Abstract
When we speak of science diplomacy, we use a vocabulary that did not exist prior to the present millennium. We also deal with an issue which has tended to be of recent interest these days, so we will try to specify the meaning being given to this concept. But behind the new vocabulary, science diplomacy appears to be rooted in the distant past: history gives evidence of ancient ties between science and foreign policy. This chapter, both conceptual and historical, is guided by this question: what is science diplomacy?
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Notes
- 1.
As part of an interview reported in “Science as a tool for international diplomacy”, http://cordis.europa.eu/news/rcn/30532_en.html. V. Turekian was formerly the Chief International Officer at the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the editor-in-chief of the quarterly journal Science & Diplomacy, launched in 2012. In September 2015, he was named the 5th Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary of State.
- 2.
- 3.
Another political voice was added in 2009 when the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called on science to play a new role in international politics and diplomacy: “It is important that we create a new role for science in international policymaking and diplomacy … to place science at the heart of the progressive international agenda”. This quote opens the Royal Society-AAAS report.
- 4.
This statement was made during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 13 January, 2009.
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However, researchers could be associated informally with diplomatic efforts in the so-called “Track II Diplomacy”. The Cold War period offers several examples.
- 6.
This treaty covers the prohibition of nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water.
- 7.
This is clearly evidenced by the historian Ronald E. Doel (1997).
- 8.
An equivalent center was created in parallel in Ukraine.
- 9.
Article 2 of the 27 November 1992 agreement establishing the International Science and Technology Center.
- 10.
As well as Canada, which later on withdrew from the organization.
- 11.
Dismantling arsenals was the other side of the clearance of the Cold War books: at the G8 Summit in Kananaskis (Canada) in June 2002, the Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction (G8GP) was launched. Originally focused on countries of the former Soviet Union, in one decade it was able to dismantle more than 180 nuclear submarines, destroy thousands of tons of chemical weapons and secure thousands of radioactive sources.
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Ruffini, PB. (2017). What Is Science Diplomacy?. In: Science and Diplomacy. Science, Technology and Innovation Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55104-3_2
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