Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the United States

Origins

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is an institution created and maintained by a fund of $10,000,000 set apart by Andrew Carnegie in 1910. The purpose of the Endowment, as outlined by one of its prominent active members, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University is “to work for the promotion of peaceful development of civilization by aiding and developing, supporting and directing the forces needful to bring about the prevention of war, the perfection of means for the establishment of arbitral justice between nations, and the development of a world congress or parliament, a high international court, and an international police, and to take such steps and promote such undertakings as shall bring about the substitution of law and justice for war as a means of settling international disputes and difficulties.”

The trustees selected by Mr. Carnegie to receive the fund and administer its income met at Washington on 14 Dec 1910. At this meeting Mr. Carnegie read a letter informing the trustees of his gift of $10,000,000 in 5 per cent first mortgage bonds, the revenue of which, he stated, “is to be administered by you to hasten the abolition of international war, the foulest blot upon our civilization.” The donor made no restrictions of the gift, but left discretionary with the trustees the expenditure of $500,000 annually accruing from the fund; he did not attempt, moreover, to outline future action as regards the measures, methods and policies that were to be adopted to the end of accomplishing the purpose specified. The only stipulation made was that the trustees were to “keep unceasingly in view, until it is attained, the speedy abolition of international war between so-called civilized nations.” The original trustees selected by Mr. Carnegie were: United States Senator Elihu Root, representative of the United States at The Hague Tribunal; Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University; Henry S. Pritchett, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; Joseph H. Choate, former Ambassador to Great Britain; Albert K. Smiley, educator and humanitarian; Charles W. Eliot, president-emeritus of Harvard University; James Brown Scott, solicitor for the State Department; John W. Foster, ex-Secretary of State; Andrew J. Montague, ex-governor of Virginia; Congressman William M. Howard, Lexington, Ky.; Congressman James L. Slayden, San Antonio, Tex.; Judge Thomas Burke, Seattle, Wash.; Andrew D. White, ex-Ambassador to Germany; Robert S. Brookings, lawyer, Saint Louis, Mo.; Samuel Mather, banker, Cleveland, Ohio; J. G. Schmidlap, railroad man, Cincinnati, Ohio; Arthur W. Foster, regent of the University of California; Robert A. Franks, banker, Hoboken, N. J.; Charlemagne Tower, ex-Ambassador to Germany and Russia; Oscar S. Strauss, Ambassador to Turkey; Austen G. Fox, lawyer, New York; John Sharpe Williams, senator-elect from Mississippi; Charles L. Taylor, chairman of the Carnegie Hero Commission; John L. Cadwalader, lawyer, New York; George W. Perkins, financier, New York; Cleveland H. Dodge, philanthropist and financier; Luke E. Wright ex-Secretary of War; Robert S. Woodward, president of the Carnegie Institution.

At their first meeting these 28 trustees accepted the fund by formal resolution, and appointed a committee on organization which at the next meeting, held in Washington on 9 March 1911, presented the following statement of the aims and purposes of the Endowment:

“That the objects of the corporation shall be to advance the cause of peace among nations, to hasten the abolition of international war, and to encourage and promote a peaceful settlement of international difficulties, and, in particular — (a) To promote a thorough and scientific investigation and study of the causes of war and of the practical methods to prevent and avoid it; (b) to aid in the development of International Law, and a general agreement on the rules thereof, and the acceptance of the same among nations; (c) to diffuse information, and to educate public opinion regarding the causes, nature, and effects of war, and the means for its prevention; (d) to establish a better understanding of international rights and duties, and a more perfect sense of international justice among the inhabitants of civilized countries; (e) to cultivate friendly feelings among the inhabitants of the different countries, and increase the knowledge and understanding of each other by the several nations; (f) to promote a general acceptance of peaceable methods in the settlement of international disputes; (g) to maintain, promote, and assist such establishments, organizations, associations, and agencies as shall be deemed necessary or useful in the accomplishment of the purposes of the corporation, or any of them.”

At this same meeting the following officers were elected: President, Elihu Root; vice-president, Joseph H. Choate; secretary, James Brown Scott; treasurer, Walter M. Gilbert (temporary appointment).

At the same time the by-laws of the association were drawn up, and provision was made, inter-alia, for the establishment of an executive committee (consisting of the president the secretary and five trustees), which at its first meeting, held likewise on 9 March 1911, decided to divide the work of the Endowment into three divisions: (1) The Division of Intercourse and Education, to promote the objects specified in sections (c), (e), (g); (2) the Division of Economics and History, to promote a scientific investigation and study of the causes of war and of the practical means to prevent and avoid it, as specified in section (a); (3) the Division of International Law, to promote the objects specified in sections (b), (d), (f). These three divisions may be described as popular, scientific and juristic, departments in which the work of the Endowment naturally falls. Thus the main activities of the Endowment were established on definite lines, and a world-wide co-operation in each branch of its work was planned. It was decided to inaugurate a series of conferences with foreign publicists, economists and statesmen, to be held in European cities, and a large number of eminent and influential men of all nationalities were invited to take a more or less active part in the propaganda.

While the outbreak of the European War in the summer of 1914 seriously interfered with the carrying-out of the program, that catastrophe only emphasized the incalculable importance and need of the work to which the Endowment is dedicated. War itself, indeed, is throwing light on the main problem, that of preventing war, and is bringing the solution of the problem nearer. On 20 April 1917, the trustees of the Endowment unanimously adopted a formal resolution, declaring their “belief that the most effectual means of promoting durable international peace is to prosecute the war against the Imperial German government to final victory for democracy, in accordance with the policy declared by the President of the United States.” On the same day, moreover, a sum of $500,000 was appropriated, by formal resolution, “for the reconstruction of devastated homes of Belgium, France, Serbia or Russia.” The main office of the Endowment is located in Washington, D. C., while a branch office is located in New York, where the directors of the divisions of intercourse and education and of economics and history have their desks; the director of the division of international law, who is also secretary of the Endowment, has his office at the Washington headquarters.

Since 1923

Note: the text below was extracted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

On July 14, 1923, the Hague Academy of International Law, an initiative of the Endowment, was formally opened in the Peace Palace at The Hague. The Peace Palace had been built by the Carnegie Foundation (Netherlands) in 1913 to house the Permanent Court of Arbitration and a library of international law.

In 1925, Nicholas Murray Butler succeeded Elihu Root as president of the Endowment. For his work, including his involvement with the Kellog-Briand Pact, Butler was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.[6]

In November 1944, the Carnegie Endowment published Raphael Lemkin’s Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation—Analysis of Government—Proposals for Redress. The work was the first to bring the word genocide into the global lexicon.[7] In April 1945, James T. Shotwell, director of the Carnegie Endowment’s Division of Economics and History, served as chairman of the semiofficial consultants to the U.S. delegation at the San Francisco conference to draw up the United Nations Charter.[8] As chairman, Shotwell pushed for an amendment to establish a permanent United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which exists to this day.

In December 1945, Butler stepped down after twenty years as president and chairman of the board of trustees. Butler was the last living member of the original board selected by Andrew Carnegie in 1910.[9] John Foster Dulles was elected to succeed Butler as chairman of the Board of Trustees, where he served until fellow board member Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president of the U.S. in 1952 and appointed Dulles Secretary of State.[9]

Alger Hiss briefly succeeded Butler as president of the Endowment in 1946 but resigned in 1949 after being denounced as a communist and a spy by Whittaker Chambers. Hiss was replaced in the interim by James T. Shotwell.

In 1947, the Carnegie Endowment’s headquarters were moved closer to the United Nations in New York city, while the Washington office became a subsidiary branch. In 1949, the Washington branch was shuttered.[4]

In 1950, the Endowment board of trustees appointed Joseph E. Johnson, a historian and former State Department official, to take the helm.

From 1960 to 1990

In 1963, the Carnegie Endowment reconstituted its International Law Program in order to address several emerging international issues: the increase in significance and impact of international organizations; the technological revolution that facilitated the production of new military weaponry; the spread of Communism; the surge in newly independent states; and the challenges of new forms of economic activity, including global corporations and intergovernmental associations. The program resulted in the New York-based Study Group on the United Nations and the International Organization Study Group at the European Centre in Geneva.[4]

In 1970, Thomas L. Hughes became the sixth president of the Carnegie Endowment. Hughes moved the Endowment’s headquarters from New York to Washington, D.C. and closed the Endowment’s European Centre in Geneva.

The Carnegie Endowment acquired full ownership of Foreign Policy magazine in the spring of 1978. The Endowment published Foreign Policy for 30 years, moving it from a quarterly academic journal to a bi-monthly glossy covering the nexus of globalization and international policy. The magazine was sold to The Washington Post in 2008.

In 1981, Carnegie Endowment Associate Fred Bergsten co-founded the Institute for International Economics—today known as the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Citing the growing danger of a nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan, Thomas L. Hughes formed an eighteen-member Task Force on Non-Proliferation and South Asian Security to propose methods for reducing the growing nuclear tensions on the subcontinent.[4]

In 1989, two former Carnegie associates, Barry Blechman and Michael Krepon, founded the Henry L. Stimson Center.

From 1990 to 1997

In 1991, Morton Abramowitz was named the seventh president of the Endowment. Abramowtiz, previously a State Department official, focused the Endowment’s attention on Russia in the post-Soviet era.[4] In this spirit, the Carnegie Endowment opened the Carnegie Moscow Center in 1994 as a home of Russian scholar-commentators.[10]

Jessica Mathews joined the Carnegie Endowment as its eighth president in May of 1997, a position she still holds today. Under her leadership, Carnegie’s stated goal is to become the first multinational/global think tank.[11]

The global think tank

As first laid out with the Global Vision in 2007, the Carnegie Endowment aspires to be the first global think tank.[12] Jessica Mathews has said that her aim is to make Carnegie the place that brings what the world thinks into thinking about U.S. policy and to communicate that thinking to a global audience. [9]

During Mathews’ tenure as president, the Carnegie Endowment has launched the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut (2006), Carnegie Europe in Brussels (2007), and Carnegie-Tsinghua at the Tsinghua University in Beijing (2010). Additionally, in partnership with the al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Carnegie established the Al-Farabi Carnegie Program on Central Asia in Kazakhstan in late 2011.

The Carnegie Endowment office in Washington, D.C. is home to eight programs: The Nuclear Policy Program, Russia & Eurasia Program, South Asia Program, Democracy & Rule of Law Program, Asia Program, Energy & Climate Program, Middle East Program, and International Economics Program.[13]

The Endowment currently publishes the International Economics Bulletin, Pro-et-Contra in Russian, China Insights Monthly in Chinese, the nuclear policy newsletter Pro News, and the Arab reform-focused Sada Journal.

Carnegie Moscow Center

In 1993, the Endowment launched the Carnegie Moscow Center, with the belief that, “in today’s world a think tank whose mission is to contribute to global security, stability, and prosperity requires a permanent presence and a multinational outlook at the core of its operations”.[14]

The Center’s stated goals are to embody and promote the concepts of disinterested social science research and the dissemination of its results in post-Soviet Russia and Eurasia; to provide a free and open forum for the discussion and debate of critical national, regional and global issues; and to further cooperation and strengthen relations between Russia and the United States by explaining the interests, objectives and policies of each.[15]

From 2006 until December 2008, the Center was led by current United States Assistant Secretary of State for Verification, Compliance, and Implementation Rose Gottemoeller. The Center is currently headed by Dmitri Trenin.
Carnegie Middle East Center

The Carnegie Middle East Center was established in November, 2006. The Center aims to better inform the process of political change in the Arab Middle East and deepen understanding of the complex economic and security issues that affect it. Paul Salem is the current director of the Center.[16]

Carnegie Europe

Founded in 2007, Carnegie Europe is the European centre of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. From its newly expanded presence in Brussels, Carnegie Europe combines the work of its research platform with the fresh perspectives of Carnegie’s centres in Washington, Moscow, Beijing, and Beirut, bringing a unique global vision to the European policy community. Through publications, articles, seminars, and private consultations, Carnegie Europe aims to foster new thinking on the daunting international challenges shaping Europe’s role in the world.[17]

Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy

The Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy was established at Tsinghua University in Beijing in 2010. The Center’s focuses include China’s foreign relations, international economics, and trade; climate change and energy; nonproliferation and arms control; and other global and regional security issues such as North Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran.[18]

Notes and References

6. “Nobel Peace Prize 1931”. Nobel Prize.
7. “About Raphael Lemkin”. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. .
8. “James T. Shotwell: A Life Devoted to Organizing Peace”. Columbia University.
9. “100 Years of Impact”. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. .
10. “About the Carnegie Moscow Center”. Carnegie Moscow Center.
11. “About the Carnegie Endowment”. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
12. “A New Vision for the Carnegie Endowment”. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
13. “Programs”. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
14. About the Endowment Carnegie Endowment website
15. “About the Carnegie Moscow Center”. Carnegie Moscow Center. Retrieved 2012-03-06.
16. “About the Carnegie Middle East Center”. Carnegie Middle East Center. Retrieved 2012-03-06.
17. “About Carnegie Europe”. Carnegie Europe. Retrieved 2012-03-06.
18. “About the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center”. Carnegie-Tsinghua Center

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2