Improving Scientific Knowledge at the State Department

Open email to Congress:

    This has apparently escaped me until now.
    Andrea Widner of C&E News has a four-page article in the May 13, 2013 on the state of science at the State Department. Apparently the State Department feels that its employees should have more scientific knowledge in order to better understand and react to the problems of the world.

    This is obviously not an area of controversy, because the State Department officials have responsibility to negotiate with foreign countries concerning various scientific matters, such as rockets, nuclear weapons, etc.. 

    While this is an admirable program, it has an obvious danger. Increasing science capability within the State Department cannot only improve scientific negotiations with other countries, but it can also be used for nation building, which is or should not be one of the objectives of the State Department. For example, it has been said that the State Department has developed a number of programs to work with 40 or 50 countries on ways to raise their level of scientific capability and scientific expertise. This sounds more like nation building than preparation for US State Department officials to be able to properly negotiate on scientific matters. It is also said that a few countries - Egypt, India, Israel, and Mexico for example - have specific funds set up by Congress to promote cooperative science project with the US. This again sounds like nation building to me. Not only should we get rid of that but ignore the State Department's request to have more money in its budget to support projects like this in other countries.

    We have considerable negative experience with nation building; for example, the failed wars with Korea and Vietnam, and more recently the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and subsequent military intervention in Egypt's and Libya's revolutions.

    Congress should see that scientific capability of the State Department employees is adequate to do their job of international relations but eliminate all funding with respect to nation building. The savings from the nation building limitation should be able to cover the cost of any new scientific capability within State.