IIASA's first director Howard Raiffa on the negotiations that led to IIASA's creation.

The following edited transcript of a talk Raiffa gave at IIASA on 23 September 1992 describes how it all began.
The IIASA charter was signed in London in October 1972, but the history goes back six years earlier. In 1966 American president Lyndon Johnson gave a rather remarkable speech — in the middle of the Cold War — in which he said it was time that the scientists of the United States and the Soviet Union worked together on problems other than military and space matters, on problems that plagued all advanced societies, like energy, our oceans, the environment, health. And he called for a liaison between the scientists of East and West.
Johnson enlisted McGeorge Bundy, former adviser to presidents Kennedy and Johnson, to pursue the topic. One of the first things he did was to commission a report from the Rand Corporation, which was written by Roger Levien, the second director of IIASA. The report gave the United States a green light to go ahead.
Bundy also met the late Jermen Gvishiani, the deputy minister of the Soviet State Committee on Science and Technology — and he was delighted with the reaction. Bundy and Gvishiani realized that if IIASA was going to be stable, it should be multilateral. On that basis, Gvishiani pushed for inclusion of the German Democratic Republic. This was embarrassing for the United States which didn’t recognize East Germany. Our first crisis. It was surmounted by deciding that the new institute would be nongovernmental. How lucky!
What that meant was not very clear because the intention was that governments would finance the center. For the USA it meant that the National Academy of Sciences got into the act. The money went from the National Science Foundation, which is governmental, to the academy, which is nongovernmental.
On a Saturday afternoon early in 1967 I got a call from Bundy at home, saying that he was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and could he meet me the next day; he would like me to do some consulting. I said, "What kind of consulting?" He said, "It’s pro bono but it won’t take long...."

Opening moves
The work in 1967 and 1968 was all directed toward the first planning meeting in Sussex, England. This meeting was also to include the UK, Italy, and France; Poland and the GDR would be there, and one other country from Eastern Europe. At the last minute they decided on Bulgaria.
We worked long hours preparing the Sussex meeting. We started on a Saturday morning in June 1968 only to receive a cable the following Friday from the Soviet Union saying that the Soviet Union, Poland, and the GDR would not be attending because of a crisis over Berlin.
Remember, these negotiations went on during the Cold War, the time of the Vietnam war and the Czechoslovakian revolution, and still they culminated in the creation of IIASA. In my view, this is really remarkable.
We talked a little in Sussex about whether we should start an institute without the Soviets. The decision was that no one would take it seriously. So, we went home—we thought that was the end of it. Then in November of ’68 there was a communiqué from Gvishiani saying, "What’s happening? Why is there no more action?" No apology, incidentally.
The next meeting was held in June 1969 in Moscow. Nothing much was accomplished until Gvishiani, Bundy, and a few others went for a walk in the woods, and made three momentous decisions.
- It should be an English-language institute—a suggestion made by Gvishiani, which was remarkable.
- The director would be an American; the chair of the governing council from the Soviet Union
- The Institute would be in the UK, according to the then Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK government, Sir Solly Zuckerman.
Decline and resurrection
In the early 1970s a hundred Soviet diplomats were expelled from the UK, and relations between the two countries froze. It was the French who got us out of the doldrums with their rousing statements about the importance of the institute. They offered the headquarters of SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe) at Fontainebleau, vacated when SHAPE had moved to Belgium. Fontainebleau was gorgeous; lots of historical rooms and tapestries. But when we said, "Can we put up blackboards, install computers, make a library," the answer was "None. You have to keep everything as it is."
Academician Jermen Gvishiani, Chairman of the IIASA Council and Deputy Chairman of the State Committee for Science and Technology of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, one of IIASA’s founding fathers.
The French did resurrect the negotiations. Bundy telephoned US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger while I was in the room. They both thought that it would be politically embarrassing to have a Republican administration sign up with Bundy, a Democrat, as their representative. So, the chief US negotiator became Philip Handler, president of the National Academy of Sciences. I was the only one transferred from the Bundy team to the Handler team, being supposedly apolitical.
From 1970 to 1972 we wrote a charter. The USA, embarrassed at having a multilateral institute dealing with advanced industrialized societies without Japan, insisted that Japan be included. Sir Solly objected, saying, "If we have Japan, why not Canada or Australia?" We compromised: all three were invited, and Japan and Canada accepted.
There had to be balance between East and West, so we invited Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Then we found that Japan didn’t want in. I went to Japan, tried to twist arms and seemingly got nowhere. A month before the charter was signed, we got a cable asking: "Where does Japan send its money?"
Name games
I have a folder from 1968 referring to the International Center for the Study of Problems Common to Advanced Industrialized Societies. That name was decided in Sussex, when the Soviets weren’t there, and they objected: "What do you mean by advanced industrialized society?" We said, "Well, we’ll have a Center for Research of Common Problems." And they said, ‘What do you mean by common problems?" We said, "We’ll have a Center for Research." They asked: "Why research and not training?’ We replied, "We’ll have a Center for Study." They said, "Should it be a center or an institute? And, will it be written as center or centre?" That's when we all decided: "We’ll have an institute."
Names kept pouring out. Cybernetics was the favorite word for Eastern Europeans. Management science, operations research, policy analysis — all kinds of names, but there was an objection to every suggestion. In the 1960s I wrote a book called Applied Statistical Decision Theory, and everybody said, "What do you mean by applied statistical decision theory?" So I had an idea: let's call it the international institute for applied systems analysis, which deals with management and policies and the societal implications of science, because nobody will know what it means and then we'll have a clean slate.
Some of the key issues in the charter had to do with selection of scientists, the size of the institute, finances, clearance of publications, areas of research, and voting systems. One possible showstopper was the selection of scientists. The USA, the UK, and the Western Europeans were adamant that countries could not send scientists to IIASA without the directorate’s approval. A wise choice and I was delighted.
Gvishiani liked this idea, but he was under constraint back home. A compromise was worked out: the Soviets would submit long lists of names and the institute could select from the lists. If there was no one on the list to satisfy IIASA, the lists would be extended. It took maybe six months of intense debate to come to this compromise.