Prometheus unleashed: Science as a diplomatic weapon in the Lyndon B. Johnson administration

Scholars who have examined science policy within the Johnson administration have generally argued that science played a limited role in U.S. foreign policy in the mid-and late 1960s. Most point to the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), which reached its zenith of influence late in the Eisenhower administration then declined through the Kennedy and Johnson years before being abolished by Richard Nixon in 1973. These accounts, however, have overlooked Lyndon Johnson's determination to employ science and technology as tools in foreign policy and the rapid growth of the State Department's international science office early in his administration. They also overlook the singular importance that Johnson-era officials placed on the physical environmental sciences-especially oceanography and meteorology-as tools of foreign policy. This article, based on archival sources, examines how Johnson administration officials embraced science in diplomatic policy from 1964 through 1968, when rising tensions over Vietnam limited these efforts. Our study includes a detailed examination of one such instance: a secret administration effort to employ weather modification in India and Pakistan as a technological fix to mitigate the Bihar drought and famine of 1966-1967 and to achieve U.S. policy goals in this strategically important region.