Home › Features › Essays › Science and Technology

Science and Technology

By Kenneth H. Keller
Fall 1990
Article Summary and Author Biography

Reviews the growing importance of S&T (science and technology) issues for US foreign policy-making over four areas (1) diminution of national sovereignty as transnational communications increase (2) resource limits on world economic development (3) threats to the controllability of society through over-dependence on untestable systems (4) a downward (populist) shift in the centre of gravity of the body politic, as political elites are forced to take greater account of increasingly well-informed public opinion.

Kenneth H. Keller is Volvo Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations. This article is adapted from the author's essay in Sea-Changes: American Foreign Policy in a World Transformed, published by the Council on Foreign Relations.

We're sorry, but Foreign Affairs does not have the copyright to display this article online.

Related

Essay, Mar/Apr 1996
America's Information Edge
Joseph S. Nye, Jr. and William A. Owens

The American century, far from being over, is on the way. The information revolution, which capsized the Soviet Union and propelled Japan to eminence, has altered the equation of national power. America leads the world in the new technologies. Its emerging military systems can thwart any threat. On the "soft-power" side, it projects its ideals and other countries follow. To prevent an information race, America must share its lead; to preserve its reputation, it must keep its house in order.

Read
Essay, Spring 1990
Technology and Competitiveness: The New Policy Frontier
B.R. Inman and Daniel F. Burton, Jr.

Reviews (1) the decline of US technological superiority in consumer electronics, semiconductors and superconductors (2) the technology transfer issues raised by the US-Japanese negotiations on the FSX fighter aircraft programme (3) US debate about whether HDTV (high-definition television) market potential is sufficient to warrant US investment as a player (4) currents of thought in other countries facing analogous science and technology policy issues (5) possible measures for strengthening the US manufacturing base and for sharpening US technology policy management. Asserts that the emergence of technological competitiveness as a matter of prime US strategic economic concern, and its extension into the centre of US foreign policy-making, require 'institutional realignments' in Washington.

Read
Review Essay, Jul/Aug 1999
A Glass Half Full? Thurow Dissects the Third Industrial Revolution
Jeffrey E. Garten

Lester C. Thurow's gloomy new book trumpets the knowledge revolution's virtues but warns that neither Europe, nor Japan, nor even America is ready for them.

Read