The Death—and Rebirth—of Science Diplomacy |
From Dec. 17-18, the Danish presidency of the Council of the European Union and the European Commission will convene the second European Science Diplomacy Conference, bringing 500 top-level policymakers, researchers, and field leaders to the table to confront an uncomfortable truth: The honeymoon of effortless international scientific cooperation is over.
Twenty years ago, international scientific collaboration seemed unstoppable. Student exchanges, joint research projects, and shared infrastructure were designed not just to advance knowledge and fuel innovation markets, but also to foster cosmopolitan values and strengthen diplomatic ties. Such undertakings depended on active government involvement through international science and technology agreements, targeted funding, and institutional matchmaking—and this convergence of science and statecraft became known as science diplomacy.
From Dec. 17-18, the Danish presidency of the Council of the European Union and the European Commission will convene the second European Science Diplomacy Conference, bringing 500 top-level policymakers, researchers, and field leaders to the table to confront an uncomfortable truth: The honeymoon of effortless international scientific cooperation is over.
Twenty years ago, international scientific collaboration seemed unstoppable. Student exchanges, joint research projects, and shared infrastructure were designed not just to advance knowledge and fuel innovation markets, but also to foster cosmopolitan values and strengthen diplomatic ties. Such undertakings depended on active government involvement through international science and technology agreements, targeted funding, and institutional matchmaking—and this convergence of science and statecraft became known as science diplomacy.
Science diplomacy was forged by the United States in the mid-1990s as a soft-power tool to create a friendlier American face abroad via science’s global prestige. Gaining momentum alongside the rise of globalization and multilateral cooperation, science diplomacy reached its height around the turn of the millennium, when scientific collaboration was widely understood as both a driver of innovation and a pillar of liberal internationalism.
As highly industrialized countries in Europe followed suit, international higher education and science collaborations, no matter how small, were eagerly branded as acts of diplomacy in lab coats and turned into symbols of strategic influence. The European Union made science diplomacy its own in 2009 by strengthening European Research Area policies under the umbrella of the Treaty of Lisbon, which enabled Brussels to align research and foreign policy to tackle major challenges, fund massive joint infrastructure projects, and compete with other power blocs in an increasingly multipolar world.
Gone are the days, however, when international scientific collaborations were celebrated as collective, neutral achievements. After a string of jolting events, including the Arab Spring; the brutal crackdown on pro-democracy movements in Turkey; revelations of large-scale Chinese science espionage; and, finally, Russia’s assault on Ukraine, observers were quick to declare the demise of science diplomacy. Their verdict, dripping with jaded irony, was succinct: So much for soft power.
But science diplomacy is not dead; it is evolving. Once the domain of idealists and bridge-builders, science........