Carnegie
Corporation
of New York
Summer 2004
Shortly after President Reagan’s 1983 announcement of plans to launch
the space-based Strategic Defense Initiative, the Corporation underwrote
a scientific study of its feasibility, assisting the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences and the University of California at San Diego to
explore the cost, legality, effectiveness and international implications
of space-based weapons. The Corporation also sponsored a study by the
Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University on the effect of
emerging space technologies on the chances of nuclear war.
Support from the Corporation also led to one of the most influential studies of SDI and directed-energy weapons, which was undertaken by the American Physical Society (APS). This was the first major independent study of the feasibility of lasers or particle beams as a defense against ballistic missiles. APS’s study group concluded that it would take at least 10 years of research to develop the technical knowledge required to make an informed decision about the effectiveness and survivability of such weapons. The study, which was also supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, received full cooperation from what was then known as the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, created to oversee SDI, and from the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy, and has had a lasting impact on strategic defense policy.
In a related effort that acknowledged the need for greater understanding of how developments in science and technology could affect the future of the nation—and the world—the Corporation established the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government (CCSTG) in 1988. Its aim was to assess the mechanisms by which federal and state authorities could incorporate scientific and technological knowledge into policies and administrative decision making and to develop strategies for improving the expertise available to all branches of government in these areas. Many of CCSTG’s recommendations—such as upgrading the president’s science advisor to Cabinet-level status—have been acted on, particularly in the area of creating new linkages between science, technology and government.
Promoting U.S.-Soviet Security Collaboration:
The Cooperative Security Program
When the Soviet Union broke apart and the Cold War was declared over in the early 1990s, the Corporation reassessed the priorities of its work in the area of promoting international peace and security. The initial emphasis on reducing the danger of a nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union “shifted toward exploring opportunities for global engagement with Russia and promoting democracy and civil society in the newly independent post-Soviet states,” explains Deana Arsenian, chair of the Corporation’s International Peace and Security program, “as well as direct U.S-Soviet collaborative research on security issues.” Another concern was that thousands of nuclear weapons and tons of fissile material that were formerly under the command and control of one nation—the Soviet Union—were now dispersed across three countries, besides Russia: Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, which then, respectively, had the third, fourth and eighth largest nuclear arsenals in the world.
The fall of the Soviet Union left the region in disarray. Looking back, nuclear nonproliferation experts say that this period, because of the potentially catastrophic loss of control over so many nuclear weapons (the “loose nukes” concern), and the possibility that former Soviet satellite states would use the weapons as bargaining chips, was one of the most dangerous times for world peace and security in the past 50 years. The changing focus of the Corporation’s work in this area was signaled by renaming the Avoiding Nuclear War program: through much of the 1990s it was known by a title that more aptly described it main concern—the Cooperative Security program, an idea reflective of new post-Cold War realities and aspirations developed by Corporation grantees William Perry of Stanford University, Ashton Carter of Harvard University and John Steinbruner of the Brookings Institution.