November 7, 2024
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We need scientific brainstorming about shared global risks
It is difficult to separate Russian and Chinese scientists from international scientific cooperation. That’s a good thing
In 1958, Soviet and Western scientists met in Geneva to discuss how to control the proposed nuclear test ban.
With Russia and Western rivals again, their scientific cooperation has been drastically reduced. And as tensions also arise between the US and China, the US has only accepted it in the short term extensions Under the two countries’ 1979 Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement, it is likely to reduce its coverage in the longer term.
International scientific organizations are also under tension. For example, CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, was founded after World War II to help bind Europe together, bringing together physicists from once adversary countries to build and conduct experiments with the world’s most powerful proton accelerator. But CERN recently announced that it will cut ties with the Russian government as the war against Ukraine continues. Russian scientists currently working at CERN will only be allowed to stay if they change their affiliation to organizations outside of Russia.
CERN is trying to separate Russia’s current government and Russian scientists, many of whom support the internationalism advocated by dissident nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov in his landmark 1968 essay.Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom“.
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Another international organization, ITER, is building an experimental fusion reactor in southern France. Unlike CERN, however, ITER has no plans to cut ties with the Russian government. It was the basic design of the reactor It was proposed by Sakharov and the physicist Igor Tamm in 1951; The international project was proposed by the late Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the Soviet Union. one of his consulting physicists. And it is Russia providing essential components for power supply and protection of ITER’s superconducting magnets.
Dismantling international science is difficult. That’s a good thing. International scientific cooperation is key to tackling global problems such as nuclear weapons, pandemics, global warming and the misuse of artificial intelligence. It also creates opportunities for scientists to think about how we can deal with these problems. Governments have long recognized this. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change It is only one of the international organizations created to explore possible strategies to facilitate and alleviate agreement on the scope of various world problems.
during the cold war Pugwash Conferences on Science and World AffairsThe international organization of scientists was created in response to the year 1955 The Russell-Einstein Manifesto against nuclear weapons, that brainstorming make it easier nuclear arms control, chemical and biological weapons bans and deep restrictions on massive military confrontation along the border between what was then East and West Germany.
I was among US scientists in the 1980s brainstormed with Gorbachev’s physicist advisers steps to end the nuclear arms race, starting with underground testing of new nuclear warhead designs. Evgeny Velikhov and Roald Sagdeev, two of Gorbachev’s advisers, were fusion scientists who had collaborated with foreign counterparts for decades. Indeed, on my first visit to the Soviet Union, when the jovial Velikhov greeted me at Sheremetyevo International Airport near Moscow, he wore a Princeton University tie on his many visits to the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
A decade later, when I worked in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the legacy of openness championed by Gorbachev was so strong that then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin gave access to experts from US nuclear weapons laboratories. cooperate With experts from Russia’s nuclear laboratories, to increase the security of the country’s huge stocks of nuclear materials and warheads.
Chinese nuclear weapons physicists were also encouraged to participate in international brainstorming. Starting in 1988, under the auspices of International School on Disarmament and Conflict ResearchThe Italian Pugwash group organized a seminar every two years in Beijing (now called PIIC Beijing Seminar on International Security) with European and US physicists. These physical meetings have ended under Chinese President Xi Jinping, but the brainstorming continues via Zoom.
Between the two world wars, Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein and other important members of the physics community participated in the international cooperative effort to develop modern physics. Bohr never lost sight of the fact that the way to the salvation of human civilization is through an “open world”. He made repeated efforts to convince world leaders and finally, in 1950, he wrote his own Open Letter to the United Nations“Any initiative on either side to remove barriers to free information and communication would be of the utmost importance in breaking the current (cold war) deadlock and encouraging others to take steps in the same direction.”
Gorbachev embraced what he called “new thinking” and used “glasnost” (“openness”) to open up the Soviet Union from within and to the world. This allowed him to work with US Presidents Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush to end the cold war and reduce a process. Combined Soviet/Russian and US nuclear arsenals by a factor of almost 10.
The authoritarian regimes built by Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Xi make international cooperation more difficult, but the West must consider the costs and benefits. proposals to build additional walls. We do it they have secrets to protect, but they will be unnecessary obstacles it has weakened us at least as much as our enemiesespecially where scientists find it harder to share ideas to make the world safer and more livable.
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily his own American scientific
