NATURE
2 September 2008

Responses to Russia's military action in Georgia have implications for non-proliferation, space exploration, climate negotiation and the European Union's framework programme.

By Quirin Schiermeier

European Union (EU) officials met in Brussels on 1 September to review relationships with Moscow amid growing friction over Russia's conduct in Georgia. Although no sanctions were agreed, the crisis is threatening hopes that Russian science will soon emerge from its state of isolation.

For now, EU science leaders are saying that international collaborations will continue. "Breaking off our scientific relations with Russia is not something that is currently on the radar," a high-ranking European Commission official told Naturebefore the meeting. "Everything depends on the political development, but we do still hope that our partnerships in science will come undamaged through the current crisis."

The primary science and technology agreement between the EU and Russia is a short document stressing the mutual intent to work together in basic science and its development. Signed in 2000 and renewed for 2004, it is up again for renewal next year. The EC official, who did not want to be identified because decisions would be made by the council, says that the science agreement is likely to be extended.

But growing political tension could at least delay Russia joining the Seventh Framework Programme, the main pan-European research funding tool. Russia is keen to become an associated partner by 2010, the state that Israel, Switzerland and a number of other non-EU countries currently enjoy. This would allow individual scientists, research institutes and companies in Russia to compete in proposals for the €53.2-billion (US$78 billion) programme that runs from 2007 to 2013.

The Russian science ministry has signalled that it is prepared to make a large financial contribution to the programme. But the commission has not yet received a mandate from EU member states to formally take up negotiations with Russia. And policy analysts suggest that former Eastern Bloc states, such as Poland and the Baltic countries, might now baulk at approving such a mandate.

Cooperation between Russia and the United States in space is also under fresh strain.Between 2010, when the US space shuttle is due to be retired, and 2015, when its replacement is slated to be operational, NASA will have to rely on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to taxi astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

“I think we're going to enter a very difficult period.”

Since the Georgia–Russia conflict began, that imminent gap has become more prominent, says Roald Sagdeev, former director of the Russian Space Research Institute in Moscow and now a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park. "The United States has been on a collision course with Russia for quite a while," he says. "I think we're going to enter a very difficult period."

US politicians are starting to react. In recent weeks, both leading presidential candidates have signalled support for adding another shuttle flight to the list of remaining launches — although a single flight would do little to shrink the time gap. A NASA authorization bill awaiting Congressional approval also calls for more flights. Democratic contender Barack Obama has said he supports boosting NASA's budget by $2 billion, which could help close the gap. NASA is now also re-evaluating whether to fly the shuttle after 2010, in part because of a letter sent to the White House last week that was co-signed by John McCain, the Republican contender.

Keeping routes open

More immediately, congressional staff say, Congress may now delay extending a waiver to the 2000 Iran Non-Proliferation Act, which forbids dealings with countries that sell nuclear materials to Iran or North Korea. NASA has asked for the waiver this year so it can renew the contract with Russia to buy flights on Soyuz vehicles; the contract expires in 2011, and Russia needs a three-year head start for any orders. Sagdeev thinks the two nations will come to an agreement somehow: "My prediction is that Russians will keep this route open for Americans," he says. "I think NASA will also try to keep it open."

Other non-proliferation initiatives have already suffered. Congressional action on a deal promoting broader cooperation between the United States and Russia on nuclear energy — which had a doubtful future even before the Georgian conflict — is now all but impossible. The Bush administration is also reconsidering talks with Russia over the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the rules of which expire next year. Unless they are renewed in some fashion, the 2002 Moscow Treaty promising further reductions will be left without any verification protocols, says Laura Holgate, vice-president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington DC.

Siegfried Hecker, a former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, now co-director of the Stanford University Center for International Security and Co operation in California, says that a political re alignment is in order. "Clearly the two countries are going to have to re-establish some sort of an appropriate relationship with each other," he says, "and I do believe that the big questions will not be sorted out until we have a new administration." In the meantime, he says, relations between scientists are likely to continue as they always have, even during the cold war. Hecker is headed to Russia this week to discuss a joint conference on non-proliferation, expected to take place next year.

A meeting next spring in Rome of the national science academies of the G8 countries will also go ahead as planned, says Volker Ter Meulen, president of the Leopoldina, Germany's national academy of science. "Science should keep out of political quarrel," he says. "We do need to work together, and I know that our Russian colleagues feel much the same way."

But worsening international relations could affect ongoing global warming negotiations, says David Victor, a law professor and energy expert at Stanford University in Palo Alto. "If the Russian relations with the West sour, that presumably will make Russia less willing to sign on to international agreements that they don't see in their national interest," he says. More broadly, he thinks that Russia might also reconsider Western investment in its old industrial and new high-tech sectors.

Meanwhile, Russian scientists involved in collaborations with the West hope that the current tensions will not lead to restrictions in terms of mobility and scientific exchange. "If that happens," says Konstantin Severinov, a molecular biologist at the Institute of Gene Biology in Moscow, "there will be a long-lasting negative effect on Russian science, as it already has strong isolationist tendencies."

Russian researchers have lately experienced a resurgence of state control over their work. For example, Severinov says that he was recently approached by a 'curator' with the Russian Federal Security Service who inquired about his US citizenship, about what exactly he was doing in Russia and in the United States in terms of science, and whether he had a security clearance. "This could be a sign of the times," he says.

If the United States and other countries were to further restrict their visa policies, the isolation of Russian scientists will only increase, says Mikhail Feigel'man, a physicist at the Landau Institute of Theoretical Physics in Moscow. "That would be the most stupid step the West could take," he says.

Additional reporting by Jeff Tollefson and Eric Hand