Nobel Politics

We've let several days pass before commenting on Barack Obama's award of the Nobel Peace Prize. We'll leave issues of whether he deserved it or not to the pundits on the left and the right. But what might be more interesting is a look into the politics behind the Nobel committee.

George Friedman offers a nice explanation in this week's Stratfor newsletter. The committee that awards the prize is composed of Norwegian politicians--current and former members of that country's legislature. They are:

• a former Labor Party prime minister
• A former head of the nation's Conservative Party
• a legislator from the Social Democrat Party
• a former lawmaker from the Progress Party
• a current parliamentarian from the Socialist Left Party

So the committee represents the full spectrum of Norwegian politics, as Alfred Nobel hoped it would when he instituted the prize in the 19th century.

The second thing to note about the Nobel Peace Prize is that Pres. Obama's award wasn't the only time the committee shocked the world. Blessed may be the peacemakers, but they don't often win the Nobel prize for it. Some examples:

1. Theodore Roosevelt, one of the greatest American presidents, was awarded the prize in 1906 for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War. But TR's motivations were far from altruistic. He believed that the Japanese were developing a hegemony over Asia that would have disastrous consequences for the United States down the road (His prescience was one reason he was such a great president.) So he stepped in to help the Russians cut a deal so they could remain a viable counterweight in the northern Pacific to the Japanese.
2. In the 1970s North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho shared the prize with Dr. Henry Kissinger. Le Duc Tho was a terrorist whose drive to unite North and South Vietnam led him to the murder of 11,000 South Vietnamese civilians--more than three 9-11s.
3. In the 1990s Yasser Arafat shared the prize with Yitzhak Rabin. Arafat was another terrorist who once had the gall to address the United Nations in waving a handgun.

So the award to Pres. Obama is far from the only eye opener in the history of the award.

The problem, as Mr. Friedman writes, is that Nobel gave his endowment very little direction or criteria on who is worthy of the prize. Left to their own devices a representative panel generally makes the award in accordance with the philosophies of a small, somewhat obscure country on the fringe of Northern Europe.

And something tells me Alfred Nobel wanted it that way.

Just thought you might like to know.