November 7, 2024
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We need scientific brainstorming about globally shared dangers
It is difficult to separate Russian and Chinese scientists from international scientific cooperation. that’s good
In 1958, Soviet and Western scientists met in Geneva to discuss how to monitor a proposed nuclear test ban.
With Russia and the West once again at odds, scientific cooperation between the two countries has been drastically curtailed. And amid rising tensions between the United States and China, the United States has only agreed to a short-term extension of the 1979 Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement between the two countries, and is likely to reduce its scope in the long term.
International scientific institutions are also under stress. For example, after World War II, CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, brought together physicists from formerly hostile countries to build the world’s most powerful proton accelerator. It was created to bind Europe through experiments. However, CERN recently announced that it would cut ties with the Russian government due to the ongoing war with Ukraine. Russian scientists currently working at CERN will only be allowed to stay if they change their affiliation to an institution outside Russia.
CERN tries to distinguish between Russia’s current government and Russian scientists, many of whom were inspired by nuclear physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov’s remarkable 1968 essay “Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, Intellectual He supports the internationalism promoted in “Reflections on Freedom.”
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ITER, another international organization, is building an experimental fusion reactor in the south of France. But unlike CERN, ITER has no plans to sever ties with the Russian government. The basic design of a nuclear reactor was proposed by Sakharov and physicist Igor Tam in 1951. This international project was proposed by the late Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the Soviet Union, at the suggestion of one of his physicist advisors. And Russia is providing key components for the power supply and protection of ITER’s superconducting magnets.
Disentangling international science is difficult. That’s good. International scientific cooperation is key to addressing global challenges such as nuclear weapons, pandemics, climate warming, and the misuse of artificial intelligence. It also creates an opportunity for scientists to brainstorm how they can address these issues. The government has known this for some time. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is just one international organization established to foster agreement on the scope of various global problems and analyze possible mitigation strategies.
During the Cold War, the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs was an international organization of scientists founded in response to Russell Einstein’s 1955 manifesto against nuclear weapons, which advocated nuclear weapons control, the prohibition of chemical and biological weapons, and nuclear weapons. brainstormed ideas to promote the ban. A large-scale military conflict along the border between East and West Germany at the time became serious.
In the 1980s, I was one of the American scientists who brainstormed with Gorbachev’s physicist advisers about steps to end the nuclear arms race, starting with underground testing of new nuclear warhead designs. Two of Gorbachev’s advisors, Evgeny Velikhov and Roald Sagdeev, were fusion scientists who had worked with foreign researchers for decades. In fact, on my first visit to the Soviet Union, when a lively Mr. Velikhov met me at Sheremetyevo International Airport near Moscow, he was no stranger to one of my many visits to the Princeton Institute for Plasma Physics. He was wearing a Princeton University tie.
Ten years later, when I was working in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the legacy of openness fostered by Gorbachev was so strong that then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin was appointed as a specialist in the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratory. His family even allowed him to collaborate with experts from Russia’s nuclear research institute. A laboratory to improve the security of the country’s vast stockpile of nuclear materials and warheads.
Chinese nuclear weapons physicists were also inspired to participate in the international brainstorming. Since 1988, the International School on Disarmament and Conflict, under the auspices of Italy’s Pugwash Group, has held a biennial seminar in Beijing (now called the PIIC Beijing Seminar on International Security) with physicists from Europe and the United States. did. Although these physical meetings have ended under Chinese President Xi Jinping, brainstorming via Zoom continues.
Between the two world wars, Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, and other key members of the physics community engaged in an international cooperative effort to develop modern physics. Bohr never lost his belief that the path to the salvation of human civilization lay in the “open world.” He worked hard to persuade world leaders, finally writing in an open letter to the United Nations in 1950: We are breaking the current impasse (cold war) and encouraging others to move in the same direction. ”
Gorbachev embraced what he called “new thinking” and used “glasnost” (“openness”) to open up the Soviet Union domestically and to the world. This led him to work with President Ronald Reagan and U.S. President George H.W. Bush to end the Cold War and begin the process of reducing the combined Soviet/Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals by almost a tenth. I was able to do that.
The authoritarian regime established by Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Xi has made international cooperation more difficult, but Western countries need to consider the costs and benefits of additional wall proposals. we do They have secrets to protect, but unnecessary barriers weaken us at least as much as the enemy.especially It makes it even harder for scientists to share ideas about how to make the world safer and more livable.
This is an opinion and analysis article and the views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of the author. scientific american.
