Developments in European science and science policy suggest that a new landscape is forming, one over which scientists can move as freely as they already do between Massachusetts and California.

The great scientific traditions of Europe have always had strong national identities. One thinks of Pasteur as French, Newton as British, Planck as German. But in moving towards an economically unified Europe, some national sovereignty had to be given up to serve a more communitarian vision. That same evolution is now taking place in science, as a powerful movement towards unified European research takes shape.

In a recent editorial in Le Monde, several Nobel Prize winners - including Francois Jacob, the French biologist, Bengt Samuelsson, the Swedish biochemist, Aaron Klug, the British biochemist, and Rita Levi Montalcini, the Italian developmental biologist - called for a restructuring of science policy that would double support for science, renew the focus on basic research and fund centres of excellence that would be regional and not national. Soon afterwards, the European Commission pointed out that European countries together produced proportionally more scientists then the US - but that scientists constituted a much smaller proportion of the working population. To help retain scientists, the Commission has advocated increased European Union investment in research and urged European co-operation to stop the "brain drain".

This growth of scientific collaboration in Europe is encouraged by the EU's sixth research framework programme, which provides grants to support work throughout the Union. The trend towards breaking down national borders should also be evident at a new pan-European event - EuroScience 2004 - taking place in Stockholm a year from now.

All this is good news but more work is needed in three areas. The priorities of a future European research entity should be restructured; governments both sides of the Atlantic should co-operate to plug any "brain drain" of talent away from Europe; and science policy needs to follow science along its cross-border course.

Some European scientists are reported to be dissatisfied with the balance of basic and applied research in the EU's framework programmes. They want more of the former and less of the latter. This dissatisfaction is fuelling discussion on the formation of a European research council, which might play a pan-European funding role like that of the National Science Foundation in the US. But if such a council is to develop, there needs to be a careful examination of the weight of different scientific fields in its research portfolio.

The US government should welcome these developments but it must also change its own position to assist the European science union. That means helping to tackle the problem of "brain drain", which received much attention in the 1960s but slipped out of view as European research expenditure increased and laboratories grew stronger. Many European commentators claim it has reappeared.

To slow it, US institutions need to ignore, at least for a time, the temptation to conduct overseas raids on scientists to fill permanent positions. An increased international scientific exchange will support, rather than inhibit, the equitable distribution of talent; and US science and immigration policies should be drawn in ways that ease movement of graduate and post-doctoral scientists in both directions. At the moment, the increasingly delicate visa situation - exacerbated by new interview requirements imposed by the US authorities - and the well publicised political differences between the US and Europe are impairing scientific exchange.

Last, the knowledge needed to construct a European science policy based on regions rather than nations must come from scientists themselves. Regional centres of excellence might provide a structure for policy discussion. But scientists still face the dilemma that while science is increasingly carried out across borders, science policy is still made by nations. The people best placed to construct a European science policy that brings together broad issues (such as the desirable balance between basic and applied projects) and narrower ones (such as stem cell research) are its leading scientists. It is a task worthy of their best efforts. The writer is editor-in-chief of Science, the international journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

October 12th will be the first anniversary of the Bali blasts which killed a total of 202 people --mostly foreign tourists. And in a move to show regional defiance against the terrorist attack on Indonesia's holiday island, leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations decided last year to hold their annual meeting in Bali (7 to 8 October). Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, which is already reeling from two devastating bomb blasts in less than a year, the other being Jakarta's JW Marriott Hotel bomb blast, is determined to make this years ASEAN summit significant. As current chair of ASEAN, a role which is rotated alphabetically among the ten nations, Indonesia is well aware that the international community and media will be playing close attention to the outcome of this years ASEAN Bali summit. Which is why the Indonesians, building on Singapore's proposal that ASEAN evolves into an Economic Community by the year 2020, have proposed the creation of an ASEAN Security Community. For an assessment of this proposal, I spoke to Professor Donald K. Emmerson, Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Institute for International Studies. "The idea of a security community is an idea that so far as I know has originated not as a sort of deliberate doctrine of the Indonesian government but rather has been circulated in particular by an academic Rizal Sukma who wrote a paper and was invited to give the paper in New York by the Indonesian mission to the United Nations. "And I think its one of those rather serendipitous cases where an idea that has been circulating if you will in the academic world, on a track three basis if I can use that phrase, has been taken over. And it looks as though depending upon what happens at the summit in Bali, it will become a kind of distinctive contribution that Indonesia would make in the period when Indonesia will be running ASEAN, that is have the chairmanship. And so I think the first thing that needs to be said is as we know from past experience every chair of ASEAN by and large you know asks themselves what can we do that is distinctive. How will our chairmanship be remembered? And I think this is at least initially how Indonesia would like its Chairmanship to be remembered." Professor Emmerson, who is also Director of the Southeast Asia Forum at Stanford feels it does not necessarily follow from this that the Indonesian government has a clear and detailed blueprint for exactly what such a security community would entail. "That this is an idea that is still somewhat vague and properly so. After all the summit has not yet convened. We're still in the phase of position papers being circulated. If this is to become an ASEAN idea as opposed to just an Indonesian idea, then it taking ownership of the idea, ASEAN has to make its contribution because obviously there are ten countries involved, not just one, not just Indonesia. And so in a way, I think its unfair for us to ask too much detail from the host of the summit because after all the whole purpose is to socialize this idea within ASEAN and to get contributions from around the region". As to the reasons why this idea has risen to a fairly high position on the Indonesian agenda for ASEAN, Professor Emmerson feels "what we ought to think of is in more general terms how this could represent a meaningful contribution by Indonesia which has traditionally been identified obviously as the largest and by implication most important country in ASEAN, as a country that sets the tone, well this is the tone they're trying to set and I think it is not's surprising that it should not be a terribly detailed proposal at this early stage". There are existing instruments or mechanisms - one is the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation which basically serves as a foundation. The renouncement of the threat or use of force. Do you think these would be built upon and serve as a foundation for the ASEAN Security Community? "Well certainly such a use of the treaty would bethoroughly compatible with a broad understanding of what a security community might entail. But it is my impression that this idea is should we say at the same time also inward looking. That is to say if we look at it, what is first obvious is that the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), which is of course a much larger body, and it is not limited to South East Asia, it includes a variety of governments. That by implication, there is an idea here that the ASEAN Regional Forum is insufficient. That it alone cannot manage if you will the security problems that exist inside South East Asia. And it is certainly the case that the security agenda of the ARF has tended to be dominated by issues in North East Asia rather than in South East Asia. Concerns over the Korean peninsula. The Chinese of course have traditionally shied away from any multi lateral discussion of the Taiwan question which they consider to be a domestic issue. "But nevetheless the involvement of China in the ARF is of critical importance. And needless to say, if we look at the region leaving aside the issue of terrorism, which has risen obviously with particular force since the Bali bombing and then now most recently with the Marriot bombing in Indonesia. But leaving that aside one would have to say that the real security threat come not from the south but conversely from the north. "And so it is entirely plausible that Indonesian policy makers would take stock of the situation inside South East Asia and say we need a venue which is suitable for managing security inside the region. And obviously that would privilige the ASEAN Summit, the members of ASEAN rather than involving outside powers. Indeed one maybe highly speculative and here I admit I'm being extremely speculative - one might even argue that there is a logic here that says that if ASEAN can begin to organize its own house with regards to security now, then it will not have to cede the power to do so to an outsider. Whether that outsider be the United States, China, Japan or some other power". Right, looking at the summary of the Indonesian recommendations, they're proposing the idea of ASEAN Security Community by 2020. They're hoping that this will build on existing ASEAN principles and cooperation. The Indonesians hope to have an ASEAN Centre for Combating Terrorism, ASEAN Peace Keeping Training Centre, and ASEAN Maritime Surveillance Centre. Are these all feasible in the future you think? "I think they are feasible especially if the deadline is as far off as 2020. I think they are entirely feasible. Lets remember that although the idea of ASEAN being a security community is innovative because the language has not been used. If we go all the way back to the birth of ASEAN, we have to understand that there are inside the origins of ASEAN if you will, the DNA of ASEAN, there are concerns for security. The high council that was to meet to resolve inter-mural disputes among members. "The empirical fact that ASEAN's success in defending Thailand as the front line state against the Vietnamese penetration of Cambodia, which represented a signal victory given the outcome of that struggle in which the Vietnamese finally around 1989 pulled their troops back. So there was a kind of an irony at the beginning of ASEAN although it put forward a face of economic cooperation, in fact its real success was precisely in the security realm. And that's another reason why it seems to entirely feasible that some proposals, not too elaborate perhaps and not too likely to run up against the sensitivities associated with national sovereignty, might well be feasible in the future. And that yes indeed, ASEAN could become a security community. Not fully fledged, not like NATO and certainly not like SEATO which was in any case in retrospect a failure. And also not a Deutschian, you know Karl Deutsch - the American professor who really coined the phrase 'security community ' - not that kind of deep security community. But a security community that has its own techniques and instruments for conflict resolution and for conflict prevention. Including this very controversial issue which we face at the moment as to how to fight terrorism in South East Asia. "And once again I want to emphasize that traditionally Indonesian thinking with regard to the security of South East Asia has been very different for example in comparison let's say to the thinking that we associate with the view of South East Asia that tends to characterize Singaporean policy makers. The Indonesians have been much more inclined as the largest country in South East Asia to look at the region and say we don't need outsiders, we don't need a check and balance as used to be the case during the Cold War. "What we need are institutions that are domestic to the region and by implication therefore which Indonesia could influence, that will be effective in solving our problems among ourselves. I think there is a bit of that behind this proposal. And frankly I'm rather encouraged. I will say this that in so far as this proposal implies that South East Asians would take increased responsibility for their own security, including maritime security. I mean what waters on earth are the most pirate infested. We all know the answer. The answer is waters that are Indonesian or at least that border Indonesia. This is a very serious problem. And so quite apart from the issue of terrorists blowing up buildings in the name of Jihad, there are a range of security issues that South East Asians I think can constructively address. And therefore I'm quite encouraged by this proposal and I hope it will be given serious consideration in Bali."

Since the Iron Curtain came crashing down, American and Russian diplomats have been searching for a special relationship between their countries to replace Cold War animosity.

Security matters have not yielded much. On issues such as the expansion of Nato, stabilising Yugoslavia and the war in Chechnya, the two have sought each other's tolerance more than co-operation. Nor have the two nations developed much economic interaction, as a result of Russia's weak institutions and faltering economy. Thus, by default, "energy" has become the new special topic in Russian-American relations.

This enthusiasm is misplaced, however. A collapse of oil prices in the aftermath of an invasion of Iraq may soon lay bare the countries' divergent interests. Russia needs high oil prices to keep its economy afloat, whereas US policy would be largely unaffected by falling energy costs. Moreover, cheerleaders of a new Russian-American oil partnership fail to understand that there is not much the two can do to influence the global energy market or even investment in Russia's oil sector. The focus on oil has also eclipsed another area in which US and Russian common interests could run deeper: nuclear power. Joint efforts to develop new technologies for generating nuclear power and managing nuclear waste could result in a huge payoff for both countries. These issues, which are the keys to keeping nuclear power viable, are formally on the Russian-American political agenda, but little has been done to tap the potential for co -operation. Given Russia's scientific talent and the urgent need to reinvigorate nuclear non-proliferation programmes, a relatively minor commitment of diplomatic and financial resources could deliver significant long-term benefits to the United States.

On the surface, energy co-operation seems a wise choice. Russia is rich in hydrocarbons and the US wants them. Oil and gas account for two-fifths of Russian exports. Last year, Russia reclaimed its status, last held in the late 1980s, as the world's top oil producer. Its oil output this year is expected to top eight million barrels per day and is on track to rise further. Russian oil firms also made their first shipments to US markets last year - some symbolically purchased as part of US efforts to augment its strategic petroleum reserve. In addition, four Russian oil companies are preparing a new, large port in Murmansk as part of a plan to supply more than 10 per cent of total US oil imports within a decade.

Meanwhile, the US remains the world's largest consumer and importer of oil. This year, it will import about 60 per cent of the oil it burns, and the US Energy Information Administration expects foreign dependence will rise to about 70 per cent by 2010, and continue inching upwards thereafter. Although the US economy is much less sensitive to fluctuations in oil prices than it was three decades ago, diversification and stability in world oil markets are a constant worry.

War jitters and political divisions cast a long shadow over the Persian Gulf, source of one-quarter of the world's oil. In Nigeria, the largest African oil exporter, sectarian violence periodically not only interrupts oil operations but also sent Miss World contestants packing last year. A scheme by Latin America's top producer, Venezuela, to pump up its share of world production helped trigger a collapse in world oil prices in the late 1990s and ushered in the leftist government of President Hugo Chavez. Last year, labour strikes aimed at unseating Mr Chavez shut Venezuela's ports and helped raise prices to more than US$ 30 (HK$ 234) a barrel. Next to these players, Russia is a paragon of stability.

The aftermath of a war in Iraq would probably provide a first test for the shallow new Russian-American partnership. Most attention on Russian interests in Iraq has focused on two issues: Iraq's lingering Soviet-era debt, variously measured at US$ 7 billion to US$ 12 billion, and the dominant position of Russian companies in controlling leases for several Iraqi oilfields. Both are red herrings. No company that has signed lease deals with Saddam Hussein's government could believe those rights are secure. Russia's top oil company, Lukoil, knew that when it met Iraqi opposition leaders in an attempt to hedge its bets for possible regime change. (Saddam's discovery of those contacts proved the point: he cancelled, then later reinstated, Lukoil's interests in the massive Western Kurna field.)

Russian officials have pressed the US to guarantee the existing contracts, but officials have wisely demurred. There would be no faster way to confirm Arab suspicions that regime change is merely a cover for taking control of Iraq's oil than by awarding the jewels before a new government is known and seated.

Of course, the impact of a war on world oil supply and price is hard to predict. A long war and a tortuous rebuilding process could deprive the market of Iraqi crude oil (about two million barrels a day, last year). Damage to nearby fields in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia could make oil even more scarce. And already tight inventories and continued troubles in Venezuela could deliver a "perfect storm" of soaring oil prices.

The most plausible scenario, however, is bad news for Russia: a brief war, quickly followed by increased Iraqi exports, along with a clear policy of releasing oil from America's reserves to deter speculators. A more lasting Russian-American energy agenda would focus on subjects beyond the current, fleeting common interest in oil. To find an area in which dialogue can truly make a difference, Russia and the US should look to the subject that occupied much of their effort in the 1990s, but that both sides neglected too quickly: nuclear power.

With the end of the Cold War, the two nations created a multi-billion-dollar programme to sequester Russia's prodigious quantities of fissile material and nuclear technology. The goal was to prevent these "loose nukes" from falling into the hands of terrorists or hostile states.

The Co-operative Threat Reduction programme also included funds to employ Russian scientists through joint research projects and academic exchanges.

Inevitably, it has failed to meet all its goals. In a country where central control has broken down and scientific salaries have evaporated, it is difficult to halt the departure of every nuclear resource. Nor is it surprising that US appropriators have failed to deliver the billions of dollars promised for the collective endeavour. Other priorities have constantly intervened, and Russia's uneven record in complying with arms control agreements has made appropriation of funds a perpetual congressional battle. Various good ideas for reinvigorating the programme have gone without funding and bureaucratic attention - even in the post-September 11 political environment, in which practically any idea for fighting terrorism can get money.

Russia has opened nuclear waste encapsulation and storage facilities near Krasnoyarsk, raising the possibility of creating an international storage site for nuclear waste. This topic has long been taboo, but it is an essential issue to raise if the global nuclear power industry is to move beyond the inefficiencies of small-scale nuclear waste management.

Russia should also be brought into worldwide efforts to design new nuclear reactors. The global nuclear research community, under US leadership, has outlined comprehensive and implementable plans for the next generation of fission reactors. The Russian nuclear programme is one of the world's leaders in handling the materials necessary for new reactor designs. Yet Russia is not currently a member of the US government-led Generation IV International Forum, one of the main vehicles for international co-operation on fission reactors and their fuel cycles. Top US priorities must include integrating Russia into that effort, endorsing Russia's relationships with other key nuclear innovators (such as Japan), and delivering on the promise made at last summer's G8 meeting of leaders of the world's biggest economies - to help Russia secure its nuclear materials.

For opponents of nuclear power, no plan will be acceptable. But the emerging recognition that global warming is a real threat demands that nations develop serious, environmentally friendly energy alternatives. Of all the major options available today, only nuclear power and hydroelectricity offer usable energy with essentially zero emissions of greenhouse gases.

Neither government should be naive about the sustainability of this endeavour. Russia is not an ideal partner because its borders have been a sieve for nuclear know-how and because its nuclear managers are suspected of abetting the outflow. Thus, plans for nuclear waste storage, for example, must ensure that they render the waste a minimal threat for proliferation. The US must also be more mindful of Russian sensitivity to co-operation on matters that, to date, have been military secrets.

Another difficult issue that both nations must confront is Russia's relationship with Iran. A perennial thorn in ties, Russia's nuclear co -operation with officials in Tehran owes much not just to Iranian money but to the complex relationship between the two countries over drilling and export routes for Caspian oil. This link to Iran cannot be wished away, as it is rooted in Russia's very geography. Any sustainable nuclear partnership between the US and Russia must develop a political strategy to handle this reality.

The world, including the US, needs the option of viable nuclear power. Yet Russia's talented scientists and nuclear resources sit idle, ready for action.