Greening the Alliance The Diplomacy of NATO's Science and Environmental Initiatives
Following the launch of Sputnik, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization became a prominent sponsor of scientific research in its member countries, a role it retained until the end of the Cold War. As NATO marks sixty years since the establishment of its Science Committee, the main organizational for...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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Chicago , London
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
2018, ©2019
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| Collection: | DeGruyter MPG Collection - Collection details see MPG.ReNa |
| Summary: | Following the launch of Sputnik, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization became a prominent sponsor of scientific research in its member countries, a role it retained until the end of the Cold War. As NATO marks sixty years since the establishment of its Science Committee, the main organizational force promoting its science programs, Greening the Alliance is the first book to chart NATO’s scientific patronage—and the motivations behind it—from the organization’s early days to the dawn of the twenty-first century. -- Drawing on previously unseen documents from NATO’s own archives, Simone Turchetti reveals how its investments were rooted in the alliance’s defense and surveillance needs, needs that led it to establish a program prioritizing environmental studies. A long-overlooked and effective diplomacy exercise, NATO’s “greening” at one point constituted the organization’s chief conduit for negotiating problematic relations between allies. But while Greening the Alliance explores this surprising coevolution of environmental monitoring and surveillance, tales of science advisers issuing instructions to bomb oil spills with napalm or Dr. Strangelove–like experts eager to divert the path of hurricanes with atomic weapons make it clear: the coexistence of these forces has not always been harmonious. Reflecting on this rich, complicated legacy in light of contemporary global challenges like climate change, Turchetti offers both an eye-opening history of international politics and environmental studies and a thoughtful assessment of NATO’s future. “Turchetti shows a peculiar and little-known history: how the most effective defense alliance in history incorporated environmental concerns into its research and administration through what he terms the ‘surveillance imperative,’ or the need to capture, depict, and track the earth’s environment to plan for potential warfare in an era of nuclear weapons and catastrophic conflict. Featuring strong research into the available archival materials on NATO, a very thorough reading of the secondary literature, and a mastery of all the ins and outs of alliance politics, Greening the Alliancedeepens our knowledge about the intricacies of NATO’s evolution during turbulent times. It is an important addition to the extensive literature on the alliance.” — Stephen Macekura, author of "Of Limits and Growth: The Rise of Global Sustainable Development in the Twentieth Century" -- “Treating the administration of scientific affairs as an important back channel for diplomacy, which is an interesting and underexplored proposition, Greening the Alliance offers a new interpretation of the role NATO played in the history of science, especially during the years of détente. Well framed and well researched.” — Jenny Leigh Smith, author of "Works in Progress: Plans and Realities on Soviet Farms, 1930–1963" |
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| Physical Description: | 256 Seiten |
| ISBN: | 978-0-226-59582-5 |