In light of the hoopla (well in space circles anyway) over the thirtieth anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), Jim Oberg has a little corrective to point out the danger of confusing cause and effect:

Even if Apollo-Soyuz had never happened, Shuttle-Mir (in some form) would have become possible in the political context of the early 1990s, and both countries’ space teams would have found a way to proceed to the space dockings with little additional effort, even without any historical precedents. Alternately, with Apollo-Soyuz as historical fact, a surviving Soviet regime—with its political repressions, imperialistic client states, massive nuclear and conventional strike forces, and soul-killing society of deception—would never have been given veto power over the centerpiece of Western human space flight, the space station.

So where does this leave the space handshakers? Well, like the robin who may think its song ushers in the spring, or the rooster who thinks he commands the sun to rise, a lot of spacemen in Russian and in America enjoy recalling their roles—honorable ones, to be sure—in carrying out such a mission. If they want to think their flight caused the international thaws rather than merely reflected them, they’ve earned the right to their point of view—just as sober historians, practical politicians, and sensible space buffs have the right to gently refuse to believe them.

He also puts paid to the politically correct nonsense that space exploration must intrinsically be international--a notion often stated, but never actually defended in any compelling way:

“I am convinced that all future flights will be international,” Leonov said at the NASM. Stafford agreed that international efforts are needed for the return to the Moon and making several expeditions to Mars. But why should merely saying so make it true?

...Having the Russians along was supposed to make the project cheaper, but it cost more to build the proper international interfaces. Launching all components into a northerly orbit accessible from Russia increased the space transportation cost by billions of dollars.

Nor did the Russian presence make the project faster, better, or safer, as it turned out. NASA was supposed to “learn from the immense body of Russian experience”, but it seems they never did—they just flew their missions and learned the necessary lessons directly. Repeated inquiries to NASA to specify things that had been learned exclusively from Russian experience have resulted in a pitiful short list of trivial “lessons”.

It can even be argued that the most important lessons learned were harmful. On Shuttle-Mir, NASA watched space crews dodge death on almost a monthly basis and may have subconsciously absorbed the lesson that since nobody had actually died, you could get sloppy with safety reviews and it wouldn’t ever bite you.

As usual, Jim is right on- and the downside of that American/Russian Co-op myth was rather well explained, explored and exposed in the new edition of Apollo 7 Astro, Walt Cunningham's autobio.
I'd just take issue (with the construction anyway) of his last sentence that basically says the opinions of "old space men" should be disregarded by today's NASA. In my mind- 'old space men' means any veterans of Mercury thru Apollo, astronuats and otherwise. That would make Jim (and even me!) an old space man- and I don't think he would suggest that his own opinions be discounted. Part of NASA's problem these days is the failure to listen to and learn from those who have gone before.

There's some real dinosaurian opinions in that piece. Notice how he blames the Columbia accident on the Russians?

Yeah, probably Columbia was destroyed by the Russian. Jim Oberg should know that without the Russians we wouldn't have any space station to comply about, less americans living there...

Blah