Our Tragic Flaw

So much has been written about this, I'm not sure I have much to add. But still, I can hardly let an event of this magnitude pass without comment.

It has been said ad nauseum, and correctly, that Obama hasn't done anything yet that could be regarded as especially--noteworthily--peaceful, except to emphatically NOT be George Bush. And even here, he has been a lot more like Bush than we had reason to believe based on the tone and content of his campaign.

A review of past laureates reveals, I think, three strategies variously used by the committee to choose the winner each year.

1. People who unambiguously represent peace or some related ideal, such as Martin Luther King (1964), Mother Teresa (1979), Desmond Tutu (1984), Elie Wiesel (1986), the Dalai Lama (1989), Aung San Suu Kyi (1991), Nelson Mandela (1993), and others.

2. People who had crossed over from the dark side to become associated with a good and peaceful outcome. These laureates are often coupled with people from the first category. Some examples of the second type from recent decades include Henry Kissinger (1973), Menachem Begin (1978), Mikhail Gorbachev (1990), Frederik Willem de Klerk (1993), Yasser Arafat (1994),  and others.

3. People who have the opportunity to become significant peacemakers in the future, usually an effort by the committee to steer that figure in a peaceful direction. Recent examples include Kim Dae Jung (2000), Kofi Annan (2001), and of course Barack Obama (2009).

Any list that includes Mother Teresa and Henry Kissinger is obviously ambiguous, to say the least. But the list, and especially the timing of the awards these various sorts of people received, shows one obvious pattern: political opportunism. The committee is trying to influence world affairs in a more peaceful direction. If one has an incrementalist (liberal) approach to social change, as the Nobel Peace committee clearly does, this strategy has obvious merit--even if it puts the committee in the awkward position of awarding something called a peace prize to someone so obviously devoid of peaceful intent as Henry Kissinger.

The real question here is whether this strategy actually works. I'm inclined to think that it doesn't, at least not very well. Consider the 1994 three-way prize to Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres. Fifteen years and a couple of intifadas later and still no peace in Israel/Palestine. Not even close.

In my view--which admittedly takes a radical rather than liberal turn--the failure of the Nobel committee's strategy is the failure to distinguish between business-as-usual political processes aimed toward peaceful outcomes and nonviolent processes aimed toward a nonviolent society. To me, a vast gulf separates these two realms. They have almost nothing in common. And yet, in the modern world the word "peace" is thought to apply equally to either.

As long as this remains the case we will continue to have such ridiculous laureates as Barack Obama (not to mention Henry Kissinger), and the cause of peace will make only modest and fleeting gains.

If we really aim for peace, we must aim much, much higher. Then and only then do we stand the remotest chance of actually achieving it.