
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