Science - USA (2019-01-04)

SCIENCE sciencemag.org 4 JANUARY 2019 • VOL 363 ISSUE 6422 37

PHOTO: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

W

ar and preparation for war have

long led militaries to exploit,

transform, and degrade environ-

ments. How ironic, then, that at

the height of the Cold War, the

North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-

tion (NATO)—the most powerful military

alliance ever assembled—emerged as a lead-

ing proponent of environmental-

ism. Simone Turchetti’s Greening

the Alliance is the first book to

explain the surprising rise, re-

peated revision, and possible

decline of NATO’s environmental

research program.

Turchetti organizes his book

chronologically. After insightful

passages on sources and meth-

ods, he traces the diplomatic

tensions and maneuverings that,

in 1958, led representatives of

the United States and Britain to cooperate

in securing support for a new NATO Sci-

ence Committee. Supporting environmen-

tal research, they hoped, would promote

parallel diplomacy to repair deepening di-

visions among the alliance’s 12 signatories.

Yet because the committee sponsored re-

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Seeking solutions to Cold War divisions, in the mid-20th

century NATO embraced environmentalism

By Dagomar Degroot

BOOKS et al.

A military alliance goes green

search with obvious strategic applications,

it actually exacerbated divisions among

the allies.

In 1966, Turchetti argues, growing dissat-

isfaction with NATO’s science program came

to a head. The rise of environmentalism, the

sinking of the tanker SS Torrey Canyon, and

the political opportunism of Richard Nixon

all led to an American push for a new kind of

environmental research at NATO. Enter the

“Committee on the Challenges of

Modern Society” (CCMS), estab-

lished in 1969 to fund research

into toxicology, devastated ecosys-

tems, and environmental moni-

toring. Research pioneered by

the committee steadily advanced

a brand of environmentalism

that prized scientific rationalism

rather than the radical counter-

culture of the grassroots environ-

mentalist movement.

Yet, Turchetti explains that Eu-

ropean allies repeatedly stalled CCMS initia-

tives, which in any case never confronted

the environmental impact of military activi-

ties. When the CCMS exposed new divisions

within NATO, American support withered,

and the alliance’s commitment to environ-

mentalism seemed to fade. By that time,

however, emerging weapons systems in the

United States and the Soviet Union increas-

ingly demanded constant environmental

surveillance. This new reality encouraged

another round of environmental research,

with obvious strategic applications.

After the rise of Ronald Reagan and Mar-

garet Thatcher led NATO to again de-empha-

size environmental research, the collapse of

the Soviet Union led the CCMS to support

efforts to rehabilitate defunct Cold War mili-

tary bases. Environmental research at NATO

lives on but faces challenges amid the alli-

ance’s increasing focus on the “cybersphere.”

In the end, Turchetti convincingly argues

not only that militaries fostered the emer-

gence of modern environmental sciences but

also that they long set the agenda for ma-

jor research programs in its disciplines. His

analysis of the American role within NATO

is especially compelling. Far from a Cold War

hegemon, the United States in Greening the

Alliance could only achieve its objectives

with the cooperation of often-reluctant allies.

Skeptics will note, however, that American

officials repeatedly determined when, and

how, NATO would pursue environmental re-

search and policy.

The protagonists of Greening the Alliance

are scientists in the upper echelons of Cold

War military and diplomatic institutions.

This focus makes for a richly detailed story of

political maneuvering and high-minded ide-

als, yet it also deprives Turchetti’s narrative

of context that might have given it greater

significance. Politicians and military officers

are rarely mentioned by name, and ordinary

people who may have shaped the course of

scientific research, such as North Sea fisher-

men resistant to early oceanographic surveys,

rarely receive much attention.

Key scientific controversies discussed in

Greening the Alliance—the possibility of nu-

clear winter, for example—frequently appear

with little explanation, and Turchetti opts not

to compare NATO’s environmental programs

with similar and simultaneous efforts in

other western institutions. (Neil Maher has

recently revealed that NASA similarly strug-

gled to implement an “environmental turn”

in the 1970s, for example.) Moreover, because

Turchetti rarely explains the scope and sig-

nificance of NATO’s environmental science

program within the broader development

of 20th-century science, it is difficult for the

reader to know just how important the activi-

ties of the CCMS really were.

Written in workmanlike prose, Green-

ing the Alliance is therefore a book that will

primarily appeal to a relatively small group

of historians and political scientists. Yet for

those specialists, it succeeds in telling a new

and critically important story. j

10.1126/science.aav1863

NATO’s efforts stopped short of confronting the

environmental degradation caused by warfare.

The reviewer is at the Department of History,

Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057, USA.

Email: [email protected]

Greening the Alliance

Simone Turchetti

University of Chicago

Press, 2018. 263 pp.

Published by AAAS

on January 3, 2019^

http://science.sciencemag.org/

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