PEACE | Carnegie Endowment Report

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has just published its 2016 annual report. Here is the letter accompanying the report, which can be accessed online.

Dear Colleague, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace I am very pleased to share with you the 2016 annual report of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace—the oldest international affairs think tank in the United States. Andrew Carnegie founded the Carnegie Endowment at a critical historical juncture. The foundations of the system of international order that had prevailed in the nineteenth century were beginning to crack. Catastrophic war and disorder loomed. The last great surge of the Industrial Revolution was transforming the global economy. The Endowment became an invaluable actor across the rest of the century, helping to establish and reinforce the new system of order that emerged out of the two world wars and produced more peace and prosperity in the second half of the twentieth century than Andrew Carnegie could ever have imagined. The world is once again at a transformative moment. Profound forces are shaking the underpinnings of international order: the return of great power rivalry; the emergence of new powers; deepening challenges to order in key regions; the growing use of new information technologies as levers of disruption and division within and among countries; the shift of economic dynamism from west to east and destabilizing economic stagnation and dislocation; and a surge of populist nationalism. [Emphasis added by this blog.] As you read this report, I hope you will gain an appreciation for the depth and breadth of our enterprise and the value of an institution like ours to help leaders in boardrooms and situation rooms around the world keep pace with a rapidly transforming world. I look forward to keeping in touch and welcoming you to Carnegie in the near future. Warm Regards, Bill Burns President Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

CarnegieEndowment.org BEIJING BEIRUT BRUSSELS MOSCOW NEW DELHI WASHINGTON

PEACE | Ireland Bond Proposal

Hillary Clinton with Irish-born professor Louise Richardson
 (R), a terrorism scholar and the new Vice Chancellor of
Oxford University

With Hillary Clinton maintaining her position at the front of the field of U.S. presidential candidates, it's worth taking looking again at her proposal last year for a new bond to raise money for the Northern Ireland economy.

As reported in the Belfast Telegraph, she urged Northern Ireland leaders in Washington on June 27, 2007 to consider floating a bond to allow Northern Ireland to obtain greater international funds for local companies seeking to go global. The bonds would be sold to international investors.

An Ireland Peace Bond was proposed by the New York City Comptroller in March 1995, when the issuer was envisioned as a multi-country development bank as opposed to, in Clinton's proposal, the Northern Ireland Government.

It is interesting to note that Eamon de Valera obtained crucial American money as a leader of Éire. In 1919-1920 he came to the United States to sell bonds issued in January 1920 to Irish-Americans and raised $5.5 million, far more than the Dáil of the new Irish Republic expected.

Of this money, $500,000 was devoted to the American presidential campaign in 1920, which helped de Valera gain wider U.S. support. Questions were later raised about $1.5 million of proceeds spent in the United States and how much reached Ireland. Some of the Éire bond certificates are in museums because they were not repaid, something that will surely not be held against the Northern Ireland Government.