SCIENTISTS, ENGINEERS, AND TRACK-TWO DIPLOMACY

A Half-Century of U.S.-Russian Interacademy Cooperation

Description:

This report is intended to provide a brief historical perspective of the evolution of the interacademy program during the past half-century, recognizing that many legacies of the Soviet era continue to influence government approaches in Moscow and Washington and to shape the attitudes of researchers toward bilateral cooperation in both countries (of special interest is the changing character of the program during the age of perestroika (restructuring) in the late 1980s in the Soviet Union); to describe in some detail the significant interacademy activities from late 1991, when the Soviet Union fragmented, to mid-2003; and to set forth lessons learned about the benefits and limitations of interacademy cooperation and to highlight approaches that have been successful in overcoming difficulties of implementation.

Glenn Schweitzer has written this book for the National Academy of Sciences (2004) based on decades in which he lead the cooperation between the U.S. National Academies and those of the Communist nations. Glenn preceded me as Deputy Director of the Office of Science and Technology of USAID decades ago, and has had a broad and distinguished career in international science and scientific cooperation.