Page "Carnegie Corporation of New York" Paragraph 25

An entirely new focus for the Corporation was the danger to world peace posed by the superpower confrontation and weapons of mass destruction.

The foundation underwrote scientific study of the feasibility of the proposed federal Strategic Defense Initiative and joined the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in supporting the analytic work of a new generation of arms control and nuclear nonproliferation experts.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Corporation grants helped promote the concept of cooperative security among erstwhile adversaries and projects to build democratic institutions in the former Soviet Union and central Europe.

An important undertaking was the Prevention of Proliferation Task Force, coordinated under a grant to the Brookings Institution, which inspired the Nunn-Lugar Amendment to the Soviet Threat Reduction Act of 1991 aimed at dismantling Soviet nuclear weapons and reducing proliferation risks.

More recently, the Corporation has addressed the problems of interethnic and regional conflict and supported projects seeking to diminish the risks of a wider war stemming from civil strife.

Two Carnegie commissions, one on Reducing the Nuclear Danger ( 1990 ), the other on Preventing Deadly Conflict ( 1994 ), together addressed the full range of dangers associated with human conflict and the use of weapons of mass destruction.

The Corporation's thrust in Commonwealth Africa, meanwhile, shifted to women's health and leadership development and the application of science and technology, including new information systems, in fostering research and expertise within indigenous scientific institutions and universities.