Synopses & Reviews
Review
"Designed to delineate and direct attention to the increasingly influentialinterrelationship between science, technology and foreign policy, Skolnikoff'sbook succeeds as the first serious attempt to set out the significance, scopeand surprising subtlety of this new interface. The book is intended to awakenthe reader to its critical importance, thecurrent incapacity of our institutions tocope with it effectiveJJl and the urgentneed to do something to improve thesituation." Scientific Research The MIT Press
Review
"A far-ranging survey of the uses of science and technology as tools of the U.S. foreign policy process."
- Orbis
Review
"Political and natural scientists andeconomists will find this book stimulating reading. It will raise their understanding of the dilemma raised by the potential benefits and dangers flowing from science, an understanding which is the necessary ingredient of the dilemma's future resolution." Herbert G. Grubel , The University of Pennsylvania The MIT Press
Review
"The author of this book is neither ascientist nor a professional diplomat.Yet he manages to crowd into 300-oddpages a great deal of pertinent andoften useful information about the interaction between the impressive andfast-paced developments in scienceand technology and the growing complications of our international relations." Technology and Culture The MIT Press
Review
"A far-ranging survey of the uses ofscience and technology as tools of theU.S. foreign policy process." Orbis The MIT Press
Synopsis
In an age when science and technology are becoming the popular yardsticks for measuring progress or prestige in international affairs, it is strange indeed that little literature relevant to the role of science in relation to foreign policy exists. That void is filled, and admirably so, by this book--a timely articulation of a relationship hitherto superficially accepted but usually denied in practice, because it is only vaguely understood.
Skolnikoff shows the breadth of the relationship and the character of the interaction between the scientific and other elements of major issues of foreign affairs. Most important, he shows how the uncertainties inherent in judgments about science and technology are affected by political factors, and reciprocally, how political factors depend on scientific and technological factors figure prominently, real integration of science and technology in the policy process is essential. In this respect, the existing mechanisms of the U.S. Government, particularly in the Department of State, are demonstrated to be wanting.
To make these and other points, such as the use of science and technology as new tools of policy, the book discusses in turn the major areas of policy--arms and arms control, space, atomic energy, bilateral relations, international organizations and the like--using a combined analytical and case study approach. The discussion develops the nature of the technical elements of policy issues and points out the requirements posed for the policy process. Modifications of existing methods for providing scientific inputs in foreign affairs are offered. In addition, the book offers for the first time a history of the science advisory mechanisms for foreign policy in the White House and Department of State. A final chapter demonstrates the meaning of continuing technological advances for some of the basic assumptions: for example, the changed significance of national freedom of action, the inviolability of national borders, the possibility of having to suppress or control technology, and the inevitable growth of decision making on an international scale.
Science, Technology, and American Foreign Policy is certain to hold the attention of scholar and policy maker alike, for it is the first book to treat this subject from a policy vantage point. This assures the best kind of generality, for it allows an over-all view of not one but the spectrum of scientific issues that are constantly meeting and interacting with the political demands posed by an effective international policy.