2012 Nobel Peace Prize

[BlackCat]

So you didn't have 60 years of peace then?

You can't have it both ways.

Serbia/Croatia/Bosnia wasn't members of EU back then

[Asher]

We can't entirely rule out the 60 years of peace as merely coincidental- but it takes a seriously blinkered viewpoint to consider that to be probable.

But you do not understand Zevico's point. You cannot definitively state the EU prevented wars. Every other Nobel Peace Prize winner was chosen after exhaustive scientific studies which proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that their winners prevented wars.

[kentonio]

You're anti-Kissinger?

Anyone who isn't anti-Kissinger doesn't know enough about Kissinger.

[regexcellent]

there's more weight behind this award than many others in recent years.

And that's such high praise.

[regexcellent]

Especially when the prosperity of all the nations within the group are linked together.

The linked prosperity thing is true of most marriages also. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

[Elok]

Aren't Nobel Prizes supposed to be given to individuals or small groups? As opposed to, say, half a continent?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

So you didn't have 60 years of peace then?

You can't have it both ways.

You might want to check which nations are EU members.

[Alexander's Horse]

The EU has ultimately allowed Germany to dominate Europe without firing a shot - if only the Kaiser had been interested in trade agreements instead of battleships, and Hitler had written Mein Regulation instead of Kampf the Germans might have saved us all a hell of a lot of trouble.

[regexcellent]

You aussies were mainly fighting the Japanese as I recall.

[notyoueither]

Correlation is not causation, Bugs. The EU's nation states may be in a state of peace but that does not mean thy have the EU to thank for it.

I think you have to take the EU into account given that maintaining peace among themselves has always been a stated aim of European integration, but of course other factors are important as well.

How about we give next years prize to the the nuclear arsenals of the USA and the USSR/Russia. They have been the largest factor in keeping developed nations from ripping into each other over the last 65 years globally.

[molly bloom]

You're anti-Kissinger?

Oh because of the whole not pro-Israel thing? You going to call Kissinger an anti-Semite, too?

I find that 'international war criminal' usually suffices- at least in moral terms.

[molly bloom]

I think you have to take the EU into account given that maintaining peace among themselves has always been a stated aim of European integration, but of course other factors are important as well.

How about we give next years prize to the the nuclear arsenals of the USA and the USSR/Russia. They have been the largest factor in keeping developed nations from ripping into each other over the last 65 years globally.

Pity about all the other proxy wars across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Central America...

[notyoueither]

Yes, it is a pity, although I am not sure if those countries would have enjoyed being battlegrounds between two industrialised sides representing ~1 billion people going at it in a hot war. I imagine the devastation of Europe in 1945, but on a much wider scale. And then again, there would be the continued devastation of Europe as the main battleground in a Red Star - White Star scenario.

[Imran Siddiqui]

David Frum, no liberal, has written a good article on this:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/10/13/david-frum-giving-the-eu-its-nobel-due/

On first hearing the news, it seems just crazy to award the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union. Not quite “Let’s give it to Obama before he’s actually done anything” crazy (as in 2009) — but still, crazy.

It’s not just that the European Union is a big, amorphous bureaucratic entity. (Next winner: the International Postal Union.) Nor is it just that the real heavy-lifting of keeping the peace in Europe was done by another organization entirely, with a different membership list. (That would be NATO.) It’s not even that the Norwegians who award the prize have themselves repeatedly refused to join the EU they so admire. (They don’t want to share their oil wealth with Portugal and Greece, and who can blame them?)

The prize seems crazy because this award comes at precisely the moment when the European Union’s faults are throwing into misery people across southern Europe —and threatening to capsize the whole global economy.

It’s theoretically possible to imagine an EU that had never gotten itself into the Euro mess. Many in the EU opposed the currency-union idea, including future German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Some EU countries refused to join the Euro (Britain) or delayed entry sufficiently long as to avoid being dragged into the catastrophe (Poland). But the EU did get itself into the Euro mess, and it got into the mess for classically EU-type reasons.

The EU characteristically insists on regarding economic problems as political problems first and foremost. A currency is classically defined as a store of value and a medium of exchange. But the EU treated the Euro as an expression of an ideal. Unsurprisingly, a currency that exists to express ideals has flunked its economic functions.

What’s even weirder is that the Euro currency did the least harm to the country that most opposed it (Germany, which saw its exports soar); has done more harm to the country that most demanded it (France, which saw its exports collapse); and has done the most harm of all to the countries that thought themselves the biggest winners (Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece, which were lured into massive public and private borrowing they could not afford). European leaders gave so little thought to the economics of currency that they did not — or could not — calculate their own national advantage.

So boo to the Nobel committee?

Well … no. Not so fast.

The Norwegians are sending a reminder flare to their continental neighbours: In the throes of today’s crisis, please remember, the Euro may have been a mistake, but the European Union must be preserved. The EU must be preserved not only as the obviously beneficial trading area that it is, but also (yes) as an ideal.

It’s an inspiring thing to visit the German-Polish border and see — not barriers, not legacies of old hatreds — but goods-laden trucks whizzing past as casually as if they were crossing the North Carolina-South Carolina state line. It’s an inspiring thing to visit Alsace and see this territory that was contested in three terrible wars arrive at peace via the simple proposition: If you want a house in Alsace, buy one. Who cares which sovereign delivers the mail?

The European Union presents every member nation with a magnificently attractive vision: A Europe at peace with itself, a Europe of rising prosperity, a Europe in which Europeans can move freely to live and work. When extremist forces arise in European countries — as they are rising now in Greece and in Hungary — they are met with the answer, “But if we yield to these forces, we’ll put ourselves outside Europe. No more right to work in London. No more aid from Germany.” The desire to qualify for Europe has powerfully pulled countries such as Serbia and Romania along the democratic path — and in years to come will exert the same force upon Belarus and Ukraine.

That’s a powerful and precious achievement. At a moment when the achievement risks being lost or forgotten due to a financial fiasco, the parliamentarians of Oslo did well to use their most effective platform to remind Europe and the world of what is at risk.

[Zevico]

Ideals don't require preservation by supra-national bureaucracies.