Following the seemingly emerging trend of bestowing prestigious international awards to unlikely and contentious candidates, this year’s Nobel Peace prize will go to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Praised for “its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons,” and in light of recent transgressions in Syria, this appears at first a symbolic appreciation for their thankless task that lies ahead amidst the civil war.
Why then, was there such uproar from Russians, and others, alike? Why was it labelled by the journalist and historian, William Engdahl, a “political dodge?” They insist that the only valid recipients, if the award is to praise the resolution of Syria’s international crisis, are Vladimir Putin and his Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov.
Clearly this is a controversy in itself, for beyond the realms of Pravda, nobody disputes that Putin is no angel. Being almost the sole provider for the Assad regime, the recent memories of his wars in Georgia, and before that, Chechnya, afford him the scorn of diplomats and journalists, while his endorsement of homophobic legislation and suppression of dissidents attract more international reproach. Indeed, it can be said that in inheriting as unpopular, and unwinnable war as Chechnya he and his Nobel-winning counterpart, Obama, are quite alike. However, in Syria it is a stark fact that while the US was gearing up for intervention (with France in tow, apparently only “hours” from striking), Putin’s intercedence is the solitary reason that the missiles remained in their silos.
By rewarding those who were sent at Putin’s behest the Nobel Committee has, perhaps intentionally, unearthed something. The Western world is not ready for the hypocrisy of Putin, the Nobel laureate; be that for his record, or for his non-Western politics. For him to be deemed ‘beyond the pale’ when considering the European Union’s 2012 award (amidst the present social and economic turmoil), and Obama’s 2009 award, after only nine months in office (and something of a mixed record in his pursuit of peace), is only made more remarkable.
Whether history books will duly accredit Putin with disarming the Syrian crisis will remain to be seen; the more immediate concern is, with awards like these, how long the Nobel Committee can guarantee its standing as a credible, truly international institution.
Image CC, courtesy of World Economic Forum, Flickr.
Ed Hernandez
October 24, 2013
Really? The immediate concern is the Nobel prize’s reputation? And what exactly is that reputation? Did it ever have a decent reputation given the founder of the prize was an inventor of munitions.
Matt Finucane
October 24, 2013
Oh, sure it’s origins are shady, but that doesn’t negate some of the good work it’s done. I feel like it has the potential to redeem itself with opportunities such as this, but that it squanders them.
Ed Hernandez
October 24, 2013
I’d like to know what good the Nobel prize has ever done in the past. The physics prizes encourage those in the field to keep trying to understand the cosmos but the peace prize has never been truly supportive of peacemakers when it started including war mongerers among its recipients. Starting in 1906 when they awarded Teddy Roosevelt the laureate. “The Norwegian Left argued that Roosevelt was a “military mad” imperialist who completed the American conquest of the Philippines. Swedish newspapers wrote that Alfred Nobel was turning in his grave, and that Norway awarded the Peace Prize to Roosevelt in order to win powerful friends after the dramatic dissolution of the union with Sweden the previous year.”
Matt Finucane
October 25, 2013
Sure, Roosevelt was a terrible choice, a rabid imperialist surrounded by others like him, that began America’s pursuit of multi-regional hegemony. Kissinger is another, and I think the most unforgivable. But rewarding Gustav Stresemann, Woodrow Wilson, and Norman Angell for sincere attempts at peacemaking’s pretty noble. It’s just a shame they’re all almost a century ago.