Alfred Nobel would be “would be pretty disgusted at what has become of his prize,” says Jay Nordlinger, author of “Peace, They Say: A History of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Most Famous and Controversial Prize in the World, a new book on the Nobel Peace Prize to be released next week.
“Then again, he’d be pleased, some years — as we all are,” Nordlinger added in an interview with The Daily Caller. “There is a saying in golf: Every shot pleases somebody.”
Nordlinger, a senior editor of National Review, said he decided to write the book after the topic was suggested to him because it is a “fascinating subject” that “gives you an overview of the 20th century.” The prize first was awarded in 1901.
“It introduces you to a large, interesting, and consequential cast of characters,” Nordlinger said. “And it leads you to ponder some of the biggest issues: war and peace, freedom and unfreedom, etc.”
Check out TheDC’s full interview with Nordlinger on his book below:
Explain your title, “Peace, They Say.”
The prize-giving committee in Oslo claims that its laureates are “champions of peace,” and the foremost in the world. That is a very big claim. We may not always agree. Peace is a very slippery concept.
Why is the Nobel Peace Prize, as you subtitle the book, “the most famous and controversial prize in the world”?
As for “most famous,” the truth is, it’s probably tied with the Oscar. And something very unusual happened in 2007: The same man, Al Gore, won both. Won both in the same year. Almost certainly, that will never happen again. As for “most controversial,” everyone has his own idea of peace, and his own idea of a peace champion, right? When you hear that Yasser Arafat has won, you might say, “No way.” Just for example.
How did the Nobel Peace Prize achieve its status as the most coveted international prize?
An excellent question, often asked, seldom answered to satisfaction. Here’s a stab: It is old. It belongs to a family of prizes. Though most can’t understand physics or chemistry, everyone can understand peace (or thinks he can). Many important and historic figures have won the prize. It’s worth a lot of dough — $1.5 million at this point. It comes every year, like Christmas or the Super Bowl. The Nobel peace laureate is thought to be some kind of saint.
I don’t know.
Has the prize committee always been political or is this a recent phenomenon?
Politics has always been inseparable from the prize, but I would say the politics started to be really tendentious in the 1980s – Reagan time.
What are some of the most interesting tidbits about the prize you discovered while researching the book?
Well, here’s one. Neville Chamberlain received many nominations for the 1939 prize, on account of the Munich Agreement. (Hitler received one too.) Winston Churchill, sitting in Parliament, nominated the Czechoslovakian president, Edvard Beneš, who was exiled in London. This nomination was so typical of Churchill. A Nobel prize to Beneš would have been a neat black eye to the Nazis, and a neat rebuke of misguided appeasers.
In the end, no Nobel prize for 1939 was given: The Nazis invaded Poland about a month and a half before the prize would have been announced. There were no prizes during the war. (A 1944 prize was given in retrospect, to the International Committee of the Red Cross.)
How did the prize committee justify awarding Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, apparently deciding less than two weeks after he was sworn in as president!
It’s true that nominations are due by February 1 (and Obama was sworn in on January 20, 2009). But the committee has until mid-October to contemplate the nominations. That’s when they announce. And Obama was an American president after the committee’s own heart. If the committee could design an American president from scratch, he would look almost exactly like Barack Obama. I think they see one of their own: basically a social democrat.
Who have been some of the least deserving Nobel Peace Prize recipients?
If I could name a class, I would say the disarmers, especially the unilateral disarmers: the disarmers before World War II and during the Cold War. Their activities were not peace-tending, if you believe in deterrence, as I do.
If I could name one prize, I would say the prize to the International Atomic Energy Agency and its then-director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, in 2005. The IAEA missed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program before the Gulf War. Indeed, Saddam sat on the board of governors from 1980 to 1991. The IAEA missed the Iranian nuclear program – we learned of it from dissidents. That’s forgivable. But ElBaradei appeared to do all he could to protect Tehran from sanctions or more severe measures. I’m afraid I consider him an enabler of the Iranian nuclear program.
Now, one could easily disagree with me about the culpability of the IAEA and ElBaradei. But a Nobel Peace Prize to them? Unjustifiable, I think. I regard the 2005 prize as merely a taunt of the George W. Bush administration and its allies for failing to find WMD in Iraq, ready to go, after the 2003 invasion.
Who are the most deserving figures of the prize who have been denied it?
Many would say Gandhi. People like me would say Reagan. Vaclav Havel would have been a good one – but they gave the 1983 prize to Lech Walesa, and they may have figured they had Eastern Europe covered, so to speak.
Who are some interesting and infamous people who have been nominated for the prize? How easy is it to be nominated?
Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin were all nominated. (Tojo, no.) Many, many people are eligible to nominate – more than people know. For instance, “members of national assemblies and governments.” And “university professors of social science, history, philosophy, law and theology.” The committee would receive many more nominations if people knew they were eligible to nominate.
What was Alfred Nobel’s intent in starting the prize? If he were alive today, do you think he would be satisfied with how his prize has been administered?
Like many others in the latter part of the 19th century, Nobel believed in evolutionary progress: Step by step, mankind would be lifted up, by science, for example. If there were progress in chemistry, might there not be progress in international relations, too? If microbes were eliminated, might not war be eliminated, or at least mitigated, too?
It’s always risky to speak for the dead, but I think Nobel would be pretty disgusted at what has become of his prize. Then again, he’d be pleased, some years – as we all are. There is a saying in golf: Every shot pleases somebody.