Both men, as cited above, left formal instructions for the continued use of their money for peace. Both intended to leave a legacy to the world, not just to their personal families, of which Nobel didn't have any. In both cases the instructions have been grossly disregarded. The Nobel Peace Prize, as well detailed in the writings of Fredrik Heffermehl, has been awarded to many who have not fit the requirements, including some who have even favored war. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has openly rejected its mission of eliminating war, moved on to numerous other projects, and re-categorized itself as a think tank.
Of numerous individuals who reasonably might have been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize but have not been -- a list that usually begins with Mohandas Gandhi -- one nominee in 1913 was Andrew Carnegie, and the laureate in 1912 was Carnegie's associate Elihu Root. Of course, mutual friend of Nobel and Carnegie, Bertha von Suttner received the prize in 1905 as did her associated Alfred Fried in 1911. Nicholas Murray Butler received the prize in 1931 for his work at the Carnegie Endowment, which included lobbying for the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928. Frank Kellogg got the prize in 1929, and Aristide Briand already had in 1926. When U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt received the prize in 1906 it was Andrew Carnegie who persuaded him to make the trip to Norway to accept it. There are numerous connections of this sort that all came after Nobel's death.
Bertha von Suttner, mother of the war abolition movement, became a major international figure with the publication of her novel Lay Down Your Arms in 1889. I don't think it was false modesty but accurate assessment when she attributed the success of her book to a sentiment already spreading. "I think that when a book with a purpose is successful, this success does not depend on the effect it has on the spirit of the times but the other way around," she said. In fact, both are certainly the case. Her book tapped into a growing sentiment and dramatically expanded it. The same can be said for the philanthropy (truly loving of people) of Nobel and Carnegie that she encouraged.
But the best laid plans can fail. Bertha von Suttner opposed one of the first nominees for the peace prize, Henri Dunant as a "war alleviator," and when he received it, she promoted the view that he'd been honored for supporting the abolition of war rather than for his work with the Red Cross. In 1905, as noted, the prize went to warmonger Teddy Roosevelt, and the year after to Louis Renault, causing von Suttner to remark that "even war could get the prize." Eventually people like Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama would make the list of laureates. A prize meant to fund demilitarization work was awarded in 2012 to the European Union, which could fund demilitarization most easily by spending less money on weaponry.
It did not take long for Carnegie's legacy to slip off track as well. In 1917 the Endowment for Peace backed U.S. involvement in World War I. After a second world war, the Endowment put leading warmonger John Foster Dulles on its board along with Dwight D. Eisenhower. The same institution that had backed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which bans all war, backed the UN Charter which legalizes wars that are either defensive or UN-authorized.
As the disregard of climate change in the 1970s and 1980s helped create today's climate crisis, disregard of Nobel's and Carnegie's intentions and legal mandates in the early and mid-twentieth century helped create today's world in which U.S. and NATO militarism are widely acceptable to those in power.
Jessica T. Mathews, current President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes: "The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is the oldest international affairs think tank in the United States. Founded by Andrew Carnegie with a gift of $10 million, its charter was to 'hasten the abolition of war, the foulest blot upon our civilization.' While that goal was always unattainable, the Carnegie Endowment has remained faithful to the mission of promoting peaceful engagement."
That is, while denouncing without argument my required mission as impossible, I have remained faithful to that mission.
No. It doesn't work that way. Here's Peter van den Dungen:
"The peace movement was especially productive in the two decades preceding World War I when its agenda reached the highest levels of government as manifested, for instance, in the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907. A direct result of these unprecedented conferences -- which followed an appeal (1898) by Tsar Nicholas II to halt the arms race, and to substitute war by peaceful arbitration -- was the construction of the Peace Palace which opened its doors in 1913, and which celebrated its centenary in August 2013. Since 1946, it is of course the seat of the International Court of Justice of the UN. The world owes the Peace Palace to the munificence of Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-American steel tycoon who became a pioneer of modern philanthropy and who was also an ardent opponent of war. Like no one else, he liberally endowed institutions devoted to the pursuit of world peace, most of which still exist today.
"Whereas the Peace Palace, which houses the International Court of Justice, guards its high mission to replace war by justice, Carnegie's most generous legacy for peace, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), has explicitly turned away from its founder's belief in the abolition of war, thereby depriving the peace movement of much-needed resources. This could partly explain why that movement has not grown into a mass movement which can exert effective pressure on governments. I believe it is important to reflect on this for a moment. In 1910 Carnegie, who was America's most famous peace activist, and the world's richest man, endowed his peace foundation with $10 million. In today's money, this is the equivalent of $3.5 billion. Imagine what the peace movement -- that is, the movement for the abolition of war -- could do today if it had access to that kind of money, or even a fraction of it. Unfortunately, while Carnegie favoured advocacy and activism, the trustees of his Peace Endowment favoured research. As early as 1916, in the middle of the First World War, one of the trustees even suggested that the name of the institution should be changed to Carnegie Endowment for International Justice."
I'm not sure any two economists calculate the value of inflation the same way. Whether $3.5 billion is the right number or not, it is orders of magnitude larger than anything funding peace today. And $10 million was only a fraction of what Carnegie put into peace through the funding of trusts, the building of buildings in DC and Costa Rica as well as the Hague, and the funding of individual activists and organizations for years and years. Imagining peace is difficult for some people, perhaps for all of us. Maybe imagining someone wealthy investing in peace would be a step in the right direction. Maybe it will help our thinking to know that it's been done before.
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