by Bruce Thornton<\/p>\n
FrontPage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n Norway\u2019s Nobel Committee added yet another absurd pick to its long list of politicized and shameful Peace Prize awards. Giving the prize to the disintegrating European Union is not as despicable as giving it to the bloodstained terrorist Yasser Arafat, or as laughably naive as bestowing it on the communist fraud Rigoberta Mench\u00fa. But awarding it to the EU is yet again a mark of the Committee\u2019s long commitment to the questionable and serially unsuccessful notion of internationalist idealism, and its corollary disdain for national loyalties and interests.<\/p>\n The Nobel Peace Prize for most of its existence has favored the idealistic internationalism that believes international law, trans-national organizations, and diplomatic \u201cengagement\u201d\u00a0can create peace and order and replace national self-interests and the use of force to maintain global order and stop aggression. In 1919, Woodrow Wilson won the prize for creating the serially impotent League of Nations, and for the next three years, the Prize was awarded to people connected with the League. In 1925, England\u2019s Austen Chamberlain won for signing the Locarno Treaty, along with England, Italy, Belgium, and Germany, claiming it would \u201cclose the war chapter and start Europe afresh.\u201d A\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0headline celebrated, \u201cFrance and Germany Ban War Forever.\u201d In 1926, the Prize went to Aristide Briand, the French Prime Minister, who also had signed Locarno. In 1929, United States Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg won the Peace Prize for co-authoring, along with Aristide Briand, the Kellogg-Briand Pact. By the terms of this agreement, the contracting parties \u201ccondemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another,\u201d and \u201cagree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts . . . shall never be sought except by pacific means.\u201d Forty-nine nations signed it, including the future Axis aggressors Germany, Italy, and Japan.<\/p>\n Anyone familiar with the history of the low, dishonest decade following the Kellogg-Briand Pact\u2019s \u201coutlawing\u201d of war knows that all these idealistic agreements did nothing to stop the relentless march to world war facilitated by those appeasers in the West who believed such diplomatic magical thinking could be effective against aggressors\u2019 willingness to use violence to achieve their aims.<\/p>\n Yet such failures have not deterred the Nobel Committee from continuing to reward internationalist delusions. The 2009 prize was awarded to Barack Obama not for accomplishing anything, but \u201cfor his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,\u201d the Committee announced. \u201cObama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts.\u201d A mere 3 years later, the abject failure of Obama\u2019s outreach to the Muslim world, his \u201creset\u201d with Russia, his empowerment of the jihadist Muslim Brothers in Egypt, and his \u201cextended hand\u201d to Iran\u2019s genocidal mullahs have yet again revealed the dangers of idealistic internationalism.<\/p>\n The corollary of internationalism is a profound distrust of sovereign nation-states with their parochial interests and exclusionary identities. Misinterpreting history, the internationalists blamed the Great War on nationalist loyalties and national sovereignty, and thought the answer was some form of \u201cworld government,\u201d or at least a \u201cworld parliament\u201d like the League of Nations. Woodrow Wilson expressed this faith when he said in 1917, \u201cNational purposes have fallen more and more into the background; and the common purpose of enlightened mankind has taken their place.\u201d Even the failure of the League, however, didn\u2019t prevent the creation of the UN after World War II.<\/p>\n Since then, the UN has functioned as nothing more than the creature of the nationalist interests of member states, particularly those hostile to the interests of the United States. And it has failed abjectly at its mission to stop war and crimes against humanity, from Sudan to Kosovo and now Syria. No matter: in 2001 the Committee awarded the prize to the UN and Secretary General Kofi Annan \u201cfor their work for a better organized and more peaceful world.\u201d The UN\u2019s failure has reflected the failed philosophy of idealistic internationalism that created it, and the reason for that failure is obvious: despite all of internationalism\u2019s wish-fulfilling fantasies, nations continue to see their identities and particular interests as reflections of their own unique cultures, not some imaginary global \u201ccommon purpose\u201d or identity.<\/p>\n Given this history, awarding the Peace Prize to the EU because it has \u201cfor over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe,\u201d as the Committee said, makes perfect sense, though it conveniently ignores the role of American money and military power in achieving those boons. The EU was created out of the same mistaken notion that national loyalties and interests had caused all the misery and wars of the previous century. By more closely joining European nations, especially France and Germany, with a common currency, common laws, an EU court and parliament, and closer economic integration, these selfish interests and nationalist loyalties could be diminished and their malign effects minimized.<\/p>\n The Eurozone\u2019s financial meltdown has exploded that ideal, unleashing long-simmering nationalist hatreds and resentments, as Angela Merkel learned firsthand when she was met in Athens with protestors greeting her with the Nazi salute. Nor are most thrifty, hard-working Germans happy about subsidizing the\u00a0dolce vita<\/em>\u00a0lifestyle of spendthrift Mediterranean countries. The foundational dream of the EU is awakening to the reality of national differences, yet the Nobel Committee \u2014 from a country that has twice rejected joining the EU \u2014 could not overcome its long love affair with trans-national government and idealistic internationalism, both predicated on a dislike of nations that pursue their own interests.<\/p>\n That commitment to internationalism and disdain for national loyalty and interests is why in 2002 the Nobel Committee awarded the prize to Jimmy Carter. Though ostensibly awarded \u201cfor his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts,\u201d the perennial Nobel highest good, the award was announced about the time the US Congress authorized the war in Iraq. It also didn\u2019t hurt that Carter had been a vocal critic of George Bush. With this award the Committee expressed its traditional preference for internationalism and diplomacy. But it also signaled its distaste for nations that believe their own interests and security sometimes will be pursued by force, and that decide the choice is ultimately theirs to make. So too with Al Gore\u2019s 2007 prize for his advocacy on global warming. That choice was another rebuke of the United States, this time for rejecting the Kyoto Treaty and thus refusing to pass legislation that would have seriously damaged America\u2019s economy and subordinated its own interests to those of the \u201cinternational community.\u201d The Committee likes only those Americans who criticize their own country and are happy to cede sovereignty to international institutions. What else explains the absurdity of awarding Mikhail Gorbachev the Prize in 1990 and ignoring Ronald Reagan, the real architect of bringing down the Soviet Union?<\/p>\n Giving the Peace Prize to the EU is yet another nail in the coffin of Nobel credibility. The delusions of idealistic internationalism and diplomacy that dominate the Committee\u2019s ideology \u2014 and that underlie Barack Obama\u2019s foreign policy \u2014 have been exposed over and over for more than a century. We are witnessing its dangers right now in the Middle East, where Iran relentlessly marches towards a nuclear weapon, Egypt is morphing into another Islamist state, a Libya liberated by the West swarms with terrorist militias, and the civil war in Syria is breeding another generation of battle-seasoned jihadists. And though the EU is unlikely to descend into such Darwinian violence, its further disintegration could very likely lead to civic disorder and the empowerment of extremist political parties. Its long history of failure makes \u201cNobel Peace Prize\u201d an Orwellian name.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce Thornton FrontPage Magazine Norway\u2019s Nobel Committee added yet another absurd pick to its long list of politicized and shameful Peace Prize awards. Giving the prize to the disintegrating European Union is not as despicable as giving it to the bloodstained terrorist Yasser Arafat, or as laughably naive as bestowing it on the communist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,86,194,99],"tags":[12,1015,202,204,200,1056,1037],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-6o","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2214,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-the-prize-and-political-theater\/","url_meta":{"origin":396,"position":0},"title":"Obama, the Prize and Political Theater","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine Giving Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, after a mere nine months in office and no foreign policy achievements whatsoever, confirms that the prize is a bit of political theater in which those Americans who put the world\u2019s interests ahead of their own country\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5418,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/nobel-nobel\/","url_meta":{"origin":396,"position":1},"title":"Nobel Nobel?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Al Gore's evangelical liberalism reconsidered. by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers Al Gore embodies a type that usually turns up in high school or university faculties, what we can call the evangelical liberal. These folks believe they have received the revealed truth about everything, and so are entitled to hector\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12911,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wests-wokeness-helped-russia-to-redefine-a-prisoner-of-conscience\/","url_meta":{"origin":396,"position":2},"title":"West’s ‘wokeness’ helped Russia to redefine a ‘prisoner of conscience’","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 1, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"An article by my Hoover colleague Dr. Paul Gregory in The Hill By forcing the standards of \u201cwokeness\u201d on a Western institution like Amnesty International, the Kremlin has weakened Russian dissident\u00a0Aleksei Navalny\u00a0as he begins his almost three years in a penal colony near Vladimir (190 km from Moscow). Everyone understands\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12665,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/destroying-the-institutions-we-inherited\/","url_meta":{"origin":396,"position":3},"title":"Destroying the Institutions We Inherited","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 16, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review In\u00a0the 21st century, hallmark American and international institutions have lost much of their prestige and respect. Politics and biases explain the lack of public confidence in organizations and institutions such as the World Health Organization, the Commission on Presidential Debates, the Nobel Peace Prize,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2204,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/just-not-into-you-a-letter-to-europe\/","url_meta":{"origin":396,"position":4},"title":"Just Not Into You: A Letter to Europe","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 19, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Norway stunned the world by awarding the coveted Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama, who was nominated for the honor after being in office less than two weeks. But the award is in keeping with Europeans' behavior over these first nine months of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2009"","block_context":{"text":"October 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/october-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7125,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-incoherence-of-western-foreign-policy\/","url_meta":{"origin":396,"position":5},"title":"The Incoherence of Western Foreign Policy","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 19, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine\u00a0 The crisis in Ukraine is just the latest in a long series of foreign policy failures brought about by the incoherence in our thinking about foreign relations. On the one hand, we have championed ethnic-national self-determination as the highest international good, while on the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ukraine"","block_context":{"text":"Ukraine","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/ukraine\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5629,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions\/5629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}