Technology and international relations

The present volume deals with an issue which greatly affects the prosperity and the security of nations in an increasingly inter dependent world: the role of technology in international relations.
Today the influence of technology is pervasive in virtually all aspects of official relations among States and in the complex web of private cross-border relations. The development, the diffusion and the use of technology deeply affect issues of peace and war, poverty and economic growth, questions of health and disease, the de terioration and the protection of the environment, as well as intellectual and cultural developments and ultimately the future of the free society. Our time, for better or worse, can be rightly called the age of technology, even though technocracy, a 'community governed by experts in theo retical or applied science', has remained and is likely to remain also in the future a utopia in the Western world.
Yet the role of technology has been trad itionally neglected in the study of inter national relations; similarly it has received scant attention in mainstream economic theory and analysis. This has been at least partly due to two major trends which have led to an increasing fragmentation of modern social sciences: the tendency of growing specialization (and the resulting preoccupation with trivia) and the flight into excessive abstraction.

The papers written for the present volume by a group of outstanding experts with a broad international academic, research and industry background, deal with a range of major issues related to technology and international relations: the book includes an overview of the role of science and tech nology in international relations as well as specific topics such as the role of govern ment subsidies, agriculture and economic development, discussions of technology leadership (with special reference to the examples of Britain, the USA and Japan), the question of Kondratiev Cycles, tech nology and the terms of trade, the issue of free trade vs protectionism in technology, technology strategies, and telecommuni cations amongst other topics.

Dr Otto Hieronymi, the editor, is Head of the Program of Economic Analysis and Forecasting, Battelle-Geneva Research Centre. A US citizen, he was born in Hungary and educated at the Graduate Institute of International Studies at the University of Geneva where he obtained a Ph.D. in international economics. He taught economics at the University of Dallas from 1964 to 1965 and was an international economist with the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company in New York from 1966 to 1970. Dr Hieronymi joined Battelle-Geneva in 1970 and is at present in charge of Battelle's short- and medium-term forecasting programmes.