On two foggy days last June, high-ranking Chinese educators met in San Diego with a team of U.S. counterparts to discuss the ethical standards surrounding the conduct of research. In the months since, U.S. scientists have led missions to North Korea, Syria, Cuba and other nations.

Writing in the San Diego Union Tribune, AAAS President Peter Agre and U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering said those missions are emblematic of “a promising global trend that features researchers, diplomats, and others collaborating on science and, in the process, building closer ties between nations.”

[Read the full commentary, "Science Diplomacy Aids Conflict Resolution," 20 February 2010. It is also available as a static PDF.]

Science was crucial in helping to thaw the Cold War, Pickering and Agre wrote. A 1979 agreement between the United States and China paved the way for bilateral scientific cooperation that has generated vast benefits for both nations. U.S. and Soviet scientists built networks of research cooperation with little government support other than travel visas, they said.

The op-ed, published Saturday 20 February, was the second in a series of three published by the Union-Tribune. The first was authored by Agre and Alan I. Leshner, the AAAS CEO and executive publisher of the journal Science. It focused on signs of a growing tension between science and society, and how it could be closed. The second was by Agre and University of California Chancellor Marye Anne Fox, and it focused on the importance of federal research and development investment for the health of the economy in Southern California and the nation.

Though it’s uncertain what will come of the recent science diplomacy missions, the authors said the time is right for the administration of President Barack Obama and Congress to deepen its commitment to such initiatives.

“The White House and U.S. Congress have made welcome moves to embrace the potential of science diplomacy,” they wrote, “but in the months and years ahead, they will need to exert still more leadership and make sure the effort has the resources needed to succeed.

“In addition to providing resources, they should quickly and significantly increase the number of H1-B visas being approved for foreign doctors, scientists and engineers,” Agre and Pickering wrote. “Foreign scientists working or studying in U.S. universities make critical contributions to human welfare and to our economy, and they often become informal goodwill ambassadors for America overseas."