From catapults to code breaking, advancements in science and technology have often tipped the balance in human warfare. But even in The Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which was fought not on battlefields but through propaganda, proxy military conflicts, and diplomatic confrontations, research and development laboratories played a crucial role in the course of the conflict.
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"When it comes to American foreign relations, most people think of diplomacy, military action, or economic relationships," explains G. John Krige, Kranzberg professor in the School of History, Technology, and Society at Georgia Tech. "They forget that America has another instrument by which it can influence the foreign policies and technological priorities of other governments, and that is its immense scientific and technological capacity.”
Krige’s research examines science and technology as instruments of U.S. foreign policy in Western Europe during the Cold War.
"I cross disciplinary boundaries to show how American scientific and technological leadership is also a part of American global political leadership," he continued. "On the one hand I engage with historians of science and technology who study the emergence of American scientific and technological preeminence during the Cold War. On the other hand I reach out to people who study American foreign policy and American foreign relations."
Of particular interest to Krige are the technologies that developed around the U.S. nuclear and space programs, and how America leveraged its preeminence in these strategic domains to boost its political relationships with other Western democracies.
"Every European engineer who was interested in space research would want to have worked with NASA in the 1960s and 1970s because that was where the best space science and technology was being done. And by virtue of that, America could collaborate with Europe in various sectors on terms often of its own choosing because the Europeans had a scientific and technological deficit which they wanted to improve by working with the world's leader in science and technology."
That NASA served a diplomatic as well as a scientific mission during the Cold War was no accident, according to Krige. The National Aeronautics and Space Act created NASA when it was signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1958. It required the agency to pursue "cooperation ... with other nations and groups of nations" in the peaceful development of space science and technology.
Although largely unrecognized by the media and the general public, both during and after the Cold War NASA engaged in some 4,000 cooperative projects. Krige's upcoming monograph, written with two graduate students, focuses on U.S. projects with Western Europe and the Soviet Union/Russia as well as Brazil, India and Japan.
For example, NASA launched Canada's first satellite, Alouette 1, in 1962. Experiments from the University of Berne, Switzerland, were carried aboard the first Apollo lunar landing. Europe built the orbiting SpaceLab laboratory that fit inside the space shuttle's cargo bay. American leadership in space also paved the way for initiatives with the Soviet Union, such as the joint Apollo-Soyuz test mission in 1975, which helped ease East-West tension as much as it advanced space science.
"During the Cold War the collaborative projects with these nations were intended to consolidate important political alliances," Krige noted. "After the implosion of the Soviet Union, big international projects like the international space station were intended to consolidate important political and economic alliances with the former Soviet republics."
Krige’s emphasizes the value of his research for today’s Georgia Tech students explaining how the Cold War and even the "space race" hold practical lessons for the next generation.
"Science and technology are major instruments of social change, and scientists and engineers are agents of change," he explained. "History is a great laboratory for understanding what the limits are to change and for anticipating where resistance to change will come from. In that sense, understanding history makes scientists and engineers, who are trying to make the world a better place, more effective and more productive agents of change."
Krige's published work includes the monograph, "American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe" (MIT Press, 2006). He has also recently completed a manuscript on the history of NASA'S international relations.
G. John Krige
Kranzberg Professor and Director of the Graduate Studies Program
School of History, Technology, and Society
- PhD, Physical Chemistry, Pretoria, 1965
- PhD, Philosophy, Sussex, 1979
Professor Krige was trained as a physical chemist and then did a second PhD at the University of Sussex, specializing in the history and philosophy of science. Thereafter he played a major role in a team that wrote the history of CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, and was the Project Leader of a team that wrote the history of ESA, the European Space Agency (ESA was awarded the Alexandre Koyré medal by the International Academy of the History of Science in 2009 for this project).
