Speech To The Council On Foreign Relations

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Thank you Josh. It's a pleasure to be here and an honor to share the podiumwith you. As this audience knows well, Josh exemplifies the role thatscientific and technological knowledge can and must play in informing publicpolicy. Perhaps more than any other single individual, he has helpedsuccessive U.S. administrations come to grips with vexing problems of reducingthe threat posed by biological and chemical weaponry.

The U.S. Government has turned to Josh not only for his scientific expertiseand general wisdom he has provided so generously in his life of public service,but also for his deep understanding of the interaction between technology andpolicy. Josh co-chaired both the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology,and Government and the Carnegie Commission's 1993 panel on "New Thinking andAmerican Defense Technology"--studies the Clinton administration has taken verymuch to heart . . . in part because a number of Clinton appoint ees participatedin the Commission's studies!

I am tempted to devote some time today thanking the Council for itssubstantial contributions to the public debate on the role of science andtechnology. But I think Les Gelb wants me to sing for my l unch. So instead Iwill describe for you the Clinton administration's approach to S&T ininternational affairs.

The Clinton administration faces three immediate and pressing problemsdemanding international scientific cooperation and technolo gical innovation.Daunting as it seems:

o we must manage the restructuring of military forces and associatedindustries, while helping the former Soviet Union do the same;

o we must strengthen efforts to prevent the proliferation of advanc ed weapons,while working to integrate formerly Communist states into the industrializedworld; and

o we must reinvigorate our own economy--for our security as a nation willderive in large measure from our global economic strength.

To sta rt, we have been guided . . . and constrained . . . by commitment toreducing the federal deficits theory of holes. That is, if you find you're inone, the first thing to do is stop digging. And we have put forward a toughdeficit-reduction budget. But we also have to climb out of the hole, so ournew approach also strongly emphasizes investment. Despite our freeze ondiscretionary spending, the President's budget for fiscal 1995 increases ourhigh-priority R+D investment by 4%. The civilian and dual -use share of thatR+D budget is up to 47%. And we want to bring that share to at least 50% by1998.

We believe that this shift of resources toward dual use and commercialtechnologies will promote our national security--which brings me to theq uestion of defense restructuring.

The end of the Cold War has not meant the end of conflict. Regional wars andcivil strife dominate the headlines. And the proliferation of sophisticatedweaponry is raising the risks and human costs -- to us, and to others. In thisera of shrinking defense budgets, we need to emphasize both sound technologicalinvestment geared to the post-Cold War environment, and the aggressive pursuitof nonproliferation policies.

< p> We will rely increasingly on mobile, highly trained forces, equipped withadvanced conventional weapons, which proved their capabilities in the Gulf War.To build the forces we need with the resources we have, we need both to cut ourinvestments in th e technologies and machinery once needed in the Cold War, anda fundamentally different approach to defense acquisition.

During the Cold War, we built two industrial bases -- one military and onecivilian. The requirements of military contracting often prevented thePentagon from buying cutting-edge commercial technology. And our militarycontractors were hamstrung in commercial competition; i.e., our civilianeconomy could not fully benefit from our military technology base . . . andvice versa .

We will integrate the defense industrial base and the commercialindustrial base into a single, globally competitive national industrialbase. Our military forces must have the benefit of the rapid advances incommercial te chnology -- particularly in information systems -- to produceaffordable and effective weapons faster, and with smaller budgets.

We are also reducing our reliance on nuclear weapons. In my personal view, ifit was not clear before, it is clear no w that their value is limited todeterrence of their use by others. For example, we are moving our weapons labsaway from nuclear weapons testing, so that they can engage in more productivescientific enterprise.

In downsizing our forces, we will face the problem of excess capacity. As weconsider our options, we must bear in mind that the weapons we may be temptedto sell have a way of being used against us. Balance-of-power-politics helpedSaddam Hussein amass a great arsenal of weapons made in the US, the SovietUnion, and Europe. If we are to be serious about preventing future Iraqs, wewill need to take a new approach to security, based on cooperative restraint inthe sale of provocative weaponry. Ironic that despite our commitment tono n-violent conflict resolution, the U.S. remains a leader in exporting arms.

In September, President Clinton announced his nonproliferation initiative,including a commitment to a negotiated comprehensive test ban and a globalconvention banning al l production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons. Heoffered to place our excess fissile materials under safeguards, to make clearto the world that our nuclear arms reductions will not be reversed. Hesubmitted the Chemical Weapons Convention for ratification, proposed newtransparency measures to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention, andexpanded the Missile Technology Control Regime.

That package goes a long way toward controlling the flow of weapons of massdestruction. But we must get control of the conventional arms trade as well.We plan to take on the intellectually and politically challenging task ofdesigning a regime for controlling the spread of advanced conventional weapons,including those technologies over which we have a monopoly. My office ispresently working with the NSC, the Pentagon, ACDA, the intelligence community,and others on ways to contain the spread of increasingly lethal conventionalweapons. I am personally committed to progress in this area.

< p> As part of our nonproliferation effort, we have stepped up our assistance tothe nations of the former Soviet Union in dismantling their nuclear andchemical weapons, and converting their military industries. Later this month,Defense Secretary Perry , Commerce Secretary Brown, and I will send teams toRussia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine to work with these independent stateson converting their defense enterprises to civilian pursuits.

As Russia and the United States dismantle their nuc lear weapons, hundreds oftons of highly-enriched uranium and plutonium will become military surpluscommodities. As a recent National Academy of Sciences study warned, thesematerials pose a particular danger in the FSU, where economic turmoil isfosteri ng an aggressive criminal underground, and guards are living in poverty. At their January summit, Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin signed an agreementin which the United States will buy 500 tons of HEU from Russia, in order toremove HEU from this uncert ain environment, and blend it down for peaceful usein power reactors.

However, surplus weapons plutonium poses a more difficult problem -- and onethat must be addressed in the context of the far larger global stocks ofcivilian plutonium, which also pose proliferation risks. The President hascreated an interagency group, co-chaired by OSTP, to devise options for meetingthis challenge.

None of the options for plutonium disposition--from fabricating it intoreactor fuel to mixing it wit h high-level waste now scheduled to be melted intoglass logs--can begin for the better part of a decade. So the priority todayis to build transparency, safeguards, and secure storage for these materials.

Most urgently, we must help Russia ensu re adequate security and accounting inits far-flung nuclear complex, so that tomorrow we don't find that severalbombs' worth of plutonium or HEU has wound up on the black market or interrorists' hands. No single issue is more central to the success of ournonproliferation effort, or more urgent in ensuring that we secure the peace,now that we've won the war.

The plutonium study and defense conversion efforts are just two examples ofUS-Russian S&T cooperation. President Clinton has made clear that helpingformer Soviet states on their rocky road to reform is a key national securitypriority.

Trade, investment, and technical cooperation will be essential for economicr evitalization, and will provide desperately needed support for the scientificcommunity in the former Soviet states -- once one of the strongest pillars ofpolitical reform, but now impoverished and underemployed.

Under the leadership of Vice-Pres ident Gore and Prime Minister Chernomyrdin,we have agreed to a broad cooperative agenda in S&T--from fundamentalscience to energy conservation to space exploration. Our historic jointendeavor on the space station, for example, will mean a better a nd cheaperstation for us, and a new future for hundreds of talented scientists andengineers for them. I co-chair the joint Science and Technology committeewith Science Minister Boris Saltykov. Together we have successfully negotiatedthe first US-Ru ssia Science and Technology Umbrella Agreement. That agreement,and its annex on intellectual property rights, provide access for ourscientists to a wealth of talent, information, and special resources. And theyhelp provide Russia's scientists and eng ineers with improved means tocontribute to the transformation of Russia's political economy and system ofgovernance. {Now that the International Science and Technology Center hasfinally begun its vital mission of engaging former weapons scientists in peaceful challenges, we are contemplating a civilian R+D foundation as well, tofurther address the "brain drain" problem.}

Our international S&T cooperation is not limited to the former SovietUnion. From global climate change to fusion powe r, from exploring space topursuing the mysteries of particle physics, we are encouraging internationalscience and technology cooperation on a broad front. In the Middle East, forexample, we've sought to develop new habits of cross-border cooperation o nshared technical problems -- such as regional water management -- which mightundergird the fragile peace process. I will soon convene the US-China JointCommission on Science and Technology--which we hope will be a vehicle for moreproductive relation s, potentially allowing us to effectively address sensitiveareas such as encouraging defense conversion as an alternative to arms sales.As we consider the possibilities for S&T cooperation, we must bear in mindthat China is the world's fastest grow ing economy and India is the fifthlargest. At the same time, both those countries are protagonists in adangerous regional arms race. Simply put, we cannot afford to be Eurocentricin our approach.

Just as science and technology can support economic reform abroad, so can theybolster our economy at home. Cutting-edge science and technology is essentialto a cutting-edge economy. When we took office a year ago, our commitment wasto grow the economy, re gain lost market share, and create American jobs.

o With NAFTA and GATT, we have opened markets, while protecting our federalR+D initiatives in new partnerships with the private sector. F reer trade isgood for us, and essential for moving the developing world out of poverty.

o We are trimming outdated export restraints, while strengthening those thatare key to nonproliferation. For example, we've liberalized export controls onc omputers, telecommunications, and other technologically sophisticatedequipment, freeing up 35 billion dollars in high-tech exports and that's only astart.

o We've developed an action plan for the National Information Superhighway.Linked to th is telecommunications network will be high-speed computers --another critical area where our Administration has already initiated major newinvestments. Yet to call this information highway "national" is a misnomer: Weare working toward an integrated g lobal network that will be a criticalcatalyst of trade and ideas. We are working actively to link up the newlyemerging democracies. [Access to information is a tool of democracy: The rolethat the simple fax machine and the samizdat it produced played infostering reform in the former Soviet Union provides a hint of the freeexpression the new information technologies can unleash.]

o We've created the Technology Reinvestment Project, to stimulate thetransition from strictly military te chnologies to "dual use" technologies thatalso have civilian applications. Already, four rounds of rigorous,peer-reviewed competition have resulted in awards worth $605 million; andindustry will match these dollar-for-dollar.

o At the NIST (DO C) we've proposed a seven-fold increase, compared to just twoyears ago, in the budget for the Advanced Technology Program, agovernment-private partnership to promote industry's development of high-risk,high-payoff commercial technologies . . . again, o n 50:50 cost sharing. Andwe're developing major new initiatives in science and technology education andtraining.

o We have targeted environmental technologies in particular -- which we expectto be a 600-billion dollar a year global market by t he year 2000 emissionscontrols/management and pollution reduction. We have put forward a ClimateChange Action Plan for the United States, and are increasing spending onresearch on global climate change by 24%. We renewed U.S. support forinternationa l family planning efforts. We forged the "clean car initiative,"to build the competitive low-emissions, high-efficiency cars of the future.Overall, we are increasing spending on environmental technologies by 11% thisyear, on renewable energy by 15%, a nd on energy efficiency R&D by 42%.

In all this, we are working in partnership with the private sector --particularly in targeting our applied science and technology investments. Weneed to insure that our manufacturers can use technology fl exibly, respondingquickly to a fast-moving market place while minimizing costs and wastes -- whatI like to call "lean, green" production.

In short, we are determined to make our Nation's preeminent scientific andtechnological capability truly t he engine of economic growth: the ladder we canuse to climb to long term national security, economic resilience, andenvironmental quality.

To enable us to carry out this S&T agenda, we are reinventing the waygovernment does business. For e xample, we have dropped the word "defense" fromthe Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), renaming it ARPA: [wherewe center our work on dual use research co-jointly with DOE, DOC, NSF, NASA,DOT]. We are reforming our defense acquisitions s ystem, and we have launchedan interagency review of how the national laboratories of DoD, DOE, and NASAcan best meet our new national needs.

To more effectively harness S&T for the nation's military and economicsecurity goals, President Cli nton has established the National Science andTechnology Council--a virtual government-wide S&T agency. Like theNational Security Council, the National Science and Technology Council ischaired by the President, and includes the Vice President and t he relevantcabinet secretaries and agency directors. OSTP serves as its secretariat and Iam the Assistant to the President responsible for its coordination.

The Council is structured to make science and technology policy across agencyboundarie s. The President will also establish a revitalized science andtechnology advisory committee (PCAST) with a new emphasis on government-privatepartnership in promoting our science and technology objectives. Let there beno doubt: President Clinton and V ice President Gore recognize science andtechnology as the key to enabling the kind of future we yearn for.

In the last half-century, science and technology have enabled amazingaccomplishments in the free world. For example, we have unraveled th emysteries of our chromosomes, doubled the efficiency with which we use energy,transformed the world with information technology, and built the finestfighting force our nation has ever seen. Though the challenges we face now aredangerous and daunting , I am full of hope that science and technology,correctly applied, can help us meet them.

The French mystic, pilot and author, Antoine Saint-Exupery wrote: "As for thefuture, your task is not to foresee, but to enable it." This government h opesto pursue science and direct technology to that end. But, ultimately, scienceand technology can only provide options. It is the purview of governance andthe market to transform options into actions [for as Victor Hugo observed, ". .. science sa