The European Community and the Politics of Science: Transcending the Bipolar World Order?
p. 147-167
Texte intégral
1For a long time, the post-war years of European history were perceived by international historians as a unified era dominated by the tensions of the global conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. In international history, the Cold War was the major interpretative framework for analysing European politics, culture, and social and political development from the end of the Second World War in 1945 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This focus on East-West tensions, however, prevented scholars from recognising the dramatic structural changes that occurred on a global scale in the last three or four decades of the twentieth Century. After the 1960s, “the Cold War no longer shaped the world affairs if indeed it ever had”, writes Akira Iriye. “The pace of globalisation began to accelerate, with the implication that U.S. economic hegemony was increasingly challenged and undermined by the European community, Japan, and later by China and other countries.”1 In other words, there has been an unfortunate lag between “history”, on the one hand, and “historiography”, on the other hand, “whereas global and transnational developments and forces were becoming increasingly evident by the 1960s, and confirmed during the subsequent decades, the majority of historians remained wedded to their traditional perspectives and conceptualisations till toward the end of the twentieth Century or the early years of the twenty-first Century.”2
2Although in the recent years, with the arrival of new transnational approaches to the study of history, there have been an increasing number of studies recognising the need for looking beyond the narrow confines of the conventional Cold War constellation,3 the worldwide systemic transition is still often absent in investigations of some major European post-war developments. One of these developments is the process of (Western) European integration and the emergence of the European Community (EC) as a central political and economic agent to complement and challenge traditional national spheres of political decision-making. This chapter shows how the global structural change, which together with détente and through increased rivalry between capitalist economies, effectively reduced the centrality of the Cold War conflict in European and international affairs, proved decisive in European integration. In accordance with the overall theme of this volume, the stress is on the Community’s gradually expanding activities in the field of science, and the first debates on a “common research policy” in the late 1960s. It is argued that after the mid-1960s, altered conditions in Western industrialised societies and sharpening international competition emerged as a major pushing factor in the development of the EC. To an increasing extent, international relations were defined, not along the traditional Cold War bloc lines, but in terms of global economic and technological rivalry, where scientific knowledge had accentuated importance. The plans for a comprehensive Community activity in the field of research were made as a response to these new circumstances that not only were perceived to require closer European cooperation, but also anticipated a permanent shift beyond the bipolar world Order. This approach does not only challenge the Cold War-centric interpretations of post-war European history but also shows how already around the mid-1960s, the apparently rigid international order started to dissolve. This was a result of developments, which at the first sight were not directly linked with the East-West conflict but which, by creating a powerful pressure also on the Eastern Bloc, became a crucial component in the collapse of the Soviet System.
3The claim here is not that the Cold War-that in the mid-1960s still was a reality, albeit soon no longer the dominant one-had no impact on the EC’s plans to create a “common research policy”. Two particular ways in which the conflict eventually contributed to the emergence of new Community structures in the field of research, could be identified: first, from the very beginning, the central objective of EC research policy was to increase economic growth, which was necessary also in the rivalry between the two alternative economic Systems, communism and liberalism. Second, the U.S. responses to the Soviet technological challenge increased American technological strength and thereby contributed to what many Europeans perceived as the “American challenge” – which again created an impulse for European cooperation. But both of these factors were indirect and barely present in the Community’s discussions. Growth was pursued not only because of the Cold War but also due to a number of domestic social and political reasons: Governments needed economic expansion for supporting generous welfare Systems and guaranteeing success in parliamentary elections. In addition, growth became connected with both material and personal freedom,4 and the objective of avoiding unemployment. As to the impact of the Superpower competition on the politics aiming to respond to the “American challenge”, it is good to remember that there was no agreement concerning the extent to which investment in U.S. military research created spin-offs in civilian sector and to what extent the Superpower rivalry-be it military or non-military-explained the American technological lead. It also appears that by the 1970s, this factor started to lose its importance. Not only did the Soviet threat diminish as the USSR was left behind in the technological race, but also in the West, the focus of science policy changed. In the United States, the weakening economic situation led to reductions in the national R&D budget and the abandonment of big prestige projects-at least until the new ambitions of the Reagan administration.5 Research policy was now targeted to answering the new economic and social challenges that came with the end of the historically long period of economic growth. Therefore, in the EC debate on research policy, more central than the Cold War concerns were the increasing worries about European competitiveness in a multipolar world.
European Integration and the Cold War – Two Different Narratives?
4In contrast to the historiography of international relations, the historiography of European integration can hardly be accused of exaggerating the role of the East-West confrontation. While generally recognising that the division of Europe into two hostile blocs, and the need to preserve Western European unity, stability, and prosperity, constituted one of the initial driving forces of the EC project, (as did the abrupt end of the conflict),6 scholars working on the subject have paid remarkably little attention to the Cold War. For many years, the history of European integration (which is understood here in a narrow sense as the history of the European Community/European Union) and the history of the Cold War developed as two parallel narratives, with almost no reference to each other.7 Still in 2007, N. Piers Ludlow estimated that the latest trends in the two fields had only increased the distance. According to Ludlow, the focus on economic issues in EU history, inspired by the revisionist work of the British economic historian Alan Milward, and the growing interest in Cold War studies in examining individual European States and bilateral relations rather than multilateral and pan-European aspects, had actually made the detachment more striking.8 Only very recently, the situation started to change. To a large extent, this can be attributed to the transformation in European integration history, which Kiran Klaus Patel has called doppelte Neuorientierung (double reorientation). The field has opened in two directions: first, there has been more and more consideration on the relation of European integration history to broader problems and trends in historical research. Second, the disciplinary boundaries have been increasingly crossed when scholars are seeking dialogue with their colleagues in the other areas of EU Studies.9 This has led to a rapid expansion and diversification of research topics and approaches. As a consequence, some explicit efforts have also been made to bridge the gap between Cold War Studies and European integration history.
5An interesting example of the attempts to bring these two historiographies together is the recent work of Angela Romano on the proactive role of the EC in the process of European détente. According to Romano, the intensifying and diversifying trade relations between the Community and individual communist countries helped to loosen Cold War constraints and ultimately end the conflict in Europe.10 It is, however, interesting that Romano-as most other scholars currently working on the subject11-focuses on the years when the bipolar constellation started to evolve into a looser network of more diversified relations. Although, in principle, the EC remained hostage of the Cold War reasoning (the Soviet Union did not recognise the Community until 1988), it appears that unofficial contacts across the Iron Curtain flourished after the mid-1960s, thus challenging the established European order. If one of the original concerns behind the Community’s creation had been to reinforce the Western front in the charged atmosphère of the early Cold War, already a decade later the situation looked different: rather than perpetuating or exacerbating the European division, the process of Western European integration blurred the bloc lines and opened a space for new interactions. In this context, the Cold War framework in fact became less important.
6Against this backdrop N. Piers Ludlow’s observation seems interesting: “[T]he Community in Brussels of the 1960s”, Ludlow writes, “concerned itself remarkably little with the ongoing Cold War....With a few minor exceptions...the issues which most preoccupied the early EEC were economic or institutional in nature and were largely detached from the rivalry and tension between the Eastern and Western blocs.”12 This remark is confirmed by an excursion to the Community archives: there are only very few references to the Cold War conflict in the documents of the EC Commission or the Council. It appears that these two institutions concentrated on dealing with the day-to-day running and the development of the Community, and paid barely any attention to wider political questions. On the basis of this material, it is easy to get the impression of the European project as an insulated enterprise, quietly evolving beyond big international tensions. Moreover, a visit to national archives is unlikely to alter the picture: also there, the EC files remain highly technical and mostly disconnected from other foreign policy concerns.13
7Of course, it would be wrong to draw hasty conclusions from the silence of the archival documents. The fact that there is generally so little consideration of the Cold War in the historical sources of the EC institutions does not necessarily imply that the conflict had no impact on the process of European integration. But the absence of references to the conflict in the Community documents invites us to ask whether the Cold War constellation formed the dominant mental framework for the officials and policy-makers responsible for the Community affairs, in particular after the mid 1960s? Perhaps the Cold War was not conceived as being that important in the consolidating and extending of the institutional and political edifice of the EC? Indeed, most crucial events in EU history take place in the decades when the agrimonies between the two Superpowers no longer constituted the only overarching factor determining international relations, or the relations between the United States and Western Europe. Since the mid-1960s, the compelling need to adapt to upheavals in the capitalist System and respond to the pressures arising from the liberalized world markets emerged as a new concern for European policy makers. The multiplying observations of change became a powerful incentive to promote integration in a number of sectors. One of them was research policy.14
8The structural transformation that after the mid-1960s dramatically altered the world views and political priorities of the Western governments, has been given a variety of names and interpretations: for instance historian Charles Maier, writing in 2000, saw the last quarter of the twentieth Century as “one of the axial crises of the modern era” undermining the previous territorial order in which bounded space had provided a basis for collective political security and economic activity. Marked by worldwide troubles such as the weakening of the hierarchical collective discipline, the reappearance of distributive social conflicts and the dissolution of relative harmonious collaborative industrial relations in the capitalist democracies, the American unwillingness to continue supporting the international monetary regime built up after the World War II, and the emergence of the new economic contenders and militant social movements, the process proved revolutionary both in its depth and scale. Moreover, it was greatly affected by science and technology:
The age of coal and iron, and then, too, of hydrocarbon chemistry, of oil and electricity, of aluminium and copper as well as Steel – all still epitomized as late as the 1950s and 1960s by the giant integrated Steel mill – was overlaid in fact, and in the public imagination, by the technologies of semiconductors, computers, and data transmission, with a new accepted basis for the creation of private wealth. The concept of hierarchically organised Fordist production based on a national territory was supplanted by the concept, if not always the reality, of globally coordinated networks of information, mobile capital, and migratory labour.15
9What thus followed was the accentuation of the role of knowledge, not only as a factor of production but also as a means to power in a broader sense. The new sources of wealth, growth and political influence were all based on increasingly sophisticated and specialized knowledge-produced by scientific research. As Susan Strange has put it:”[T]he competition between States is becoming a competition for leadership in the knowledge structure. The competition used to be for territory, when land and natural resources were the major factors in the production of wealth and therefore the acquisition of power for the state... Today, the competition is for a place at the ‘leading edge’ (as the jargon has it) of advanced technology. This is the means both to military superiority and to economic prosperity, invulnerability and dominance.”16 This was a fundamental change that created a favourable context for research policy, whose strategic importance rapidly increased towards the end of the Century.
10These changed contours of international reality constitute the interpretative framework in which the institutional and ideational structures of the European Community’s research policy were created. Rather than the intensity of the East-West conflict, it was its manifest absence among the concerns of European decision-makers, which opened a cognitive space enabling considerations of activity in a new policy domain. To an increasing extent, the fiercest economic and technological competition took place within the “West”, whereas the “East” was largely excluded from the first fruits (and problems) of the IT-revolution and the globalizing liberal market economy. Communication technology, especially computers and Internet, gradually linked the capitalist centres closely together, making Europe, North America and Japan a vital nucleus of global capitalism. The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, however, were cut off from this development. The deep-rooted scepticism of the Soviet leaders towards Western imports and their preference to invest in military technology at the expense of consumer electronics,17 combined with the gradual decline of the Soviet R&D sector,18 contributed to this situation in which substantial parts of the world seemed to be moving away from interaction with the Soviet Union and towards a higher degree of communication with each other.
A Research Policy for Growth and Competitiveness
11When the three European Communities were created in the 1950s, there was little thought of a Community-level “science policy”. Besides the activities of the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) in civilian nuclear technology, the limited activities of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in the field of coal and Steel, and some provisions for agricultural research given to the European Economic Community (EEC), the Treaties establishing these three Communities in 1951 and 1958 remained completely silent on the subject. Moreover, Euratom ran into difficulties very soon. The disagreements over its multi-annual research programme – which mainly stemmed from the differing visions on the Community’s future and the increasingly national strategies of the member States – created a political deadlock already in the mid-1960s. Euratom became a warning example of the challenges that scientific cooperation or coordination within the Community could entail. But the hardships of Euratom were not the reason for the EC’s initially modest role in the field of science:19 in the 1950s, the EC was far from being the obvious core of Western European integration. It was an exclusive economic club of only six countries, focusing on a limited number of policy sectors. In many fields, European-level activity took place in other institutional contexts.20 This holds true also for research. The years after World War II saw a rapid proliferation of inter-governmental organisations promoting or conducting scientific research,21 which was partly due to the change in the scope and nature of scientific activity, involving “the growing complexity and increasing specialization of the sciences, the accelerating rate at which discoveries are perfected and exploited, and the mounting cost of the equipment essential to research and of the research process itself.”22 The arrival of ‘big science’ conducted in teams and requiring highly specialised expertise and know-how while swallowing increasing sums of money, created a new rationale for sharing resources in an international framework.23 Many of those enterprises were initiated by scientists themselves, who preferred flexible forms of cooperation, minimal government involvement, and often a large number of participating countries. The EC was a principally economic institution with a narrow membership basis, and so it was not regarded as a suitable framework for joint European action.
12It took a change in the perception of science and the emergence of a new understanding of science policy to identify the Community as a potential context for cooperation. Although most European States had long been involved in scientific research, until World War II, the relationship between science and the state was still relatively distant.24 Only when science was recognized as a source for economic growth and thereby a useful component of economic policy, did the governments across the Western world start to establish ambitious institutional structures devoted to supporting and coordinating research. Here the key actor was the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC; since 1961 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD) that in the late 1950s started to promote the idea of “science policy” or “research policy”25 as an activity mostly driven by the economic interests of the nation-state. Inspired by the works of American growth economists, the organization proved successful in rooting this new conception in Europe. At the time the Rome Treaties were drafted, however, this work had barely begun and the concept of “science policy” as an economic activity was not yet widely established.26 Consequently, at that point, the Community had little incentive to develop a “science policy”. The Atomic Energy Community was a case apart; its inception must be seen against the backdrop of the general excitement about nuclear technology and the worries about securing sufficient energy supply in post-war Europe. Although economic concerns also played a role in the creation of Euratom (cheap energy was deemed necessary for augmenting industrial production), it was a strictly sectorial enterprise and mainly an issue of energy policy. The first debates on a “common science policy” in the mid-1960s, pictured an overall policy covering different fields and disciplines. This policy would aim at improving Europe’s economic conditions and boosting its position in the world markets.
13Growth was the key term in the Community’s early discussions on research policy. Following the pioneering debates within the OECD, between 1963 and 1965, the EC Commission came up with a number of initiatives for extending the Community’s activity in the field of research. A common denominator to all these proposals was a firm belief in the benefit of scientific research for economic growth. The plans also received occasional Support from the member governments. In particular, the French government made a decisive contribution to the debate by submitting a memorandum in March 1965, where it called for a creation of a “common research policy”. Growth figured prominently in this document,27 as was the case with the reports of the working group PREST, established a month later to study the possibility to develop a “common or coordinated research policy” and to propose means allowing its realization.28 There are many reasons for this systematic emphasis on growth,29 but in the EC a major motive was the need to fit the new initiatives within the existing legal framework. The EC had juridical competences in economic policy but not in general research policy. The objective of increasing the wealth and prosperity of its members was explicitly stated in Article 2 of the Rome Treaty, defining the purpose of the EEC.30 If it was accepted that scientific research held out the promise of growth, activity in that field could eventually be justified by the economic commitment of the EC. Sensitivity to the juridical constraints grew especially towards the late 1960s when some governments, refused to consider any new activity that was not covered by the treaties.
14Economic growth was, however, not the only factor that pushed the EC Commission and the member governments to envision a “common research policy”. Another central concept that recurrently appears in the documents of the period is competitiveness. The frequent references of the need to safeguard and redress Europe’s competitiveness in the open world markets, was a new discursive phenomenon that strongly emerged around the mid-1960s. It indicated experiences of a major transformation, which radically altered the contours of national economies and international markets, and gradually reduced the role of the Cold War as the dominant organising frame in world affairs.
15For instance, the 1965 memorandum of the French government noted that since the foundation of the EEC in 1958, the world had changed. Meanwhile, the rapid technological development had created a situation in which
aucun pays n’ignore plus [...] qu’au nombre des moyens de son développement économique qui constitue une des tâches primordiales des signataires du Traité de Rome, la recherche scientifique et technique occupe une place prépondérante. On affirme maintenant très couramment que les chances d’un pays dans la conquête des marchés, voire la place d’un pays dans le monde, se mesurent chaque jour davantage à sa capacité d’innover.31
16The change of the international conditions was evoked also in the Commission’s memorandum “on the problems of the scientific and technological progress in the European Community” of March 1967. In this document, the Commission gave two major reasons for the urgent need for research policy in Europe: firstly, the structural change in European societies was leading to a situation where the traditional reserves of productivity (the unemployed, the surplus labour in agriculture, the delays in modernisation in certain industrial sectors) were rapidly diminishing and the importance of improving the volume and quality of production was becoming increasingly urgent. Secondly, the liberalisation of world markets would soon subject Western European countries to global competition. “Dans ces conditions”, the Commission noted, “la capacité d’innovation (y compris la vitalité de la recherche) des entreprises européennes ne sauraient que devenir un facteur irremplaçable pour la croissance globale de l’économie communautaire.” There was thus an obligation for the public powers to “faire tout ce qui est en leur pouvoir pour contribuer au progrès scientifique et technique.”32
17This memorandum was one of the main documents discussed in the first Council meeting of the Community’s research ministers, organized in Luxembourg in October 1967. Although in the short term, concrete results of the reunion remained limited, the event became an important reference point in the subsequent efforts to expand the EC’s activity in the field. Moreover, the final communiqué contained an explicit declaration of intent: the research ministers expressed their willingness to develop new Community activities aimed at promoting scientific research and industrial innovation.33 It is interesting that both growth and competitiveness figured also in this statement: “Le progrès des sciences et des techniques constitue un facteur fondamental de la croissance économique et du développement général des États membres des Communautés et en particulier de leur capacité concurrentielle.34 Economic concurrence was thus in the minds of the EC ministers, convened in Luxembourg in October 1967 to gauge possibilities to create something like a “common research policy.”
The Transforming International Reality
18The late 1960s were marked by the calming of international tensions. The diminution of the prospect of a direct military confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, gave more room to economic rivalries that were not necessarily fought along the traditional Cold War lines. Moreover, the rapprochement of the two Superpowers aroused worries among Europeans of being marginalised in international affairs. All these developments had a specific impact on the process of integration. In November 1967, Jean-Jacques Salomon, the head of the OECD research policy division, noted:
Jamais pourtant les pays européens n’ont davantage ressenti la menace d’une domination du fait même de leurs divisions ou de leur allégeance à l’un des deux blocs. La menace militaire diminuant, l’Europe de l’Ouest, comme celle de l’Est, découvre les limites de son aptitude à demeurer en bonne place dans la compétition économique mondiale. Les États d’importance moyenne, ‘trop petits pour ce qu’ ils ont de grand, trop grands pour ce qu’ils ont de petit’, refusent l’idée de l’État multinational dans le même temps où ils prennent conscience que leurs efforts pour échapper aux effets de domination ne peuvent être couronnés de succès s’ils demeurent isolés et rivaux. La menace militaire conduisait à une alliance avec les deux Grands, garants et arbitres de ‘l’équilibre de la terreur’ ; la menace économique conduit à une définition nouvelle des rapports de l’Europe, à l’Est comme à l’Ouest, avec les ‘puissances périphériques’ et par conséquent à des liens plus étroits entre puissances ‘moyennes’ et ‘petites’. La carte brandie par M. Wilson dans ses négociations avec les six pays du Marché commun, d’une ‘communauté technologique européenne’, illustre bien cette évolution ; en témoigne également la multiplication des accords scientifiques bilatéraux entre pays à l’Ouest et à l’Est de l’Europe.35
19With détente, transactions through the Iron Curtain grew more intense. Besides increased trade, the relaxing international atmosphere led to more active cooperation in the domain of science and technology. A good example of this change is the intensifying collaboration between the Soviet Union and West Germany towards the late 1960s. The Federal Republic had been one of the Kremlin’s main targets for technology and knowledge transfer already from the mid-1950s, when the Soviet leaders realised that continuous economic growth in the USSR was only possible if it was based on sophisticated technology-that in many cases had to be obtained from the West. West Germany was thought to have the technology and expertise the Soviet Union urgently needed. Only with Bonn’s new Ostpolitik, however, there was a real possibility for deeper cooperation. The agreement on scientific-technical cooperation between Siemens and the Soviet State Committee of Science and Technology (GKNT), signed in 1971, was soon followed by the establishment of a joint Soviet-German commission on economic, technical and scientific cooperation. By the mid-1970s, West Germany had become the largest Western exporter of machines and instruments to the Soviet Union.36
20This activity did not yield the desired results: despite its effectiveness, the technical exchanges between the Soviet Union and Western Europe had little impact on the Soviet economic modernisation process or economic growth. However, it created multilevel interaction between the two blocs – which, gradually, helped to overcome the rigid bipolarity in Cold War Europe.37 Examples of East-West cooperation also serve as a good reminder that the relations between the two blocs were not only about confrontation and distrust, but also collaboration and mutual interest.38 This sphere of positive interaction widened considerably from the mid-1960s onwards.
21The increasing interest of the Western European countries to forge closer contacts with the East aroused concern in the United States and became an additional strain on the already fraught transatlantic relations. As a consequence of the gradual strengthening of the Western European position, the United States had started to regard its allies with increasing alienation: the rich Western European countries appeared now more like rivals that in a geopolitically more relaxed situation, were willing and capable to go their own way. According to historian Geir Lundestad, in the American eyes, the new European strength of the 1960s involved two different challenges: the political challenge constituted by the French President Charles de Gaulle and his vision of European relative independence vis-à-vis the United States, and the economic challenge expressed in Washington’s concern about the effects of a more united Europe on American’s economic interests.39 These challenges did not make the United States abandon its basic support for European integration, but during the 1960s, the Americans also became increasingly insistent about their own interests being safeguarded.40
22In Europe, the new uncertainty in relations with the Western Superpower was articulated through the worries of a “technology gap”. Crucial for the invention of the “gap” were the dramatic increase of American direct investment in Europe in the early 1960s41 and the difficulties of European Companies in competing with their U.S. rivals, which appeared to be in a better position to profit from the new conditions of the emerging Common Market.42 Perhaps the most media attention to these phenomena was drawn by Le défi américain, the bestselling book of Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, published in 1967.43 In his book, Servan-Schreiber, the co-founder of the French weekly L’Express and one of the most popular opinion-makers in France, managed to capture the concerns about the presumed trans-Atlantic technological difference and to sell them to a wider public in an attractively polemic form. His manifesto found immediate resonance in a number of the leading Western European newspapers as well as national government agencies that started to contemplate strategies to close the “gap.”
23The idea of European retard was of course not new: narratives painting gloomy pictures of the continent’s future vis-à-vis the rising power of the United States, had a long history especially in the former European colonial powers, France and the Great Britain. Reaching back to the late 19th Century, these debates revealed growing anxieties of a permanent European or national decline in a world dominated by the Americans. However, it is interesting-and somewhat paradoxical-that only at this precise point, in the middle of the 1960s, the anxious regards across the Atlantic took such a manifest form: when the discussion of the ‘Technology gap” reached its apogee, the differences between the U.S. and Europe were already rapidly diminishing.44
24One explanation for the timing of the debate is the effects of the new industrial revolution that emphasised research-intensive sectors of production. If there had been a transatlantic “science gap” or ‘Technology gap” before, its consequences had not been regarded as serious as they were now, in the mid-1960s, when knowledge, more than ever, set the pace of economic growth, social progress, and ultimately determined the international power relations. Jean-Jacques Salomon observed in 1967: “Toute la question est de savoir si l’ ensemble des investissements effectués dans la recherche et le développement n’entraîne pas une nouvelle révolution industrielle dont les États-Unis seraient à la fois source et modèle.”45 The United States appeared as the absolute leading power of the new industrial era-which, for Europeans this much was clear, would not be without consequences.
25There is no doubt that in the late-1960s, the operative environment for Western Europeans was no longer the same than what it had been during the first two decades after World War II. As a result of a number of social, political, economic, and technological changes, more than ever before, relations between capitalist countries were now conceptualised in terms of economic and technological rivalry. Crucially, the “gap” gained momentum in a world with new tensions and dividing fines between “us” and “them”. An important feature in the “technology gap” debate was that it departed from the conventional Cold War reasoning that identified the Soviet Union or the “East” as the only “other”. With its powerful threat images of American technological dominance, the “gap” represented entirely new experiences and horizons of expectation.
26By the 1970s, even the rare references to the Soviet scientific challenge had practically disappeared from the discourse. From this point on, science policy in the East and in the West seemed to follow radically different paths: while the Western countries moved away from the big demonstration projects that had been characteristic of the early Cold War years, and engaged in efforts aimed at increasing economic competitiveness and the social accountability of research, in the Soviet sphere of influence there were no signs of a serious reconsideration of the prevailing practices. The cult of science, carefully built during the Stalinist rule and Consolidated in the subsequent years on the foundation of success in sectors such as space, nuclear power and high-energy physics, remained unchallenged. In contrast to the West, public disapproval with expenditure on prestige technologies with little immediate social utility, if it occurred, was effectively muted. As before, military R&D dominated national programs, while the entire research System became increasingly inefficient and incapable of providing pioneering inventions or matching the development in Western Europe and the United States.46
27Crucially, the “gap” became a mobilising force in European integration. The basic argument here was straightforward: science had expanded exponentially and now required resources that not even the largest European States could provide on their own. Limited to a national level, European efforts remained fragmented and insufficient while European firms lacked the critical scope to successfully face competition in the open markets. In other words, for the promoters of integration, the problem of the “gap” was first and foremost a problem of scale: it was argued that besides from generous government spending, the indisputable American advantage stemmed from the sheer size of the country and its powerful Companies, which were big enough to undertake large-scale research and to develop efficient strategies to occupy large markets. The ‘Technology gap” thus symbolized European structural and political disadvantage and was portrayed as a worrying phenomenon that called for decisive, European-level action.
Planting the Seed
28Until the 1980s, these impulses were not strong enough to lead to the establishment of significant European-level research funding mechanisms or comprehensive coordination of national research efforts – two objectives that figured in many of the early proposals for a Community research policy. European cooperation in science and technology took place mainly within sectorial intergovernmental settings outside the Community structures. This was the case even though the 1970s, besides further exacerbating the trends that already had been visible in the previous decade, brought a number of new phenomena that could have pushed towards greater European integration in the field of science: the breakdown of Bretton Woods System, the rise of transnational finance, the spread of multinational enterprises, and the rapid increase of international trade, were complemented by the arrival of new technological innovations, such as microprocessor chips, fibre optics, and communications satellites. When these technologies pervaded the market and globalisation gained wind, the pressure to invest in research and development rapidly grew.47 In Western Europe, however, responses to the “American challenge” – or the “global challenge” – were still primarily sought in national or other international contexts.
29But the debate that started within the European Community in the late 1960s is nevertheless important. It played a crucial role in creating the mental frames and institutions that only became Consolidated in the subsequent decades. During the 1980s, when more European-oriented approaches started to replace national strategies, policy-makers could fall back on ideas, discourses and instututional settings that already were there. Furthermore, by the early 1970s, the EC, despite its very limited juridical competences in the field, was already widely recognised as a research policy actor in Europe. The establishment of the General Directorate responsible for research within the EC Commission in 1967, and the work of numerous EC committees and working groups dealing with the subject, made the Community appear as a valuable, although often contested, contributor to European debates on science. It is thus possible to speak of the emergence of a new “European entity” a substantial process of Europeanization48 in this field already in the late 1960s.
30The changing international framework was of course not the only factor that made the EC expand its role in the field of science. European integration is a complicated process that involves multiple dynamics. In the case of research policy, promoting integration for its own sake and using research just as an occasional resource in the complex political trade-offs common to the Community decision-making, for example, were important as well.49 However, it is unlikely that without the external pressure stemming from the perceptions of a worldwide change, there would have been a debate on a “common research policy” – at least in a similar form and scale. In the long term, the powerful discourse that drew its strength from a wider European and international context and presented research policy as a means to promote national economic growth and competitiveness, was the most powerful and consistent driving force of the Community’s political action in the domain of research.
31The aim of this chapter is not to belittle the significance of the Cold War division of Europe, whose consequences especially for the Eastern bloc were profound, long-lasting, and in many respects traumatic. Nor is the intention here to neglect the fact that for many years, the conflict defined the geographical shape of the EC, excluding a large part of Europe from this particular political project. This separation not only determined the early character of the EC as an exclusive club of prosperous Western European States, but also defined the trajectory of the Community’s internal development. Consequently, one should not underplay the importance of the collapse of the Soviet Empire for the European development and international relations more generally. After 1989, the world changed, for sure. But why did it change? Was it just the sheer impossibility of the Soviet experiment or the toughness of the U.S. policy that ultimately ended the European division? More recent historiography has tried to perceive the end of the Cold War as a long-term process that was not limited to the Superpower politics in 1989-1991.50 There were fundamental systemic changes taking place way before those turbulent years, and while some of those changes did not directly or immediately affect the East-West conflict, it is interesting enough that in the long run, many did.51
32The structural transformation that first shook the capitalist economies after the mid-1960s did not confine itself to the Western half of the world. The ascent of new forms of post-industrial production, spurred by technological change and the increasing application of scientific knowledge to manufacturing defied the Cold War logic and transcended the allegedly impermeable Iron Curtain. Neither were the rapid liberalisation of world markets and the rise of neoliberal economic thought, were direct consequences of or responses to the Soviet-American conflict. These were developments that mostly evolved beyond the political struggle between the East and West but that, towards the 1970s and 1980s, had an increasing impact on it. The result of the growing pressure to reform in the East, and the failure of the political leaders of the communist countries to make the necessary adjustments, was strikingly clear by the time of the dramatic events of 1989-1991.
33If the revolution in industrial production and the arrival of the “knowledge society” with faster and denser webs of communication penetrated the Eastern bloc only with some delay, already early on, the change had a decisive impact on Western Europe and the process of Western European unification. This chapter has shown how interest in creating a European-level research policy in the mid-1960s arose from the transformation of technological, economic and ideational conditions within the capitalist world. Tightening competition in the worldwide liberal markets created new imperatives and rationales for policy-makers to pursue integration. In this context, Cold War tensions played only a secondary, if not minimal role. The impact of the Cold War on the plans to extend the EC’s competences in the field of research can at best be described as indirect. The East-West conflict was barely mentioned in the Community’s or the member government’s documents on the subject, emphasising competitiveness, growth and Europe’s need to perform well in the increasingly open international markets.
34The growing interest of scholars of European integration in researching the connections between the Cold War and the creation and evolution of the EC is more than welcome. These studies share the undisputable advantage of extending the research from a narrow scrutiny of the internal developments of the Community to a richer analysis of international events. One has to, however, be careful not to over-interpret the role of the East-West conflict in the history of the EC, especially during the years of détente. In most cases, the gradual extension of the Community into new policy fields had very little to do with the Cold War confrontation. If anything, the overtures were encouraged by the relaxing European atmosphere, and even more, the new economic, social, political and technological conditions. This is clearly the case with research policy: the plans for including research in the Community’s activities were mainly motivated by observations that went far beyond the politics of the Cold War.
Notes de bas de page
1 Akira Iriye, Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future, Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillian, 2013, p. 19-20, 23. For an earlier criticism of the Cold War over-determinism “where everything that happened between 1947 and 1991 is attributed to American-Soviet conflict”, see David C. Engerman, American Knowledge and Global Power (Bernath Lecture), Diplomatic History, 31 (2007), p. 599-622 (621).
2 Iriye, ibid., p. 20.
3 See Iriye, ibid.; Kiran Klaus Patel, Kenneth Weisbrode, European Integration and the Atlantic Community in the 1980s, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2013.
4 Stephen J. Purdey, Economic Growth, the Environment and International Relations. The Growth Paradigm, London and New York, Routledge, 2010, p. 89. Reinhard Steurer, Der Wachstumsdiskurs in Wissenschaft und Politik: Von der Wachstumseuphorie über ’Grenzen des Wachstums’ zur Nachhaltigkeit, Berlin, Verlag für Wissenschaft und Forschung, 2002, p. 68, 78.
5 Jean-Jacques Salomon, Science Policy Studies and the Development of Science Policy. In: Ina Spiegel-Rösing, Derek De Solla Price (eds.), Science Technology and Society: A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective, London, Sage, 1977, p. 57; John Walsh, OECD Report on Research System Says the Honeymoon Is Over, Science, 30.5.1975.
6 For a nuanced analysis on the Maastricht process, see e.g. N. Piers Ludlow, European Integration in the 1980s: On the Way to Maastricht, Journal of European Integration History, 19 (2013), p. 11-22.
7 On integration research, see e.g. Alan Milward, The Reconstruction of Western Europe 1945-51, London, Methuen, 1984; Raymond Poidevin, Histoire des débuts de la construction européenne (Mars 1948-Mai 1950): actes du colloque de Strasbourg 28-30 novembre 1984, Brussels, Bruylant, 1986.
8 N. Piers Luldow, Introduction. In: N. Piers Ludlow (ed.), European Integration and the Cold War. Ostpolitik-Westpolitik, 1965-1973, London and New York, Routledge, 2007, p. 1-3.
9 Kiran Klaus Patel, Europäische Integrationsgeschichte auf dem Weg sur doppelten Neuorientierung. Ein Forschungsbericht, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 50. Band 2010, Bonn, Verlag J.H.W. Nachf, p. 595-642, p. 595-596.
10 See e.g. Angela Romano, Untying Cold War Knots: The EEC and Eastern Europe in the Long 1970s, Cold War History, 14:2 (2014), 153-173.
11 In addition to the contributions in N. Piers Ludlow’s collective volume (2007), see e.g. Patel, Weisbrode, European Integration (note 3) and PanEur 1970s a five-year ERC funded research project, led by professor Federico Romero at the European University Institute, which aims “to investigate the European Socialist regimes’ expectations and predicaments vis-à-vis the opening of a space of pan-European cooperation in the long 1970s.” https://paneurl970s.eui.eu/projectdescription/ (accessed 19 December 2015). See also Veera Mitzner, Almost in Europe? How Finland’s Embarrassing Entry into Eureka Captured Policy Change, Contemporary European History (forthcoming 2016).
12 N. Piers Luldow, An insulated Community? The Community Institutions and the Cold War, 1965 to 1970. In: Ludlow, European Integration (note 9), p. 137.
13 The creation of the EPC (European Political Cooperation) in 1970 and the European Council in 1974 changed the situation to some extent. Both institutions, however, were intergovernmental arrangements and relativity separate from the daily work of the community.
14 Both Alan Milward and Andrew Moravcsik have made a strong case for the economic objectives of the member States as a determining factor in European integration. My intention here, however, is not to enter that debate on the driving forces of unification. Alan Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-State, London, Routledge, 1992; Andrew Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht, Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 1998.
15 Charles S. Maier, Consigning the Twentieth Century to History: Alternative Narratives for the Modem Era, The American Historical Review, 105 (2000), p. 807-831.
16 Susan Strange, States and Markets, London and New York, Printer, 1994(1988), p. 132.
17 Arne Odd Westad, The New International History of the Cold War: Three (Possible) Paradigms, Diplomatie History, 24 (2000), p. 558-560.
18 Vladimir Kontorovich, Technological Progress and Research and Development. In: Michael Ellman, Vladimir Kontorovich (eds.), The Disintegration of the Soviet Economic System, London and New York, Routledge, 1992, p. 230-231.
19 The crisis of Euratom had actually a contrary outcome: the need to find creative solutions for reforming the Community offered an unique opportunity to extend the EC’s activities to cover new sectors. Veera Mitzner, Research for Growth? The Contested Origins of European Union Research Policy (1963-1974), Unpublished PhD thesis, European University Institute, Florence, 2013 (Chapter 4). On Euratom’s crisis, see also: Laurence Hubert, La politique nucléaire de la Communauté européenne (1956-1968). Une tentative de définition à travers les archives de la Commission européenne, Journal of European Integration History, 6 (2000), p. 129-153; Lawrence Scheinman, Euratom: Nuclear Integration in Europe, International Conciliation, 563 (1967), p. 5-66.
20 Kiran Klaus Patel, Provincializing the European Communities. Cooperation and Integration in Europe in a Historical Perspective, Contemporary European History, 22 (2013), p. 649-673.
21 Good general accounts on this subject are: John Krige, The Politics of European Scientific Collaboration. In: John Krige, Dominique Pestre (eds.), Companion to Science in the Twentieth Century, New York, Routledge, 2003; John Krige, Luca Guzzetti, History of European Scientific and Technological Cooperation, Luxemburg, European Communities, 1997.
22 Jean-Jacques Salomon, International Scientific Organisations. In: Ministers Talk About Science, Paris, OECD, 1965, p. 57, 64-65.
23 On big science, see e.g.: Peter Galison, Bruce Hevly (eds.), Big Science. The Growth of Large-Scale Research, Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 1992.
24 Dominique Pestre, Science, Political Power and the State. In: John Krige, Dominique Pestre (eds.), Science in the Twentieth Century, Paris, CRHST 1997, p. 62-67.
25 These terms were normally used by the Contemporary actors interchangeably. Therefore they are treated as Synonyms also here.
26 Pierre Piganiol, Scientific Policy and the European Community, Minerva, 6 (1968), p. 354-365.
27 Note du gouvernement français sur l’élaboration d’une politique commune de la recherche scientifique et technique, 4.3.1965, Bruxelles, 9.3.1965. CM2 1967-1029, Historical Archives of the European Union, Florence (hereafter HAEU).
28 Comité de politique économique à moyen terme. Mandat pour un groupe de travail “Politique de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique”. CEAB2-3746, HAEU.
29 Reinhard Streuer, Der Wachstumsdiskurs in Wissenschaft und Politik: von der Wachstumseuphorie über, Grenzen des Wachstums‘ zur Nachhaltigkeit, Berlin, Verlag für Wissenschaft und Forschung, 2002.
30 “The Community shall have as its task, by establishing a common market and progressively approximating the economic policies of Member States, to promote throughout the Community a harmonious development of economic activities, a continuous and balanced expansion, an increase in stability, an accelerated raising of the standard of living and closer relations between the States belonging to it.” The Treaty of Rome, 25 March 1957.
http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/emu_history/documents/treaties/rometreaty2.pdf (accessed 21.12.2015).
31 Note du gouvernement français sur l’élaboration d’une politique commune de la recherche scientifique et technique, 4.3.1965, Bruxelles, 9.3.1965. CM2 1967-1029, HAEU.
32 Ibid.
33 For a detailed analysis of this Council meeting, see Mitzner, Research for Growth? (note 19), chapter 3.
34 Problèmes de la recherche scientifique et technique dans les Communautés, Annexe IV au doc. R/189/67. CM2 1967-73, HAEU.
35 Jean-Jacques Sorel (Jean-Jacques Salomon), Le retard technologique de l’Europe, Esprit, 365 (1967), p. 755-775 (759). “La carte brandie par M. Wilson” refers to the initiatives made by the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1966 and 1967 to create a European technological community. Although the primary goal of the proposals was to ease Britain’s access to the EC, European cooperation was perceived in London as a true chance to compete with the United States in advanced technologies. John W. Young, Technological Cooperation in Wilson’s Strategy for EEC Treaty. In: Oliver. J. Daddow (ed.), Harold Wilson and European Integration: Britain’s Second Application to Join the EEC, London, Frank Cass, 2003, p. 95-97, 110; NATO Ministerial Meeting, Paris 14-16 December, 1966, Brief No. 9. PRO/FCO 55/50, The National Archives, London.
36 Sari Autio-Sarasmo, Knowledge through the Iron Curtain. Soviet Scientific-Technical Cooperation With Finland and West Germany. In: Sari Autiosarasmo, Katalin Miklóssy (eds.), Reassessing Cold War Europe, Oxon & New York, Roudledge, 2011, p. 66, 74, 77-78.
37 Ibid., p. 78.
38 Katalin Miklóssy, Sari Autio-Sarasmo, Introduction: The Cold War from a New Perspective. In: Autio-Sarasmo, Miklóssy, Reassessing Cold War Europe (note 36), p. 7.
39 Geir Lundestad, ‘Empire’ by Integration. The United States and European Integration 1945-1997, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 58.
40 Ibid., p. 1, 71, 73-74, 83, 99.
41 The U.S. direct investment in Europe grew from $4.151 million in 1957 to $13.894 million in 1965. Christopher Layton, European Advanced Technology. A Programme for Integration, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1969, p. 16.
42 Salomon, Le retard technologique (note 35), p. 761.
43 Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, Le défi américain, Paris, Denoël, 1967.
44 Richard R. Nelson, Gavin Wright, The Rise and Fall of American Technological Leadership: The Postwar Era in Historical Perspective, Journal of Economic Literature, 30 (1992), p. 1931-1964; For instance, in France, between 1960 and 1973, the average annual economic growth was 5,5 per cent-which was actually higher than the growth rates in the United States. Also, in French research, funding during the decade witnessed a remarkable expansion: the share of research of the GDP went from 0,79 per cent in 1958 to 2,23 per cent in 1967. Julie Bouchard, Comment le retard vient aux Français: analyse d’une rhétorique de la planification de la recherche 1940-1970, Villeneuve d’Ascq, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion 2008, p. 135.
45 Salomon, Le retard technologique (note 35), p. 775.
46 Paul R. Josephson, Soviet Scientists and the State: Politics, Ideology and Fundamental Research from Stalin to Gorbachev. In: Margaret C. Jacob (ed.), The Politics of Western Science, 1940-1990, New Jersey, Humanity Press, 1994, p. 119-124.
47 The value of world trade increased more than two-and-a-half fold during the 1970s, and the value of cross-border bank lending and deposit taking more than doubled. Daniel Sargent, The Cold War and the International Political Economy in the 1970s., Cold War History, 13:3 (2013), p. 393-425.
48 Kiran Klaus Patel and Ulrike von Hirschhausen have defined Europeanization as “a variety of political, social, economic and cultural processes that promote (or modify) a sustainable strengthening of intra-European connections and similarities though acts of emulation, exchange and entanglement and that have been experienced and labelled as ‘European’ in the course of history.” Ulrike v. Hirschhausen, Kiran Klaus Patel, Europeanization in History: an Introduction. In: Martin Conway, Kiran Klaus Patel (eds.), Europeanization in the Twentieth Century: Historical Approaches, New York, Palgrave 2010, 110-131.
49 See Mitzner, Research for Growth? (note 19), especially Conclusion.
50 Njolsatd, Olav (ed.), The Last Decade of the Cold War. From Conflict Escalation to Conflict Transformation, London and Portland, Frank Cass, 2004, Frederic Bozo, Marie-Pierre Rey, N. Piers Ludlow, Leopoldo Νuti (eds), Europe and the End of the Cold War. A Reappraisal, London, Routledge, 2008.
51 Charles S. Maier, Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1997. See also: Sargent, The Cold War (note 47).
Auteur
Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, and a Departmental Guest at Princeton University. After receiving her PhD from the European University Institute, Florence, in 2013, she worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Network for European Studies, University of Helsinki and Visiting Lecturer at the University of Turku. In 2011, she was a Visiting Scholar at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Her principal research interests include the history of European politicai and economic integration, Cold War history, research policy, and the history and politics of the Nordic countries. Publications : Veera Nisonen, Almost in Europe ? How Finland’s Embarrassing Entry into Eureka Captured Policy Change, Contemporary European History (forthcoming 2016).
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