Scientists, Engineers, and Track-Two Diplomacy: A Half-Century of U.S.-Russian Interacademy Cooperation (2004)

Summary: This report has three main purposes. The first is to provide a brief historical perspective of the evolution of the relationship between the Russian and US academies of science during the past half-century. The second is to describe the significant interacademy activities from late 1991, when the Soviet Union fragmented, to mid-2003. Some of the interacademy activities should be of continuing interest both to government officials and to scientists and engineers in the two countries, because related programs are currently being implemented through other channels. The third is to set forth lessons learned about the benefits and limitations of interacademy cooperation and to highlight approaches that have been successful in overcoming difficulties of implementation. These insights should help policy makers both in understanding how scientific cooperation has achieved a special, and seemingly permanent, status in US-Russian relations and in designing future bilateral programs of the academies and other organizations.