The Nobel Peace Prize: Blessed be the peacemakers?
sigmundcarlandalfred.wordpress.com
Has Alfred Nobel’s Peace Prize has become something other than its founder intended?
There probably never was a finer gift donated to ‘the greatest benefit of mankind’ than the prize that the Swedish inventor and tycoon Alfred Nobel (1833-96) established for ‘the champions of peace’. The abolition of war has been a hopeful dream of most people through all ages. When, on November 27th, 1895, Nobel signed his last will he had concluded that his desire for global peace required global disarmament founded on global law. He intended his prize to promote a systemic change in international relations.
Hardly any of his inventions have been more effective than the five prizes Nobel established for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peacemaking. They have become a visible, lasting international institution, attracting global attention to great minds and deeds, innovative ideas and discoveries twice every year.
The Nobel Foundation, the money management and the awarding committees are all located in Stockholm - with one exception: Nobel entrusted the selections for the Peace Prize to an independent committee of five to be appointed by the Norwegian parliament. Nobel obviously saw theStorting as the best place to find a committee of persons qualified and enthusiastic about the promotion of peace through law and disarmament.
Until the Second World War the committees were reasonably loyal to Nobel’s original vision. Yet the prize has long ceased to challenge the financially powerful and deadly forces it was supposed to combat. Instead of appointing committee members loyal to Nobel’s intentions, the majority of parliamentarians use the prize to serve their own purposes. Only the Nobel name is left; in reality the Storting has asserted its control and, over the last decade in particular, the prize has deteriorated into a business operation and a glamorous social event.
Many Nobel Peace Prizes, including those awarded jointly in 1973 to Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state, and the Vietnamese revolutionary Le Duc Tho, and in 2007 to former US Vice President Al Gore, have been severely questioned. Yet a simple glance at Nobel’s original text is sufficient to confirm that something more fundamental has gone wrong.