Science diplomacy works, but only when it's genuine

The Obama Administration has embraced the concept of science diplomacy as a way to bridge cultural and economic gaps between the United States and the rest of the world. The director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, John P Holdren, regularly meets with his science policy counterparts from Brazil, China, India, Japan, Korea and Russia. The US State Department has sent a series of American scientists abroad as "Science Envoys" in hopes of using scientific relationships as an olive branch to the Muslim world. Since 2009, these science envoys, acting as private citizens, have collectively visited almost 20 countries, including Indonesia, Morocco, Bangladesh, Kazahkstan and pre-revolution Egypt.

This new interest in science diplomacy is at least partially explained by the nature of contemporary global problems: issues of resource distribution, climate change, and uneven economic growth can only be solved with input from science. Climate change, for instance, does not respect international borders; addressing it will require international partnerships. Nor do American scientists hold a monopoly on good ideas. For these and a host of other reasons, science diplomacy makes good sense and promises benefits for the countries on either end of scientific exchange.

But science diplomacy programmes also draw on a long tradition that holds science and scientists as uniquely qualified to spread American ideals. In the 1960s (the last time that the United States made a sustained effort to use science diplomacy to build international partnerships), the concept was marred by ties to propaganda campaigns and intelligence operations. The idea was that foreign elites who adopted the values of science – objectivity, internationalism, the free exchange of information – would be more receptive to American overtures more generally. This assumption drove most US science diplomacy throughout the Cold War.

When government sponsorship was explicit ("overt"), neither intelligence gathering nor pro-American reporting would have come as a surprise: anyone agreeing to participate in a US government-sponsored scientific meeting, circa 1962, probably knew what they were getting into.

Things got much murkier when the foreign policy establishment turned to groups of private citizens as ambassadors for science. An oddity of the history of American diplomacy is that the United States routinely conducted its Cold War cultural campaigns through arms-length arrangements. In a few cases, the groups engaged in so-called "private diplomacy" really were unaffiliated, but – more often than not – organisations touting their "independent" work on behalf of the US government received help, usually with financial support channeled through fake philanthropic foundations. The pass-through strategy was common in US international activities from approximately 1948 until 1967, when an article in Ramparts magazine uncovered the CIA's covert funding of the National Student Association (a youth organisation), and caused a major foreign policy scandal.

Science turned out to be a particularly good fit for this sort of arm's-length operation. All attempts at private diplomacy offered benefits of economy and plausible deniability, but private science diplomacy carried the additional weight of reinforcing American ideals. The American version of "science" that these scientists and their patrons at the CIA had in mind stressed disinterestedness, objectivity and scientist-driven research organisations. They portrayed Soviet science, in contrast, as enslaved to the state, overly focused on technology and driven by ideology. Who better to spread this message than private scientists, working as individuals? By definition, this worldview undermined the ability of overtly sponsored US government science diplomacy to promote the American message.

Consider a specific example. In the early 1960s, the Boulder, Colorado-based Biological Sciences Curriculum Study produced a series of innovative biology textbooks; it's still around today. In 1961, the BSCS started accepting funds from the Asia Foundation (now known to be a CIA pass-through) for its international programmes. Like many of the private organisations that received at least part of their funding through the CIA, the BSCS also received support from legitimate philanthropic organisations, including the Rockefeller Foundation and US government agencies, including the National Science Foundation. Nor is it entirely clear whether the BSCS's leaders were aware of the true source of Asia Foundation funds: Arnold Grobman, the BSCS's long-time executive director, denied any knowledge of such links in an interview with me a few months before his death, in the fall of 2011.

In any case, between 1961 and 1967, the BSCS and its overseas affiliates received 10s of thousands of dollars from the Asia Foundation to underwrite the adaptation and translation of biology textbooks in Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and other nations on the Chinese perimeter. From the historical evidence, the BSCS's overseas adaptation offices don't appear to be cover for something nefarious: they really did focus on biology curriculum reform, especially textbook translation. The only thing sketchy about these offices was that their support came from a different source than their local participants (and possibly even their American partners) believed.

And that's the problem. Covers can be blown. When the Asia Foundation's board of trustees acknowledged their ties to the CIA in 1967 (in an attempt to pre-empt yet another damaging story in Ramparts), the BSCS's entire overseas operation came under suspicion. Indian authorities, for instance, briefly threatened to kick out any group that received funding from the Asia Foundation; it took the BSCS years to re-establish trust with the foreign ministers of education who had previously embraced their work. A similar fate befell almost all projects that involved Americans abroad, as all "private support" became synonymous with "CIA front". Covert operations discredited the concept of cultural diplomacy for a generation.

The Obama administration's resurrection of the concept of science diplomacy offers enormous potential. But, once again, the intelligence establishment has found in science diplomacy a convenient cover for its own needs. The CIA's use of a fake vaccination campaign in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the subsequent withdrawal of aid workers from Pakistan over fears for their safety, are all too familiar. Once again, covert operations are threatening to derail genuinely helpful, hopeful activities that might otherwise go a long way toward building international goodwill. The state department's insistence on calling its science envoys "private citizens", too, is cause for concern. Since the science envoys are obviously doing the state department's work, why not call them "officials" and avoid the potential for confusion? The US has been there before. This time, science diplomacy is worth doing right.

Audra J. Wolfe is a writer, editor and historian based in Philadelphia. She tweets as @ColdWarScience.