CHAPTER 20.  Case Study C -- Conference on International Economic Cooperation (CIEC), Paris 1975-7
 

"When you fall into a man's conversation, the first thing you should consider is, whether he has a greater inclination to hear you, or that you should hear him."
Sir Richard Steele

Setting
Economic Cooperation (CIEC)7 convened at the International Conference Center in Paris December 16-19, 1975, at the invitation of the President of France ValÈry Giscard d'Estaing.  (The Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries [OPEC] had greatly increased the price of oil in 1973.)  Minister-level officials from twenty-seven countries, including U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, attended and adopted compromises for CIEC's program that had been worked out at two preparatory conferences (prepcons) April 7-15 and October 13-16.  Work for economic development was included in the plan adopted, and, largely at the initiative of the LDCs, it came to encompass technology transfer, industrialization policy and related infrastructure improvements.  Science thus became a significant issue at CIEC.8

The first prepcon had considered a broader French agenda that was called in abbreviated form "producers-consumers issues."  The United States, EU Members and Japan at that first conference resisted consideration of nonenergy items.  Otherwise, they thought, the conference as proposed by France could become another UN-type meeting with a wide-ranging and unproductive agenda, yet no hope of progress or agreement among developed and undeveloped countries.  Prepcon I broke off without progress.

Secretary Kissinger reiterated at Paris in December the proposals he had made at the seventh special session of the UN general assembly in September in the interest of overcoming the April prepcon I deadlock, and which indeed he had achieved at prepcon II in October.  These proposals were rather general, pointing toward economic security and growth, access to capital markets and technology, better trade conditions and attention to the plight of the poorest LDCs.

Prepcon II had, of course, already decided on the outcome of the ministerial meeting, or else the meeting never would have been held.  As foreordained, ministers called for:
 

• energy,
• raw materials,
• development and
• financial affairs;

To start with, the four commissions would convene again in Paris for periods up to a week in March, April, June and July, and later in the year as arranged.

Issues
Focus on science and technology was in the development commission.  The declaration accompanying the ministerial communiqué said rather ponderously and obviously:

It is understood that the Commission on Development will  take into account the progress in other international forums and will be entrusted with facilitating the establishment or reinforcement, as the case may be, of arrangements for accelerating the development of developing countries, on the basis of close cooperation.11

The Commission on Development should consider trade (access to markets for products of developing countries, etc.); accelerated industrialization; transfer of technology; development of agriculture; development of infrastructure; problems of supply of food and fertilizers (special attention to devising measures for ensuring adequate supplies of food and fertilizers at reasonable prices to developing countries); special and urgent attention to the question of the grave difficulties of MSACs [most severely affected countries] created by the current economic situation; and the need to increase present assistance to meet their pressing requirements.

The overlap between this G-18 paper and the list of subjects proposed by the United States in October for the development commission was not great.  The United States suggested addressing:
 

On S&T issues the United States was at an instant political although not substantive disadvantage.  Its agenda had little to do with that of the LDCs'.  Algeria was an aggressive co-chairman of the development commission for the LDCs.  The EU as the other co-chairman was prone to moving in ten directions at once with little net motion, thus reaching any consensus slowly.  The United States took co-chairmanship of the energy commission, with Saudi Arabia; this was surely the most important commission post, the key to CIEC.  But that didn't help the U.S. delegation to the development commission with its S&T issues.13

United States Effort
The United States government mounted a major effort in CIEC,  realizing that the more controlled agenda and limited membership of CIEC could allow progress that UN fora like the general assembly, UNCTAD and UNIDO precluded.  The effort's center was in the State Department, in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs (EB), which at that time could avail itself of a rich selection of economic officers coincidentally on assignment to Washington.  Stephen Bosworth, later ambassador to the Philippines, took overall control, assisted primarily by colleagues from EB and the Treasury Department.

The CIEC was so novel and fluid that the United States chose a rare course: to send a large, fairly high-level delegation abroad to the near-monthly meetings of the CIEC commissions so that delegation members could negotiate and decide new and fast-developing issues on the spot.  They would not necessarily require recourse to the telegram home followed by the interagency meeting to approve or disapprove what the delegation thought should or could be done.  The delegation roster changed from meeting to meeting, and even then didn't always list accurately everyone who took part.  The official list of November 16, 1976, shows thirty-one members on the United States delegation, twenty-six from Washington and five from the U.S. Mission to the OECD in Paris.  The April 26, 1977, list shows an attrition of only three: there were twenty-eight on the delegation, including five from the Paris OECD Mission.  For these two meetings the delegate distribution is instructive to anyone who observes the ebb and flow of executive power, of executive effort, of economics influence, of foreign affairs clout.  From Washington there came agency representatives14 as follows:
 
 

	November 1976	April 1977
State	11 members	11 members
Treasury	5	5
White House	3	1
Commerce	2	1
AID	2	2
Agriculture	1	1
Federal Energy Admin.	1	1
Federal Reserve	1	1
TOTAL	26	23

A paper the U.S. delegation submitted on what was required of both sides in technology transfer failed to impress the Algerians and their friends in the Group of Nineteen who had presented their own version of what technology transfer meant to them three days earlier on April 23.  Their paper neither helped advance the general debate nor bridge differences between the United States and LDCs.  It contained a familiar list of questionable or unacceptable demands for
 

There was very little in common between the two papers.  Given, the U.S. paper was more didactic than prescriptive, hardly an attractive opening negotiating position.  But what the LDC paper demanded was so unyielding, so unreconstructed and so unreasonable as to be outside the reasonable bounds of negotiation possibility.

That is the way the LDCs wanted it.  They preferred to score in the energy commission, and they held hostage the negotiations in the other three commissions.

In July 1976 "senior officials" met in Paris for CIEC and reviewed scant progress with the customary polite language and called for "action-oriented" work in the second half of the year.  These officials directed the commissions to get on with their work for a week in September, a week in October and a week in November.  The senior officials still optimistically anticipated a meeting at ministerial level in December to wind up CIEC.

International organizations almost always have secretariats, and CIEC was no exception.  Secretariats arrange the meetings, pass out the writing paper and bottled water and distribute anything any delegation writes down, in all appropriate languages.  In many organizations the secretariat prevails in what is supposed to be a discourse, a negotiation among sovereign states, guided by the secretariat but not dominated by it.  These "sovereign" states often vacate their responsibilities to the tireless, faceless and self-serving bureaucrats by their preoccupation, sloth and negligence.  Fortunately, the temporary CIEC secretariat had not time enough to prevail or even to affect adversely the outcome of the conference.

It was the task of the chief of the U.S. delegation to the development commission, Bob Ryan, to rally State Department expertise, or at least opinions, on brain drain, technology transfer, R&D quotas and industrial policy.  All the dialogue developed slowly.  By October the United States contributed another paper, this time less pedantic and actually listing its positions on technology transfer.  The key subitem it addressed as number ii was:
 Strengthening the ability of developing countries to select,  adapt, develop and apply technology, including its  institutional aspects and training as well as promotion of  developing countries' exports of technology.
This could have been useful.  The United States favored LDCs' setting national S&T policies but rejected any new international bureaucracy to regulate commercial terms and conditions.

Concerning institutions, an unprecedented number of United States proposals developed in part at the September 1975 seventh special session of the UN general assembly and in 1976 at the Organization of American States lay more or less on the table.  (The S&T proposals that the United States put forward between 1974 and 1977, essentially without result, are discussed in more detail elsewhere in this text: Chapters 11-14, Chapter 21 and Appendix B.)  The U.S. delegation to the CIEC development commission confidently reloaded some of these initiatives into its negotiating cannon and fired them in a coordinated salvo at the G-19:
 

The United States rejected the specific R&D targets proposed by LDCs, namely that developed countries should commit 0.05 percent of their GNP to research and development relevant to LDC problems.  While not rejecting the principle (and the amount was certainly small), it rightly questioned how one could measure relevance of most research to LDC problems since the relevance of basic research becomes apparent only after it has been performed.

Recognizing the adverse effects of the brain drain on LDCs, the United States rightly favored offering more training in the LDCs and adopting immigration policies that promoted the return of trained workers to their homes in LDCs.  The U.S. delegation noted, however, that the brain drain was more a symptom of the less-developed state of a country, not a cause.

The LDCs were wary of the U.S. Technology Corps initiative, viewing it as a possibility for exploitation by the private sector.  They did not reject it outright, however.  In view of the eventual outcome of the 1979 UN Conference on Science and Technology for Development (UNCSTD-Chapter 14), the United States at CIEC in 1976 exaggerated the likely positive role of the conference in promoting economic development in LDCs and the contribution that the United States would make to the conference.

The G-19 position on the U.S. information center initiative sums up effectively their view of the whole S&T dialogue at CIEC:

The United States Government concept of the Center is a  technical one; the G-19 and G-77 (the LDCs) view is largely  political.

Nevertheless, without a doubt science and technology were at the heart of the real issue of technology transfer, training and information exchange.  Most economists would agree that infusions of capital for development are of little use if there is no technical base, including a technical information base.  Yet in the CIEC development commission LDC representatives repeatedly rejected suggestions for technical solutions in their pursuit of political and bureaucratic advantage.  This stance frustrated the American delegates personally as well as professionally.

Overall one could characterize delegations to the CIEC as follows:
 

In a major coordinated effort, the United States, Japan and the EU (then the EC) managed to put out a paper entitled "Cooperation on Industrialization and Transfer of Technology" on October 22, 1976, a monument to negotiating patience of the co-authors but of little subsequent help in the dialogue.  A week later progress remained so meager on all commissions that CIEC formed contact groups on key issues, including industry and technology transfer, to stimulate progress.  The contact groups were to explore for common ground and negotiating potential in sticky areas like those, plus development aid, access to capital markets, food and agriculture and north-south trade.15

Impasse
A key concept of CIEC was to get north-south issues into a forum more workable than the UN.  Nevertheless, a CIEC co-chairman reported the lack of progress at the conference first to the UN economic committee and then to a closed G-77 caucus16 on election day in the United States (November 6, 1976).  The United Nations followed the results in Paris very closely and CIEC was never free of the rhetoric of this or that UN declaration, this or that special UN conference (like UNIDO II at Lima in 1975), this or that special session of the UN general assembly or even particular meetings of the general assembly.  In the end the issues at CIEC were marginally more manageable than at the United Nations only because CIEC was smaller.  The developed countries originally brought to the conference a limited flexibility they wished to exercise outside of the paralytic UN atmosphere.  The LDCs almost to a country pursued with the same grim determination, political dedication and illogical blindness the political nonstarters of the previous ten years.  Using this tactic they missed an opportunity for real progress.  United States foreign policy under Kissinger was swinging in their favor as the series of Kissinger initiatives (many emphasizing science and technology) clearly showed.

United States delegates at CIEC were incredulous that the key G-19 representatives preferred to debate along ideological or political lines instead of what the United States thought of as lines "logical" or "scientific."  Promising or even proved ways to bring about development, admittedly few in number and contested in some countries under certain conditions, held no interest for them; what had worked in Korea had no interest for Algeria; studies on the efficacy of access to capital vs infrastructure development enraged them.  Political will was the only goal worth seeking.  Developed countries' political will.

The LDCs seemed to believe that a change in the will of the government of the developed countries was all that was necessary to achieve development of the LDCs.  But even if the LDCs had gotten every developed-country reform they requested, development would still have eluded them because their view of development economics was so questionable, their infrastructure so inadequate.  Yet G-19 leaders for the most part refused to discuss substantive issues.

For the sake of political will, the LDCs paused in their confrontation in Paris when Jimmy Carter was elected U.S. president November 6, 1976.  CIEC was originally scheduled to end in December 1976, one year after it began.  CIEC was extended to see if the "political will" of the new Carter administration exceeded that of the outgoing Ford administration.

It didn't.  Marathon negotiating sessions at CIEC in November produced little of significance, certainly nothing in the S&T area.  They yielded for the commission's report of November 26 only texts of "agreement" on issues of industrialization and technology transfer shot through with bracketed sections of wording unacceptable to one side or the other.  The G-8 could not accept the G-19 "target" of assuring that the LDCs' share of world industrial production should reach 25 percent by the year 2000, for example.

Acceptance was no wider for technology transfer: there was no agreement on patents; no agreement on a binding code of conduct for developed-country firms, on access to technology; no agreement on  R&D targets, information policy, brain drain and other issues.  Most innovative and least acceptable of the LDC proposals was that compensation be paid them by the developed countries for the drain of "brains," or educated persons, from their countries.

While the U.S. government position on most of these issues tends to be more conservative under Republican administrations, there was nevertheless an "opening" on many of them under the Nixon and Ford administrations, engineered largely by Henry Kissinger.  At CIEC (and at the United Nations, the OAS and elsewhere) the limited but imaginative initiatives made by the United States went largely unanswered as LDC members pursued the political rather than the realistic millennium.  President Carter changed the U.S. stance but little, as was foreseeable.  To his administration is attributed the statement that it no longer made sense to tax the poor people in rich countries for the benefit of the rich people in poor countries.

Four years later, long after CIEC, President Reagan actually revived some of the initiatives of the seventies but with no results.

United States position summaries and interventions at final meetings in Paris in March 1977 indicate that the differences between G-8 and G-19 were slightly refined and that suitably vague wording that encompassed both sides' positions was adopted.  Concurrent discussion of some issues in the United Nations -- R&D targets, for example, in the Committee for Science and Technology for Development and UNESCO -- was an excuse for postponing substantive discussion and action at CIEC.  This approach, of course, was contrary to the purpose of CIEC.  Since the atmosphere at CIEC hardly became one of positive cooperation, the United States and other developed countries also fell back on decisions reached at earlier UN conferences, saying, in effect, this far again here but no farther.  For example, at UNCTAD IV the United States had agreed to consider refraining from adoption of policies that might promote the brain drain and encouraging qualified personnel to remain in LDCs.  But when LDCs raised again the issue of compensation by developed countries, the CIEC dialogue not only failed to advance, it slipped back to the level and time of UNIDO II at Lima in 1975 and UNCTAD IV at Nairobi in 1976.

The United States has never considered UNIDO worth much attention because even the hope of progress often appeared to be stymied in the double grip of its LDC members and its secretariat.  UNCTAD offered the possibility of progress.  With CIEC still underway Secretary Kissinger himself attended UNCTAD IV.  The United States fought off compensation for the brain drain and other LDC proposals, but it did repeat its new proposals actually designed to be helpful in economic development.  These included the International Industrialization Institute and the International Energy Institute proposed at CIEC (see above), calls for increased use of institutional networks and satellite technology, organization of information technology, improved training, adoption of voluntary guidelines for technology transfer and comprehensive plans for the 1979 UN Conference on Science and Technology for Development (see also Chapter 14).17

By April 1977 G-8 members had reached positions reflecting the common positions of nearly all of them on each issue.  Small differences existed: Sweden, for example, had never opposed R&D targets.  Ever optimistic and busy the U.S. side tried again to make progress.  An internal memo of April 13 expressed belief that the U.S. positions could be "improved," i.e., made more acceptable to the G-19, on six of the eleven technology transfer issues under discussion, namely
 

The memo held out no hope for progress on the remaining five issues, often deadlocked by previous LDC and developed country positions in UN fora.  These stalled issues were
 

The six issues where progress seemed possible were actually the most "scientific" on the development commission's agenda.  More laden with ideological baggage and precedent, the issues like access, patents and code of conduct (binding on developed-country exporting firms) needed more than science and logic to break the impasse.  The description of this situation was a story often told: countries can agree on science and technology many times when on nothing else.  Had both sides wished to bring CIEC in part to a positive conclusion they could have concentrated on these S&T issues and other tractable issues in the other commissions and achieved an area of agreement.

The G-19, in the tradition of the larger LDC caucus, the G-77, sought political action to overcome the problems of the LDCs in the form of grants, aid, preferences, loans, debt relief, free patents, free technology, compensation for departed skilled workers and strict rules for dealing with LDCs on the most favorable terms to them.

The organization of the U.S. delegation to CIEC was informal and flexible enough so that all voices could be heard, all had a chance to influence the U.S. position.18  Delegates responsible for the peripheral issues of industrialization and technology transfer had as much to say as the gurus from Treasury or the experts from AID.  Thus science, technology and industrialization had as good a seat at the table as any other subjects.  But it didn't help.  The G-18 lost a great opportunity presented to them to make progress on some of the issues of development.  All the stars were in the right positions: the president of France had staked his country's prestige on the conference; the U.S. Secretary of State had just laid down a remarkable series of initiatives including, besides S&T proposals, an International Energy Agency at the OECD in 1974 and an International Energy Institute at CIEC.  The Ford administration in the United States had probably been more sympathetic to LDCs than they thought, while the Carter administration from 1977 on was no less sympathetic, if less so than LDCs unrealistically hoped.

Delay
The delay at CIEC due to the U.S. election, which the unrealistic LDC politicos, showing little evidence of political savvy, counted on to bring the political will that would sweep their program into the final conference resolution, was further extended as participants went into their tizzy that regularly precedes the economic summit meeting of the group of seven.  CIEC delegations from participant countries (United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan) felt that old reluctance to get out in front before their leaders met in London in May 1977.  Nonmembers of the group nursed their perpetual grievances at being left out and unconsulted.

The LDC politicos focused on the potential outcome of the Downing Street Summit to stall CIEC deliberations again.  The summit declaration predictably gave LDCs no more hope than had the change in presidents in the United States.  As CIEC approached its delayed climax at the end of May the key issues of the conference, not to mention the industrialization and S&T issues, remained unresolved if not deadlocked:
 

Conclusion
The final meeting of CIEC at ministerial level, originally scheduled for December 1976, began at the end of May 1977.  By June 3 it was all over.19  The results of the most interest here are these four anodyne paragraphs of the annex to the final communiqué:

Transfer of Technology
1. Industrial Property
The participating countries in the CIEC agree that the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property should be revised in WIPO [World Intellectual Property Organization], taking fully into account the interests of the developing countries.  This should be done along the lines agreed at UNCTAD in Resolution 88(IV) and with due consideration of the conclusions of the experts of developing countries as recommended in operative paragraph 3 of that resolution.

They further agree that developed and developing countries should cooperate fully and effectively so as to conclude as soon as possible the ongoing process for the revision of the Paris Convention.

 2. Transfer of Technology
The countries participating in CIEC reconfirm their support of UNCTAD resolutions 87(IV) and 89(IV) and agree  accordingly to take the necessary measures so as to ensure the earlyand effective implementation of these resolutions.

They support the convening of the United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development.

This was pretty thin soup after the eighteen-month effort put in by twenty-seven countries, including the United States with a delegation of thirty or more at about a dozen meetings.  Allan MacEachen, the Canadian co-chairman of CIEC, gave an artful if restrained resume of the conference on June 3, 1977.  He reviewed progress on the eleven points of concern presented by the G-19 only on May 5, 1977.  He said little if anything about the affairs of CIEC between December 1975 and April 1977.  His statement is a model of making the best of a limited situation.

For example, he said:

On over half of the eleven points pressed by developing countries, real and substantial progress is in sight.  On others, at least limited agreement has been registered.  There were disappointments other than in energy.  With respect to the problem of indebtedness and protection of purchasing power, we must record incomplete agreement.  But we have set down a good foundation for future work in this activity.

Inevitably [MacEachen wrote], more technology will have to be transferred if this industrialization process is to take place.  In this regard, important relevant resolutions were adopted months ago at Nairobi, and the participants at this conference expressed their determination to proceed quickly with their effective implementation.

United States Secretary of State Cyrus Vance attended the final meeting of CIEC for the United States and confirmed his country's commitment to the one-billion-dollar special action program for developing countries pledged at the Downing Street summit, and to the common fund.  He also proposed that CIEC talks be continued in some form.20  He postponed his return to Washington in order to attend personally meetings of the energy commission to see how the conference would turn out.  He reportedly21 sought pursuit of a more reasonable oil pricing policy in another forum, but was rebuffed until developed countries should also reconsider reducing the price of LDC industrial imports and holding up the price of their exports.

In the end the G-18 rejected a continuing energy dialogue.  CIEC ended on June 3, 1977, eighteen months after it began, with scant trace of result.  Economic Under Secretary of State Richard N. Cooper testified before Congress on CIEC's outcome22 on June 21.  He emphasized the common fund as an accomplishment and alluded to unspecified progress "on a number of secondary issues including ..technology transfer, [and] industrialization..."   Later, he cited agreement on the three "significant measures" pertaining to technology transfer already cited above: