The American scientific community, the United States government, and the issue of international scientific relations during the Cold War, 1945-1960

In 1945, the Manhattan Project elevated scientists to an influential place in American society. The potential of atomic energy and other wartime scientific innovations added new dimensions to the familiar range of political, economic and strategic issues in international relations. American scientists brought distinct perspectives to policy-making. Apprehensive about conflict in a nuclear age, possessing a tradition of international collaboration, the "Los Alamos generation" conceived a complex ideology that warned about nuclear war and offered solutions based on the paradigm of scientific relations. The atom bomb, they explained, had changed diplomacy forever. Maintaining traditional state relationships would guarantee the destruction of civilization. Science compelled new kinds of diplomacy. Instead of secrecy and competition, relations would be based on cooperation and exchange, leading to peace and material progress.;The Cold War ended such hopes. United Nations negotiations on atomic energy failed, and domestic legislation proved too restrictive. The Truman administration's attitude toward science and technology was hegemonic and unresponsive. The climate engendered by the anticommunist milieu eroded the scientists' internationalist vision. By the early fifties, they were isolated from foreign colleagues by security concerns, official roadblocks to exchange, public pressure, and the political and academic environment. As information about the Soviet Union's xenophobic campaign against Western science became widespread, and international science split into bipolar camps, many scientists rejected their earlier ecumenical vision and accepted the Cold War consensus.;Circumstances changed during the Eisenhower administration. Scientists were integrated into an increasingly technical policy-making process. European science recovered from the war, and developing nations demanded scientific aid and technology transfer in exchange for economic and political agreements. The administration proposed cultural and technical initiatives to break strategic and political deadlocks with the Soviet Union, such as Atoms for Peace. The new climate encouraged international scientific relations. By 1960, political authorities, borrowing earlier arguments, claimed that science and technology offered the United States access to the hearts and minds of the world, a high-tech Marshall Plan for raising living standards and appreciation of the American cultural paradigm. Internationalist scientific traditions, in modified form, had become a tool of Cold War policy.