Science, Technology, and American Foreign Policy [Paperback]

Designed to delineate and direct attention to the increasingly influentia linterrelationship between science, technology and foreign policy, Skolnikoff's book succeeds as the first serious attempt to set out the significance, scope and surprising subtlety of this new interface. The book is intended to awaken the reader to its critical importance, the current incapacity of our institutions to cope with it effective JJl and the urgent need to do something to improve the situation.

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 booka 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 policyarms and arms control, space, atomic energy, bilateral relations, international organizations and the likeusing a combined analytical and case study approach. The discussion develops the nature of the technical elements of policy issueslƒ-