Hard Problems, Soft Answers: Impact of Epistemic Communities on U.S.-Russian Nuclear Cooperation

Despite the unpredictable situation of the post-Cold War era, the United States and Russia pursued three types of cooperative programs related to nuclear nonproliferation and arms control in the 1990s. Although they showed promise, many of these initiatives eventually faltered. Their failures have often been attributed to high-level politics and changing national interests. Research has focused less, however, on where the spirit of cooperation originated. This study looks at the role of the network of scientists and strategists--labeled by Haas (1992, 2) and Adler (1992, 101) as an "epistemic community"--in supporting cooperative programs. Focusing on the development of scientist engagement programs and lab-to-lab initiatives, the evidence indicates that the transnational epistemic community defined early national interests and points for cooperation during the chaotic time following the dissolution of the USSR, but its influence was later tempered by the Russian scientists' loss of resources and bureaucratic interests that exacerbated existing divisions in the community. The findings confirm Haas' argument that epistemic communities are most effective during chaotic periods (described by Kingdon (1984, 166) as "policy windows"). In this case, transnational contacts made prior to the end of the Cold War were one of the biggest factors in the programs' initial successes.