Scientific Cooperation and Peace Building: A Case Study of USAID's Middle East Regional Cooperation Program by Krishna Kumar

The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and not of USAID. 2Policy makers view scientific research as a universal enterprise with a common language and methodology that transcend national boundaries. They regard the joint pursuit of science, technology, and knowledge as inevitably and inexorably creating an intellectual climate and institutional structures conducive to peace and cooperation. These were the underlying premises of USAID's Middle East Regional Cooperation Program (MERC), launched in the aftermath of the Camp David Peace Accords of 1978 to support scientific and technical cooperation between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Congress, in funding the program, assumed it would advance the normalization of relations between Israel and Egypt, as well as promote peaceful relations where hostilities continued between Israel and other Arab states. The Center for Development Information and Evaluation's (CDIE) recent assessment of the MERC Program,"Scientific Cooperation and Peace Building: A Case Study of USAID's Middle East Regional Cooperation Program, " critically examines some of these premises to determine their validity. The report studies scientific cooperation between Israel and the Ara