| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
International Affairs: The Soviet Union and the United States joined hands to establish the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) at the height of the Cold War, a geopolitical standoff. What prompted the two superpowers during the era of confrontation to start an organization of this sort?
Prof. Detlof von Winterfeldt: It started with a conversation between President Johnson and Premier Kosygin in the United States; it was connected to a meeting they had at the UN at that time. One of the topics they discussed was essentially something you may consider science diplomacy, or diplomacy through science. And the idea was born that an international institute founded primarily by the Soviet Union and the United States and their respective allies would be a good vehicle to study problems of joint interest, problems of the industrialized countries that we shared, like pollution and energy. And also behind that, I believe, was the aspect that it would be good for both blocs if scientists could meet unencumbered with ideological, political issues and they could meet to exchange ideas, for a mathematician is a mathematician whether he is a communist mathematician or a capitalist mathematician. So soon after that meeting between Johnson and Kosygin, their advisers, and especially McGeorge Bundy of the United States and Dzhermen Gvishiani of the Soviet Union were the main men who moved this forward. And in 1972, IIASA was born, and Austria provided it with a castle, and we pay only a nominal fee for the castle, less than one euro a year. And so, we've been there since 1972, and the emphasis of research has shifted somewhat.
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