Science Diplomacy1 is a vibrant research field: this is illustrated by the growing number of scholars who are exploring the field both by studying contemporary issues and reevaluating past conflicts and political negotiations. Coming not only from the ranks of historians, scholars from international relations, Science and Technology Studies, and science management, to name a few, are exploring the history of science and diplomacy.2 Nevertheless, much is yet to be understood with respect to science and diplomacy's historical dimensions and the ways in which science and technology have become increasingly important devices in the administration of foreign affairs since the beginning of the Cold War. Founded in 2018, the Commission on the History of Science, Technology and Diplomacy3 organized its first conference from 19–20 July 2019 at the Niels Bohr Archive in Copenhagen. The conference brought together researchers from several countries and various fields who explored the diverse history of science diplomacy as an endeavor, focusing especially on the actors involved. The papers presented at the conference described and analyzed how particular diplomats, scientists, and institutions used techno-scientific knowledge in their diplomatic efforts. This special issue bears the same title as the DHST conference and includes six of the papers presented in Copenhagen. As a diplomatic activity, science diplomacy refers to the practice of using science and technology in diplomacy to foster dialogue and cooperation between nations, individuals, and organizations to develop international relationships.4 However, science diplomacy goes beyond building bilateral relationships and is often used to advance broader foreign policy objectives connected to issues like democracy, nuclear disbarment, or clean energy.5 While peace and progress though international collaboration in science has been discussed at least since the 1940s, Science Diplomacy was first publicly labeled by the US State Department during the Obama administration as a distinctive, identifiable diplomatic approach to advancing US foreign policy priorities in Muslim-majority countries,6 the term was soon applied by scholars retroactively to the study of a number of scientific activities and institutions active during the Cold War. The concept of Science Diplomacy gained substance as an analytical category with publication of the influential 2010 report, New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy.7 Based upon findings from a June 2009 meeting co-hosted by the Royal Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science,8 the report defines three broad dimensions in Science Diplomacy: Science in Diplomacy, Diplomacy for Science, and Science for Diplomacy. The first, Science in Diplomacy, focuses on providing scientific expertise to enhance foreign policy. The second, Science for Diplomacy, focuses on the use of scientific cooperation in international relations to improve or strengthen bi- or multilateral relations between states. The third, Diplomacy for Science, aims at facilitating international scientific cooperation. These three dimensions support the well-established notion that government policy and military patronage influence and shape science and technology.9 Yet, they do not specify when international scholarly interactions become science diplomacy. Since most scientists engage internationally in publications, in projects, or in personal interactions, the different modes of interaction cannot easily be discerned. Furthermore, the report argues, scientists have a long history of supporting international cooperation, but the unprecedented nuclear threat after World War II made them increasingly proactive in efforts to reduce international conflict.10 Consequently, the Cold War spurred the development of initiatives that, today, appear as founding moments in the history of science diplomacy.11 Current literature on science diplomacy in history reflects a preference for Cold War studies: the spread of nuclear technology and the appeal for nuclear arms control are particularly fertile areas of research.12 In these studies, bilateral cooperation in science is often described as a hegemonic relationship in a bipolar political setting.13 The Science Diplomacy perspective nuances this position by focusing on negotiation, cooperation, and interaction in science as ways to communicate in tense political situations, instead of juxtaposing hegemonic conflicts. This relates to the understanding of science diplomacy as an expression of soft power.14 Several contributions to this special issue study how diplomacy uses science in territorial conflicts, which is not how science diplomacy is normally understood. Generally speaking, the soft power of science diplomacy is attributed to science's alleged universal, apolitical intentions and humanitarian aspirations.15 The common ground for negotiation provided by science's aura of universality is why science and scientists can act as catalysts in diplomatic actions. However, history shows that the way science is used in diplomacy changes according to states’ geopolitical needs. During the era of colonial conquest, science and technology played important roles as symbolic instruments of territorial appropriation through which explorers and colonizers identified, named, and subsequently analyzed the new biological species, geophysical phenomena, etc., which they encountered. Seen through the lens of Science Diplomacy, it becomes clear that science is still utilized in territorial conflicts but is employed by the state in new ways. In the twenty-first century, governments can no longer expand by claiming new territories discovered and described by their explorers and scientists. Instead, sharing or withholding knowledge can be ways to gain or maintain geopolitical influence. For example, the Soviet Union employed a center-periphery framework, in the specific environment of the Communist Bloc, for transferring knowledge among Eastern Bloc countries and across the Iron Curtain. Consequently, the circulation of knowledge was hampered by Soviet dominance.16 Recently, some theorists have challenged this traditional center-periphery model and replaced it with a more flexible and, in our opinion, more suitable, postcolonial theory framework.17 A good example of how the history of science in diplomacy inspired a conceptual critique of Science Diplomacy is the study of the British biochemist and first director of the UNESCO18 Science Section, Joseph Needham, who formulated his thoughts on science as a diplomatic tool in the late 1940s, is. In 1946, he defined science as a perfect diplomatic tool for non-governmental bodies like UNESCO: UNESCO is an agency for peace through active international cooperation. In the field of scientific cooperation and service, we have one of the immediately effective means of accomplishing this. This is partly because scientific research is essentially and traditionally international and cooperative, and also because the applications of scientific knowledge to human welfare, if properly made, can be one of the most effective methods of removing some of the causes of war.19 According to historian of science Patrick Petijean, Needham further elaborated on the role of science in diplomacy and introduced the “periphery principle” into postwar science: In Needham's vision of postwar cooperation in science, scientifically advanced nations, such as Western Europe and North America, should share knowledge and resources with “peripheral” nations.20 Similar ideas of knowledge transfer from the Global North to the Global South are still at the heart of many multilateral non-governmental bodies like UNESCO or AINA who engage in science diplomacy. Their default position is problematized by post- and decolonial scholars like Casper Andersen who points out that this perspective leads to a “diffusionist” understanding of Science Diplomacy, with “bright zones” like Western Europe and America functioning as senders and peripheries as recipients.21 He instead calls for a more dialogical approach to knowledge production. On the role of multilateral non-governmental bodies, John Krige has argued that the development of science and technology and its globalization during the latter half of the twentieth century led to a transfer of power to non-governmental international organizations, which weakened the power of nation states.22 The implication is that international scientific organizations became powerful actors in unofficial forms of Track Two diplomacy.23 The brief and selective examination of the literature above shows that the concept of Science Diplomacy is much more complex than the three dimensions of New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy suggest, but also that it is still very much boundary-work. So far discourses with the social sciences have directed much of the studies of science diplomacy, closely followed by scholars of Science and Technology Studies. Within the history of science, science and diplomacy is a well-known research subject, but to illustrate that Science Diplomacy is not merely old wine in new bottles but offers fresh perspectives on the history of science and of international relations, the following two examples for future research should serve to demonstrate the potential of the approach. Firstly, the role of science during democratic transitions: Most concepts employed in explaining transitions from authoritarian to democratic systems, and vice versa, fail to explain why some social groups or communities, especially researchers and scientists, are more willing to rebel at certain times than at others.24 An early attempt to explain this phenomenon appeared in the “Inventing Europe” research network,25 but while the network's concept of scientists as managers of social crises is close to our understanding of Science Diplomacy, further research is still needed to fully understand the social role of scientists and of science diplomacy in political and social crises across nations. For example, the relationships between scientists and governments in Western societies during the Cold War may differ considerably from what scientists in communist societies experienced.26 Secondly, as regards studies of Cold War science, the new perspective of Science Diplomacy calls for a more nuanced reading of the action and agency of international techno-scientific actors. It allows us to see more clearly how scientists, on behalf of their nation-states, have negotiated foreign relationships, in particular when smaller nation-states used science diplomacy to advance their own objectives independently of the dominant powers. We began this editorial by declaring that much is still to be understood about the history of science in diplomacy, especially since the conceptual framework of Science Diplomacy lies at the intersection of several disciplines and the area of study covers multiple historical periods. The contributors to this special issue have approached the subject from various different perspectives, thus highlighting the many different modes of science diplomacy. Focusing on scientific knowledge and the development of a network of scientific, colonial, and diplomatic expertise, Daniel Gamito-Marques (Nova University Lisbon, Portugal) investigates the role of zoologist José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage in negotiating Portuguese territories in Congo in his contribution “Science for Competition among Powers: Geographical Knowledge, Colonial-Diplomatic Networks, and the Scramble for Africa.” He demonstrates that the concept of Science Diplomacy does not only apply to the Cold War, but is equally applicable in a nineteenth-century colonial context. The study's protagonist served the Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs as a diplomat, using his scientific knowledge and colonial networks to aid Portugal's bid for territorial expansion in Africa. Without scientists and their research, there would be no science diplomacy. But how did scientists become diplomatic actors? This is the question Finn Aaserud (Niels Bohr Archive, Copenhagen, Denmark) addresses in his contribution “Niels Bohr's Diplomatic Mission during and after World War Two.” Using a biographical lens, Aaserud shows how Niels Bohr used his prestige as a significant international scientist to try—largely unsuccessfully—to redirect nuclear policy. The study highlights the fact that not all who conducted science diplomacy did so in an official capacity. Although an esteemed scientist, Bohr had no official diplomatic position, yet he still engaged in transnational negotiations, acting according to his personal views and believing that the way to peaceful international relationships was through open, international cooperation on nuclear research. Simone Turchetti (University of Manchester, United Kingdom) also addresses nuclear diplomacy in his contribution “The Unflinching Mr. Smith and the Nuclear Age.” He analyzes the role of Gerald Coat Smith in reshaping the geopolitical thinking around nuclear diplomacy in the US during the Cold War and shows how diplomatic approaches to science and technology aided negotiations and helped establish or re-establish relations across specific political and geographical divides. Doubravka Olšáková (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic) provides a study from the other side of the Iron Curtain. Her contribution, “A Matter of Courtesy: The Role of Soviet Diplomacy and Soviet ‘System Safeguards’ in Maintaining Soviet Influence in Czechoslovak Science before and after 1968,” describes how the USSR influenced and even interfered with scientific institutions in Czechoslovakia in order to secure Soviet hegemony in the western part of their Empire during the social and political crisis in 1968. Her study shows how difficult it was, during the 1960s and 1970s, for Moscow to maintain control of its empire and its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, especially in peripheral countries like Czechoslovakia. Another contribution looking at scientific institutions in diplomacy is “Engineering Education in Cold War Diplomacy: India, Germany, and the Establishment of IIT Madras” by Roland Wittje (Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India). His study describes the decision to establish a technical university in India, IIT Madras, and Germany's role in establishing and developing it. Wittje's study of IIT Madras's German support illustrates how the Cold War's bipolar conflict was acted out by proxy when nations from the East and West participated in developing engineering education in India. That not all Cold War conflicts with superpowers were acted out by proxy is illustrated by the contribution of Beatriz Martínez-Rius (Université Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, France), “For the Benefit of All Men: Oceanography and Franco-American Scientific Diplomacy in the Cold War, 1958–1970.” Her study shows how France decided to fund a national institution for oceanographic research in order to challenge US dominance and secure access to raw materials. Martínez-Rius's work reminds us that it is not always science that aids diplomacy; diplomacy influences science as well. In this case, the primary driver for French Cold War oceanography was the political need to exercise control and influence over maritime territories. The picture that emerges from the contributions to this special issue is that science diplomacy is much more than just Cold War or nuclear diplomacy. Science was an active part of nation-states’ diplomatic efforts across a wide range of issues. More importantly, the contributions also dispense with the notion that scientists and scientific institutions historically engaged in diplomacy were always working to reduce international conflicts for greater humanitarian ends.27 They show that the main goal of the scientists, institutions, and diplomats involved was to advance the ideologies or foreign-policy objectives of their own nation-states—even to the point of sacrificing intellectual freedom to maintain power, as was the case when Soviet scientific institutions and diplomats worked to curb the intellectual freedom of Czechoslovak scientists. The one exception in this trend of nation-centered diplomacy is Aaserud's account of Niels Bohr's diplomatic activities. Aaserud demonstrates that Bohr's Open Letter to the United Nations was genuinely motivated by altruism and opposed the express policy of both the US and Great Britain. Bohr's position demonstrates the importance of an individual scientist with an acute sense of moral responsibility and a high level of social engagement. In all the contributions, it is impossible to draw a firm line between scientific interactions across nation-states and science diplomacy, or even to provide a litmus test telling one from the other. The modes of science diplomacy are such that scientists and institutions may be involved indirectly by association or directly as diplomatic envoys. However, just because military and government politics influence science or vice versa, it does not follow that all scientists or institutions operating internationally automatically become diplomats, even though some might do so along the way (as is the case, e.g., in Gamito-Marques's contribution). However, it is conceivable that scientists and scientific institutions, especially those relying on a particular political milieu for funding, will echo the political position of their patrons via their research. Through international scientific interactions at meetings, through publications, and within joint projects, these positions become part of the international exchange of knowledge. What differentiates science diplomacy from international scientific communication and cooperation is the political objectives of the diplomatic activities. The different modes of science diplomacy presented in this issue show how science is used to expresses power and dominance in alternative ways. Although not a deliberate strategy of the editors, it turned out that many contributions in this special issue have been written from the perspective of less powerful nation-states. They amply illustrate the viability of science diplomacy as an alternative or indirect strategy through which non-dominant nation-states can negotiate foreign relations. As guest editors we hope that this special issue demonstrates how rich and varied the study of science diplomacy can be, what areas will benefit from further research, and what new perspectives can be applied to historical studies of science and technology. The concept of Science Diplomacy provides an opportunity to rethink knowledge transfers and how power is negotiated between agents of science and agents of diplomacy. It also brings to light the twofold role of scientists as both practitioners and diplomatic agents. We hope that this special issue will open the concept of Science Diplomacy to a wider community of historians of science and that they, in turn, will bring in new perspectives.
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Mar 5, 2024
Gautam Biswas 
Open Access