15 The Only (Tense) Encounter of a Non-Existent Relationship? NATO, IUPAP, and the 1963 Travel Ban Controversy

Can the lack of communication between two international organizations tell us a great deal more about their relationship than many items of correspondence? This appears to be the case for that between the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Despite their shared interest in the promotion of the physical sciences, the two organizations were deliberately uncommunicative with each other during the whole Cold War, not even acknowledging their respective patronage roles. IUPAP (est. 1922) restarted its activities after World War II under the aegis of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU, est. 1931), with an ambition to facilitate international exchanges even across the Iron Curtain. A NATO science program targeting the physical sciences materialized instead the search of political synergies between the members of the transatlantic defense alliance established in 1949 by promoting scientific collaboration aligned to Cold War alliances. These constitutive differences of the Atlantic alliance explain why IUPAP and NATO hardly ever entered into a conversation. Their archival collections confirm indifference, or lack of interest in establishing a dialog, as NATO hardly ever features in IUPAP’s secretarial correspondence, General Assembly meetings, reports, and news bulletins. IUPAP is virtually absent from the official documentation of the Atlantic alliance. Indeed, given the absence of relevant exchanges one might even question the significance of writing an article on their interactions.

Yet it is exactly this silence that makes their relationship worth exploring, as it reveals the compresence of diverging agendas in the patronage of the physical sciences. Focusing on this divergence actually enriches our understanding of the historical lineage of what we now call “science diplomacy.” Over the last decade, scholars from various disciplines have identified the promotion of scientific initiatives as paving the way to a distinctive form of diplomacy shaping parallel tracks in the administration of international affairs. However, the co-existence of competing science diplomacy schemes is a theme largely overlooked in the relevant literature. The works published so far have largely focused instead on cases of positive diplomatic returns associated with individual scientific exchanges, rather than contiguous but divergent patronage efforts consistent with rivalling diplomatic ambitions.¹ Yet, the co-existence of contrasting science diplomacy projects is a distinctive feature of the Cold War. For instance, sponsorship of a NATO oceanographic committee produced disapproval from within the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), as their officials complained that the alliance’s patronage disrupted their collaboration with Soviet oceanographers and fishery scientists.²

Not dissimilarly, NATO’s sponsorship affected the physical sciences as the alliance seized the opportunity to funding more lavishly international exchanges in Western Europe. Yet, in contrast with ICES, IUPAP executives did not engage with NATO’s aggressive patronage strategy, especially given that from the 1950s the Union looked for new members in non-Western and developing countries, whereas the alliance retained a regional focus in Western Europe. Moreover, the different channeling of patronage efforts initially reassured IUPAP executives about the possibility to co-existing with NATO, as the Union operated as a non-governmental organization within the framework of national academies, whereas NATO’s schemes resulted from an inter-governmental endowment.³

However, tensions escalated in the early 1960s at one decisive junction in Cold War history. Following the erection of the Berlin Wall, NATO endorsed and extended a ban to East German citizens requesting to travel to the alliance’s member states. Since it affected scientists wishing to travel to international meetings too, IUPAP officials agreed to engage in a (tense) conversation with their NATO counterparts to have these restrictions removed. The episode proved formative for the authorities of both organizations as it focused their attention on international scientific relations, and their role within these relations. From that moment, IUPAP’s championing of the free circulation of scientists was more sustained, and this campaigning increased its visibility, also providing a social responsibility agenda for the organization. By contrast, NATO’s restraining stance on free circulation made it more difficult for its officials to promote its science initiatives over the following two decades. The criticism mounting on the ambitions of its science program eventually contributed to make it less relevant internationally. The final part of this article thus examines how these competing stances shaped the two organizations’ patronage trajectory at the end of the Cold War.

When in 1958 NATO publicized the launch of a science program, no ICSU or IUPAP official commented on the initiative. The distinctive sound of silence accompanied the announcement, actually, as IUPAP officials worried that this promotion could run against their efforts to increase opportunities for networking and exchange among physicists in a divided world, especially by reducing exchanges across blocs.

Efforts to sidestep the geopolitical orientation of individual governments in the promotion of international exchanges had already dotted the Union’s post-war history. IUPAP initiatives implicitly reaffirmed the political non-discrimination principle that the 8th ICSU General Assembly deliberated in October 1958. It stated that adherence or association [to unions] had “no implication to recognition of the government or the country of the territory concerned.”⁴ Hence IUPAP representatives administered thorny membership cases recognizing the legitimacy for scientific academies and societies to join the Union, regardless of whether they operated in capitalist or communist blocs, or if their countries had received official recognition. For instance, the Union offered membership to both the physical societies of the recently established People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Taiwan-based Republic of China (ROC), even though the ROC’s acceptance led the Chinese Physical Society in Beijing to refuse membership. The same controversy emerged when the Physikalische Gesellschaft in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik applied for membership in IUPAP. Their colleagues managing the Physical Society of Federal Republic of Germany opposed the request, arguing that their society represented all the physicists on German territory. But the Union’s President Edoardo Amaldi (1957–60) felt compelled to accept the request in light of the political non-discrimination principle, and, in 1960, an East German committee joined IUPAP as its 35th national member.⁵

This happened at the end of a period particularly prolific for the organization despite the limited funding available. By the time Amaldi was appointed, IUPAP comprised of six more commissions (for a total of fifteen), and four inter-union committees. The French physicist Pierre Fleury, head of the Institut d’Optique in Paris, and Secretary General from 1947, played a part in the Union’s impressive growth. He had prompted the recently established United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, est. 1946) to fund IUPAP’s activities recognizing the urgency to “promoting research and training in the most promising fields of physics.”⁶ Moreover, UNESCO offered a $200,000 grant-in-aid to ICSU’s unions for “travelling expenses of those attending international scientific gatherings, movements across frontiers of younger scientific workers, contributions towards publications, the rehabilitation of scientific stations of international standing.”⁷

These UNESCO funding streams helped IUPAP to expand and consolidate, also developing synergies with other national groups within non-Western academies. Alexis De Greiff notes that the Union continued to have a distinctive “Western constituency and image” given that by 1972 only ten out of thirty-nine IUPAP national committees were located in third world countries.⁸ Yet it is equally true that from the late 1950s IUPAP sought to encourage memberships from other world regions, also assisting UNESCO in its promotion of science in less developed nations. Moreover, while the appointment of the Indian physicist Homi J. Bhabha as Amaldi’s successor for the triennium 1960–63 was due to a variety of factors, it propelled this developmental agenda.⁹ As Director of the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research in Bombay, Bhabha played a key role in attuning his country’s scientific infrastructure to the political agenda of India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, hence encouraging both country development through the sciences, and non-alignment. His appointment as IUPAP President gave visibility to these stances.¹⁰

NATO’s patronage of the physical sciences, which began in same period of Bhabha’s appointment, differed substantially from IUPAP’s sponsorship. The establishment of an alliance in 1949 extended the US Government’s ambition to contain communism in Western Europe by outlining a defense coalition tasked to repel a Soviet attack. In the alliance’s formative years this defense coordination effort coupled with the search for political synergies, especially as, although twelve founding members had representation in its chief authority, the North Atlantic Council, three (the US, France, and Britain) dominated its proceedings.

NATO’s backers in the USA had toyed with the idea of sponsoring fundamental research within the alliance from its establishment. But these plans materialized at the end of the 1950s partly due to the bad publicity that US sponsorship received following the publication of the anonymous French communist pamphlet Un plan U.S.A. de mainmise sur la science playing up connections between this patronage and covert intelligence operations.¹¹ Only the Suez crisis of 1956 paved the way to concrete steps to enact a science program, as the contrast between the alliance’s three major powers on supporting Israel displayed a need for greater political harmonization. An ad hoc NATO committee named as Committee of the Three (also known as “Three Wise Men”) proposed initiating scientific cooperation as a way to provide it, and the launch of the first Soviet satellite Sputnik, in October 1957, invigorated further the idea of a NATO-sponsored program. The following year the North Atlantic Council approved setting up a Science Committee. Chaired by a newly appointed NATO Assistant Secretary General on Scientific Affairs (US physicist Norman Ramsey), within two years the committee agreed on three funding schemes promoting individual fellowships to study abroad, international workshops (or Advanced Study Institutes (ASIs)) and collaborative research projects.¹²

The physical sciences featured in all these strands, and especially in the ASIs, since the funding scheme targeted already popular physics summer schools in Western Europe. From 1959, NATO became the chief sponsor of that organized at Les Houches (Pyrenees, France) by the French mathematician and physicist Cécile Morette (wife of Bryce DeWitt, a leading US physicist in the emerging field of general relativity). While the French Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique had initially sponsored the school, a Fulbright endowment funded its expansion, and from 1956 the Ford Foundation offered an annual grant which NATO took on three years later. While participation did not preclude the participation of physicists from other countries, only those from NATO had their expenses covered. Unsurprisingly, they represented the bulk of the seven hundred participants who traveled to Les Houches up until 1966.¹³

The following year, NATO stepped up this commitment to bring international training activities in line with Cold War alliances by offering a grant-in-aid of the Varenna physics summer school. Originally paid for by the Italian Physical Society, the yearly meetings at a villa sited in the tourist resort of Varenna (Lake Como, Italy) received NATO money from 1959. As for that at Les Houches, however, this sponsorship indirectly prompted a selection by covering the expenses of NATO nationals.¹⁴ As the official documentation reiterated, funds were “made available […] not to influence the policy of the institute nor its selection of students or staff” while covering only “living and travel expenses of participants from NATO countries [my emphasis].”¹⁵

In the context of the 1959 NATO program, $150.000 dollars funded the Varenna and Les Houches schools, and the alliance paid for three more physics-focused ASIs in Naples (Italy), Kjeller (Norway), and Corfu (Greece). No other discipline aside from physics received funding in that year, showing that at this stage NATO seized an opportunity to become a major patron for the physical sciences in Western Europe.¹⁶ NATO officials were open too about their ambition to bring international exchanges in line with Cold War divisions. They argued that UNESCO and ICSU initiatives had “limited utility” because of “difficulties involved in co-operation between countries with different political belief.” Moreover, the UN devoted “too much attention to the needs for technical aid in the newly developing countries.” NATO wished to encourage scientific exchanges premised on “homogeneity of political outlook and economic development” instead as in its twinned defense alliances; the South-East Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO, est. 1954) and Central Treaty Organization (CENTO, est. 1955).¹⁷

IUPAP officials never commented on this aggressive sponsorship strategy, possibly persuaded that by targeting physics schools with pre-existing national sponsorships, NATO only shaped regional multilateral exchanges rather than international ones (accepting all academies and societies from any world region). They did not dispute NATO’s stance even when French communist physicists agreed to organize a summer school alternative to that in Les Houches in protest with its divisive ambitions.¹⁸ On the contrary, some IUPAP officials even agreed to involve themselves in NATO’s initiatives. In 1959, Fleury became a member of the Advisory Panel making recommendations on its research grants, and from 1960 the physicist Louis Néel, who was a member of the IUPAP Executive Committee, became the French representative in the NATO Science Committee. He occupied this position for several years, even when he succeeded Bhabha as IUPAP President (1963–66).¹⁹

When NATO initiatives gained momentum, IUPAP officials kept quiet about them, although their uneasiness surfaced in correspondence. For instance, in February 1960, the Danish physicist Otto Kofoed-Hansen informed Fleury about a NATO summer school organized at the Danish Atomic Energy Commission. He actually asked for additional funds from the Union, given that NATO funds had allowed hiring five lecturers from the prestigious US laboratories of Livermore, Oak Ridge, and Princeton. Fleury marked the letter in blue and red, in what was seemingly a prelude to a reply emphasizing the contrast between the profligacy of NATO sponsorship and IUPAP’s parsimonious approach.²⁰ He did not reply though. Yet, he could no longer keep silent about the alliance three years later, when NATO ratified restrictions preventing East German physicists from traveling, hence throwing a spanner into the routine mechanisms of free circulation of scientists wishing to attend international meetings. This time he and Bhabha had to engage in a tense exchange with NATO officials proving decisive to the history of IUPAP (and informing NATO’s future science initiatives too).

After World War II, scientists had struggled to obtain visas to travel to international meetings more than once. In the years that followed the conflict, those in Soviet Russia had often to cancel their visits to the West, while their Israeli colleagues could not travel to Eastern bloc countries. In the early 1950s, the red scare propelled the approval of the McCarran Internal Security Act curtailing access to the USA to foreign scientists with a suspected communist affiliation. The 1956 Soviet repression in Hungary produced more bans.²¹

The erection of the Berlin Wall marked a more sustained travel crisis. From August 1961 a partition, permanently dividing the city’s western sector from the other ones was under construction. The adoption of a separate flag and anthem for the self-appointed German Democratic Republic (GDR) exacerbated tensions already made palpable through the 1955 Hallstein Doctrine.²² This situation also made impossible for East Germans to travel. They had that far been allowed to do so thanks to a Temporary Travel Document (TTD) made available by Western powers recognizing the GDR territory as a Soviet-occupied area of Germany rather than that of a sovereign state. Hence, the Allied Travel Office (ATO) of West Berlin, a bureau where consular authorities from the USA, the UK, West Germany, and France had their representatives, released TTDs replacing visas and passports.

From 1961 the number of East Germans receiving a TTD rapidly decreased, while NATO endorsed and extended a travel ban. As Heather L. Dichter has recently showed, NATO was drawn into the controversy due to the criticism that followed the ban of an East German team from the 1962 World Ice Hockey Championship. The ban caused a sensation because the ice hockey federation had already agreed that the team travel to Colorado (USA) for the competition, and therefore queried the US State Department’s decision to not release travel permits for its players. Given that the four ATO powers were part of the alliance, the US representative at NATO now asked an official ban endorsement to deflect international disapproval.²³ The North Atlantic Council provided the ratification following advice from its Committee of Political Advisers (or Political Committee—assisting the council in the political consultation process). In January 1962, its head, Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs Robin W. J. Hooper, confirmed the ban to be valid in all NATO member states.²⁴

Notwithstanding the NATO authorities’ reassurance that the ban should “not be maintained any longer than absolutely necessary,” very few East Germans could cross Checkpoint Charlie in 1962, and virtually none in 1963.²⁵ GDR scientists wishing to attend meetings did not receive their TTDs either. The UK Government, led by the Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, was particularly rigorous in implementing the ban and these developments troubled IUPAP officials exactly because the Union had recently welcomed a GDR national committee as a new member. Bhabha and Fleury understood the gravity of the situation when, in July 1962, no GDR physicist could attend the IUPAP-sponsored Conference on Semi-Conductors organized in Exeter (UK).²⁶

The ban divided NATO too. The Danish representative in its Political Committee argued that the absence of East Germans at a scientific symposium in Copenhagen organized at the same time of the Exeter conference had produced “strong criticism, even in the most conservative press” of his country.²⁷ Moreover, there was disquiet about the possibility of retaliatory measures applied to the forthcoming physics conferences in Eastern Europe, such as the one due take place in East Berlin in summer 1963.²⁸ In the UK, a Labour Party member of parliament complained in the House of Lords that East German scientists were prohibited from traveling to the forthcoming London congress of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) (IUPAP’s sister union for chemistry). Wayland Young (Lord Kennet) also recalled that ICSU now intended to approach UNESCO, since the ban had “given rise to such disquiet in international circles.”²⁹ The UK Minister of State for Foreign Affairs deflected his political opponents’ criticism by appealing to the NATO directive.³⁰

At this point IUPAP officials began to view the alliance not only as bringing exchanges in the physical sciences in line with Cold War alliances, but also as preventing these exchanges outright. Indeed, the travel ban soon became the chief item in Bhabha’s own agenda as the new IUPAP President.³¹ Moreover, the GDR representative vibrantly protested with him and Fleury about the ban, arguing against Union-sponsored meetings in countries that disqualified the East Germans. So, when in January 1963 the IUPAP Executive Committee met at Bhabha’s institute in Bombay, the travel restrictions featured as a prioritized agenda item, and one that, unsurprisingly, led to a “lengthy discussion.”³² A comprehensive note summed up the committee’s deliberations. Bhabha agreed to write directly to the NATO Assistant Secretary General for Scientific Affairs asking him to make representations in the alliance’s political forum against the ban. Meanwhile Fleury informed the ICSU Executive Secretary, André E. Decae.³³

Bhabha’s letter spurred the ICSU officials into action. Its President, the Swedish embryologist Sven Hörstadius (University of Uppsala), first congratulated Bhabha for his initiative, and then went on to recall Bhabha’s letter in the council’s statement against the ban. By then the President, together with Decae, had already agreed to write to the science academies of ATO countries so that they could lobby against their governments’ restrictions. The letter was also forwarded to British, French, and West German authorities through their embassies in Stockholm.³⁴ It clearly stated that “protests have been made on several occasions both by scientific bodies and by such eminent personalities as Professor Bhabha who … recently put forward a plea … to facilitate the obtaining of visas.”³⁵

For reasons explained in the conclusions, we do not know the content of Bhabha’s letter. What we know instead is that US physicist William P. Allis, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor appointed as NATO Assistant Secretary General for science Affairs in 1962, did little to address Bhabha’s concerns. Internationally renowned for his work in applied physics as a former member of the MIT Radiation Laboratory, Allis had since played a prominent role in the American Physical Society (and was therefore familiar with IUPAP too). By the time NATO employed him, the alliance’s science program had developed, now comprising sixty-seven ASIs completed, about one thousand fellowships awarded, and over one hundred cooperative scientific projects already finished or under way.³⁶

Notwithstanding these achievements, criticism within the alliance was mounting, especially as French and British representatives contended that the scheme duplicated studies developed within the alliance’s military research laboratories.³⁷ Partly because of this criticism, but also to conform to his government’s stance, Allis never replied to Bhabha. In April, Fleury took on the responsibility of contacting directly Allis’ office, especially given that he had previously acted as an evaluator in the selection of research projects. He thus wrote to the NATO Division of Scientific Affairs and succeeded in arranging a meeting with Allis and Hooper.³⁸

As Fleury wrote to Bhabha after the meeting, removal of the ban continued to be lettre morte at the alliance’s headquarters. He was tactful enough with the two NATO officials, repeatedly stressing that the case concerned physicists in the zone soviétique allemande, hence being of importance to international scientific cooperation rather than to the internal affairs of an unrecognized country like the GDR. But Allis and Hooper did not commit to anything, and Bhabha eventually learnt from Fleury that “as things stand … we will not get any progress through our NATO channels [translation mine].”³⁹

Exactly at that time, however, a new proposal was tabled. Since the representatives of Netherlands, Norway, and Denmark at NATO had been vocal against the travel ban, in the spring 1963 the ATO powers proposed a trial relaxation. GDR scientists would be allowed to travel, but only if they agreed to join an “all-German” delegation (hence comprising West Germans too). The US National Academy of Sciences representative, nuclear physicist Robert E. Bacher, confirmed that the academy was working hard on the proposal shaping all-German teams during the ICSU Bureau meeting of March 1963.⁴⁰

But due to this detail in the proposal’s design, the provisions had limited success. East German scientists received permits to travel to Berkeley (California) for the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) conference of August 1963.⁴¹ But, as Decae wrote to Fleury, the disagreement between the two German academies had intensified making “difficult to propose this solution as a fix to all the troubles we are currently going through [French in the original, my translation].”⁴²

Indeed, the East German Academy of Sciences complained about the IUGG meeting, so that eight GDR scientists attempted to gain admission outside an all-German delegation. Nine more GDR scientists hoped to attend the International Union of Crystallography congress, but their country’s authorities refused exit permits, denouncing the all-German provisions as discriminatory.⁴³ In July 1963, the President of the East German Academy of Sciences informed Hörstadius that the academy discouraged its members be part of an all-German delegation.⁴⁴ The International Genetics Conference (The Hague, Netherlands) confirmed the NATO solution to be short-lived, as no all-German delegation could be assembled.⁴⁵

By September 1963, with the 11th IUPAP General Assembly in Warsaw (Poland) approaching, the ban was still pretty much in the frame. Bhabha and Fleury had to work hard to make sure that participants could travel, especially given that Eastern European authorities began to refuse visas to West German physicists.⁴⁶ In Poland, the IUPAP General Assembly reiterated the ban condemnation made at the previous Executive Committee meeting. It acknowledged that “free travel possibilities of all scientists for the participation in international scientific conferences form an indispensable basis for successful international co-operation,” and deliberated that the restrictions should be removed immediately. Moreover, as stated in the minutes of the IUPAP General Assembly, ICSU’s national committees were about to take “appropriate steps with their respective governments for arranging facilities for granting exit and entry visas to all scientists attending international scientific conferences.”⁴⁷

In November 1963, the 10th ICSU General Assembly followed up on these deliberations by approving the Vienna Resolution on Free Circulation of Scientists. Decae and Hörstadius had prepared the it carefully by seeking to circumvent an “unpleasant row” on the resolution between opposite factions.⁴⁸ The officers thus suggested setting up a small working group to deliberate on these matters. Drawing on the 1958 declaration of political non-discrimination, the group eventually resolved that the council should “take all measures within its powers” to ensure the participation of scientists and set up an executive committee to operate accordingly, hence fully embracing the free circulation principle.⁴⁹ While especially Bhabha, but also Fleury, contributed to set this principle in the agenda of both IUPAP and ICSU, they were about to leave this campaigning to their successors. In that year, the French Néel replaced the Indian physicist in the routine rotation of IUPAP Presidents, while Fleury left the IUPAP Secretariat in the hands of the Briton C. C. (Clifford Charles) Butler.⁵⁰

Meanwhile the NATO Science Committee did not even debate the travel ban once, as US officials succeeded in making sure that its involvement in these matters be prevented. In September 1963, the Foreign Secretary of the National Academy of Sciences, Harrison Brown, consulted with the US ambassador at NATO, Thomas Finletter, and its representative on the Science Committee, Isidor Isaac Rabi. They agreed to avoid bringing “the matter of TTD up before the Science Committee” and alerted Allis accordingly.⁵¹ Thus, not only was Allis non-committal with Fleury, but ready to castrate efforts to debate the travel ban at Science Committee meetings. Indeed, he pounced on the Danish representative, the physicist Henning Højgaard Jensen, when he attempted to raise the issue at the meeting of October 28, 1963, a month after the Warsaw IUPAP conference. Jensen urged Allis to “press for a relaxation of the present regulations, with the view of allowing free scientific exchange.” Yet, Allis dismissed his remarks, prevented other representatives from joining the discussion, and claimed that the issue had too “high political content” to be debated at committee meetings. He did not even set it as an agenda item for the next one.⁵²

Jensen had presented the issue speaking in his personal capacity, but his plea anticipated that of the Danish ambassador at the North Atlantic Council, and Erik Schram-Nielsen spoke as government representative. The diplomat recalled the problematic consequences of the ban in his country, and noted with regret that the Bertolt Brecht theatrical company had not entered Denmark to stage the recently defunct playwright’s last piece. He also explained that the ban had had consequences for illustrious scientists too. The world-renowned East German physicist Gustav Hertz could not travel to Copenhagen to deliver the Helmholtz medal to Niels Bohr’s wife. “Taking into consideration Professor Hertz” international standing and the purpose of his visit to Copenhagen,” Schram-Nielsen pointed out “Danish scientists have reacted sharply to this refusal.”⁵³

The Danish statement, which the NATO Secretary General Dirk Stikker judged “very persuasive,” shaped a more visible opposition to the travel restrictions. Stikker thus arranged a follow-up debate for the council’s meeting of November 6, 1963. On that day the German ambassador Wilhelm G. Grewe conceded that the rigid measures had weakened the alliance politically, but insisted that restrictions to freedom of movement in the Soviet Zone associated with the building of the Wall were to blame. The measures endorsed by NATO, were “merely a rather weak and hesitating response to the brutal and inhumane measure of building a wall right through Berlin.”⁵⁴

The German ambassador now proposed the scheme which would take the controversy to an end. He suggested removing the “all-German” principle, but at the same time, he was firm that “the ‘so-called DDR’ citizen abroad should refrain from political activity (including flying the flag),” and called for the East Germans to match the ban relaxation with similar determinations in their country.⁵⁵ The Political Committee debated these measures before the council finally approved the provisions.⁵⁶ Yet the German resolution did not lead to implementing straightaway the relaxation it advocated. In 1964, GDR sportsmen and scientists received over three hundred TTDs, but refusals continued to be high in number in both France and Italy, while much lower in Britain.⁵⁷ In any case, it was not thanks to the IUPAP executives that the controversy ended, even if Fleury and Bhabha assisted in raising international attention to the travel ban. At the same time, the decision made IUPAP authorities more alert about the free circulation of scientists as an item that the Union should champion more actively. Conversely, in the decades after the travel ban controversy, the relationship with NATO went back to its non-existent past.

Given its involvement in the 1963 controversy, IUPAP officials became even more active in championing the free circulation of scientists internationally during the 1970s. This is not to say that IUPAP was alone in this campaigning. ICSU stepped up its commitment through setting up a Standing Committee on the Free Circulation of Scientists in line with the 1963 resolution elaborated by “Working Group 4.”⁵⁸ Yet IUPAP’s campaigning interjected the call for greater social responsibility coming from within the physicists’ community, and hence conferred a virtually unique political goal to the Union.

The 1970s was a decade typified by tensions in the physics community, especially after the revelations contained in the so-called Pentagon Papers that a US Government’s advisory group comprising prominent physicists, JASON, had been responsible for designing bombing strategies for the Vietnam conflict. The members of grassroot organizations now campaigned for a social agenda in the physical sciences, while becoming more alert to instances of discrimination in scientific societies. All these issues called for greater commitment to social causes, and, in turn, many physicists framed social responsibility as an item to prioritize in national and international scientific affairs.⁵⁹

When, in the summer of 1971, the Canadian physicist Larkin Kerwin succeeded Butler as IUPAP Secretary General, he thus more vibrantly endorsed the campaign on the free circulation of scientists to display this as the chief item of a social responsibility agenda for the Union. Hence, not only did his activism give furtherance to Bhabha’s and Fleury’s commitment of the early 1960s, but chimed with the growing demand for social engagement.⁶⁰

Kerwin endorsed and propelled the free circulation advocacy also to shield IUPAP from accusations regarding racial discrimination following a 1971 ICSU investigation on scientific unions. Just before resigning, Kerwin’s predecessor had thus received a questionnaire about the Union’s stance and records. South Africa’s membership to IUPAP now emerged as a sticky issue given its apartheid legislation, even if Butler was quick to point out that no South African delegate had attended the last IUPAP General Assembly.⁶¹ A few weeks later, the recently appointed Kerwin more vocally replied to the ICSU Secretary General recalling that the championing of free circulation of scientists was the chief evidence of the Union’s non-discriminatory approach. Indeed, not only had scientists been able to freely attend scientific meetings, but since the post-war years IUPAP had accepted membership of academies from capitalist and communist countries alike. There was enough evidence that the Union operated in line with the ICSU resolutions on free circulation and non-discrimination.⁶²

Kerwin also wrote about the campaign in the official magazine of the American Physical Society, Physics Today in a time when, exactly because of the JASON controversy, its editorial board had attempted to give resonance to cases of social engagement. His article displayed IUPAP’s role in championing the free circulation of scientists in a divided world, and the challenges that lay ahead in defending this stance. He focused especially on what he defined as “harassment” cases, when there was not an explicit ban, but the release of visas was delayed long enough to prevent a physicist from travelling.⁶³

Over the decade, there were more moments on tension when flagging up this non-discriminatory approach proved important for IUPAP executives. In 1974, the Yom Kippur war led UNESCO to condemning Israel, and, in retaliation, a group of physicists with Israeli connections boycotted meetings at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) of Trieste.⁶⁴ In the same year, the IUPAP General Assembly deliberated new measures on the free movement of scientists dictating that the organizers of union-funded meetings ought to provide written reassurance that refusal to grant a visa would lead to suspending sponsorship. IUPAP would no longer “sponsor a conference if visas are refused to travel to it purely on grounds of nationality or citizenship.”⁶⁵

By 1975, Kerwin recalled at the IUPAP General Assembly that these impediments included the “denial of entrance and exit visas, restriction of travel, the delivery of visas after the beginning of conferences, the lateness of visa applications, [and] boycotts.”⁶⁶ From then onward IUPAP took care of more cases, including the persecution of physicists in Argentina and Bangladesh opposing their countries’ regimes following military takeovers. Kerwin collected the correspondence regarding these cases in separate archive folders.⁶⁷ The growing commitment to the free circulation of scientists also helped the Union to thrive, especially as evidence of the Union’s non-discriminatory approach persuaded UNESCO to provide more funding for physics symposia. With thirty-eight countries as members and seventeen commissions, the Union now covered more aspects of the physical sciences than ever before.⁶⁸

In contrast with IUPAP, NATO could not deflect the criticism of physicists calling for greater social responsibility. Those targeting the secret US advisory group JASON now viewed NATO as complicit, especially as the alliance invited some of group’s members to international meetings in Europe during the summer of 1972. The Italian Physical Society even succumbed to the protesters’ request that from that year the alliance no longer financed the Varenna summer school. The militants also disrupted a NATO-sponsored meeting organized at the ICTP of Trieste, and their criticism made European allies (especially France and Britain) wary about increasing the budget for the alliance’s science program. In turn, this made NATO science schemes less relevant internationally, especially as inflation hit at the real value of endowments.⁶⁹

The divergent paths and fortunes of NATO and IUPAP returned their relationship to the state of non-existence typifying the period before 1963. Scientists who displayed ignorance of their lack of dialog were promptly reminded. For instance, in 1979 a University of Salford (UK) biochemist informed IUPAP that NATO had just approved funding an ASI on time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy. Robert Cundall dared asking Kerwin extra funds, and the IUPAP official replied coldly, recalling that “the Union has never had the resources to support [NATO] summer schools and study institutes [emphasis mine].”⁷⁰

Profligacy aside, the two organizations increasingly divided over giving voice to what concerned the physicists they funded, especially with regards to the social and political implications of atomic energy and nuclear weapons. For instance, when in 1977 the Danish representative at the Science Committee called attention to “the approaching crisis of science,” citing nuclear power as an example, the US representative (and JASON member) William Nierenberg belittled his pledge as aligned to the stances of “vociferous minority.”⁷¹ In contrast, while IUPAP never officially endorsed nuclear disarmament, organizations and individuals affiliated to the Union could voice their concerns at its meetings, as they did during the 1983 crisis that followed the deployment of Pershing II and Cruise missiles in Europe.⁷² GDR physicists prepared a resolution for the IUPAP assembly calling upon “colleagues in other countries actively to make a stand against the deployment …, and to do everything in their power in order to banish completely nuclear weapons from Europe.”⁷³ The Soviet Academy of Sciences transmitted a similar appeal: “NATO decision to deploy medium range missiles … caused particular alarm …. Scientists express their confidence that collective wisdom and united will of peoples are capable to stop the sliding of the world towards the Third World War.”⁷⁴ The crisis also led to the ICSU statement “Scientists and Peace.”⁷⁵ Unsurprisingly, appeals of this kind did not feature in the context of NATO ASIs.

Physicists previously affiliated with IUPAP and NATO divided over these issues too. The former IUPAP President Edoardo Amaldi now campaigned for nuclear arms control through the disarmament organization Pugwash.⁷⁶ By contrast, in the early 1980s the (NATO-endowed) President of the European Physical Society Antonino Zichichi, busied himself with organizing (together with the JASON member Edward Teller) the International Seminars on Nuclear War in Erice (Sicily). Teller and Zichichi advocated, in line with NATO’s stance, the deployment of more advanced technological systems, including the infamous Strategic Defense Initiative.⁷⁷ The opposite standpoints of Amaldi and Zichichi further amplified the already existing distance between IUPAP and NATO during the final years of the Cold War.

This article has explored, and attempted to explain, the lack of interactions between NATO and IUPAP resulting from diverging science diplomacy approaches. IUPAP’s efforts to promote physics derived primarily from a search for international coordination sidestepping political divides. Instead, NATO invested in the promotion of physics as a way to strengthen the alliance politically, and to increase political homogeneity in international scientific exchanges. These diverging sponsorship strategies led to schemes with similar disciplinary goals but diametrically opposite in their ambitions.

If we accept that international scientific exchanges make space for the development of parallel diplomacy tracks in international relations, then this article makes plain to see that the two organizations operated very differently as diplomatic agents. While initially propagandized as a-political, IUPAP’s quest for international coordination in physics eventually produced a clear diplomacy ambition not just sidestepping, but to also attempting to remove Cold War divides in the physical sciences. In particular, it stimulated the campaigning on the free movement of scientists as a long-term political goal for the Union to champion along with ICSU. The 1963 travel ban controversy framed this issue as one of contingence, primarily aiming to promote participation in the meetings taking place at the time, as shown especially by Fleury’s negotiations with Allis and Hooper. Over the years, however, this advocacy placed IUPAP more firmly in the international affairs domain, allowing its officials in general, and Kerwin more specifically, to use the campaigning to spearhead the union’s non-discriminatory approach and its social responsibility agenda. Hence, what initially appeared as a pragmatic request of significance to physicists alone, eventually influenced the administration of scientific (and even state) relations in powerful ways, especially when the free circulation principle went against the challenges that authoritarian regimes posed to the movement of scientists across borders.

By contrast, NATO instrumentalized the promotion of physics from the onset, as the diplomacy gains deriving from such an investment in the realm of its intergovernmental relations persuaded its executives to launch a sponsorship program. Hence, the diplomatic agenda of such an investment coincided with the intention of improving the synergies between its member states. Interestingly the fate of the program was also decided by its diplomacy returns. When, especially due to the internal and external criticism of NATO’s sponsorship, it did not bear the expected political fruits in alliance relations, and lacked the funding needed through refusals to increase its budget, its visibility and international appeal contracted considerably.

To sum up, the parallel diplomacy tracks that IUPAP and NATO initiatives instigated never intersected one another, aside from when the 1963 travel ban controversy forced their officials to confront each other for the first and only time in Cold War history. Indeed one might argue that the event contributed to making their diplomacy tracks even more divergent. The 1963 controversy made IUPAP officials aware of the importance of championing the free circulation of scientists. It contingently revealed the NATO limitations in the promotion of physics (and science more generally) in that it could only reach out politically homogeneous cohorts hence stifling scientific exchanges with a broader participation. More could actually be uncovered on these opposite science diplomacy trajectories, but unfortunately some of the key pieces of correspondence, and especially Bhabha’s letter, are no longer available to allow us to probe further into. In 1977, Kerwin sent IUPAP archival documents to the University of Montreal, where a study on these holdings revealed its significance. Sadly, while described as “magnificent,” Bhabha’s letter appears to have since then vanished.⁷⁸

Therefore, we can only surmise the importance of this piece of correspondence. Bhabha’s decision to write directly to the NATO science adviser represented the first moment when an IUPAP official acknowledged the existence of NATO’s own science set up. This action reversed IUPAP’s previous stance, in that the organization had that far deliberately not commented on NATO science to avoid discussing its controversial ambition to align scientific exchanges to Cold War alliances. By agreeing to write an open letter to its science adviser, Bhabha also tested the alliance’s commitment to international scientific collaboration. In other words, he must have implicitly alluded to a contradiction between applying travel restrictions to the free circulation of scientists and, at the same time, promoting international scientific exchanges. This paper also shows that the letter had great resonance across various domains in the international science community energizing ICSU’s action and paving the way to the championing of the free circulation principle that the council enacted through the setting up of a committee devoted to this issue.

To sum up, the letter, and the later exchanges that Fleury instigated, played a constitutive role in the evolution of IUPAP as a science diplomacy organization, and, likely, a decisive role in the trajectory of NATO science too. But these exchanges are also the only instances of engagement between IUPAP and NATO that have been officially recorded. Interestingly, only the end of the Cold War has materialized as an opportunity for more. Correspondence of the American Physical Society shows that by 1998, with the Cold War then ended, new procedures enabled it to transfer NATO grants to work with IUPAP.⁷⁹ Moreover, a IUPAP Physics at 2000 report widely publicized a recent project including experiments carried out at NATO’s Undersea Research Centre of La Spezia to advance further acoustics studies sponsored by the relevant IUPAP commission.⁸⁰ These collaborations have happened too recently to allow a comment on their significance. Yet, in concluding this article, it is appropriate to stress the dramatic transitions marked by the end of the Soviet Union, and the reconfiguration of NATO as a transnational organization extending beyond Western Europe. Surely, these changes have set an opportunity for collaboration that had never existed before. In other words, they have removed the deliberate silence between the two organizations that—with one notable exception—had prevented them from interacting for more than thirty years.

The author of this chapter wishes to acknowledge and thank Nicholas Nguyen of the NATO Archive for assistance in retrieving the relevant documentation examined in the article.