Can Knowledge Make the World More Secure?

Deana Arsenian reflects on the ways the Corporation’s International Program advances knowledge and understanding of issues, regions, and countries as an essential — if imperfect — element of its efforts to reduce global threats and promote cooperative approaches to security challenges

By Deana ArsenianAugust 17, 2023

Rescuers work at a building destroyed after Russia conducted two missile strikes on August 8, 2023, in Pokrovsk, Ukraine. Seven people were confirmed dead and more than 80 wounded on this day, a year and a half into the Russian conflict. (Credit: Serhii Korovayny/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

History is a graveyard of wars resulting from the conflict between knowledge and assumptions. As the marking of the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq has suggested through policy debates and media coverage, assumptions about Iraq’s development of weapons of mass destruction were a factor in a war with enormous human, economic, and strategic consequences to the United States, Iraq, and beyond. And as Russia’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine has entered its second year, it is clear that Russia’s assumptions about Ukraine and its resolve and resilience to fight back have unleashed a tragic war with devastating consequences for Ukraine, Russia, and globally.

More than a century ago, Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish American industrialist and one of the richest men in the world, thought the answer to the pivotal and age-old question “Can knowledge make the world more secure?” was a resolute “yes.” He dedicated the bulk of his fortune to create Carnegie Corporation of New York, a grantmaking foundation with the mandate to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding toward strengthening international peace and education. The quest for peace through knowledge generation, and especially in the social sciences, led the Corporation to be an early supporter of area study programs at American universities. Following the end of the Second World War, the Corporation granted seed funding that launched the Russian Research Center (now the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies) at Harvard University in 1948 to encourage better understanding of the Soviet Union — America’s chief Cold War adversary.

The Corporation continues to be guided by Carnegie’s vision that knowledge is essential to societal progress. But this proposition is increasingly tested in today’s fractured, divided, and conflictual world dominated by social media and a glut of information, misinformation, and disinformation offered by humans or generated by bots. Does knowledge matter when truth, facts, and even historical evidence are contested? What qualifies as knowledge when people derive their information from what they consider to be the true source of reliable knowledge? What is the value of the diffusion of knowledge when knowledge-seekers turn to outlets that are best aligned with their points of view?

There is a joke: Father asks son, “What’s worse, ignorance or apathy?” Replies the son, “Dad, I don’t know and I don’t care.” Like all jokes, this one has an element of truth. Yet can humanity — now facing existential crises from climate change to the use of nuclear weapons — afford not to seek and rely on knowledge and understanding? Can citizens and governments alike ignore the distinction, as Plato observed, between knowledge that is tethered to the truth and mere belief that is not?

Many of today’s international challenges stem from post–Cold War geostrategic rivalries and unsettled regional tensions. These and other problems have been exacerbated by climate change, the explosion of social media, rapid technological advances, and the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. And they have been further aggravated by Russia’s war on Ukraine, tension and competition between the United States and China, and divisions between the West and the so-called Global South, which is largely comprised of countries that have not fully backed U.S. and European Union–led sanctions against Russia.

In this environment, the Corporation’s International Program continues to advance knowledge and understanding by promoting research, scholarship, and academic networks in the United States and abroad. The current emphases are on reducing the risks posed by nuclear weapons; promoting better understanding of developments in and research relevant to the major power dynamics involving the United States, China, and Russia; advancing scholarship in Africa and in the Arab region; and narrowing the gap in the United States between the policymaking and academic communities. The ultimate intent of these programs is to increase the likelihood that policy decisions rest on in-depth expertise. And while most Corporation grants go to institutions, fellowships reach individual scholars in the United States and other regions of the Corporation’s attention, as well as displaced or at-risk academics in zones of political instability or military conflict.

As history has shown, since the Corporation’s creation there have been many cases where knowledge about issues, regions, and countries has contributed to policies that have reduced global threats and promoted cooperative approaches to security challenges. There have also been cases where the lack of knowledge has led to bad policy decisions with costly outcomes. Knowledge alone might not prevent or mitigate negative trends or scenarios in an increasingly complicated and dangerous world. But it remains an essential, even if insufficient, element in making the world more secure.

Deana Arsenian is vice president of Carnegie Corporation of New York’s International Program and program director, Russia and Eurasia.