The Ignoble Noble

Why him? Why now? And what is the real aim of the peace prize?

When it was first established in 1900, the Nobel committee clearly thought itshould be awarded to people who really did believe in peaceful solutions and non-violence. Accordingly, in1901, the first brace of recipients were Jean Henry Dumont, the Swiss founder of the Red Cross, and FrédéricPassy, the French dreamer who founded the International League for a Permanent Peace. Similar recipients weresought and found over the next four years.

A rearguard action must have been mounted soon after, because in 1906 the prizewas awarded to Theodore Roosevelt, the US president. To be fair, this swashbuckling, aggressive leader neverhid his love of war and adventure. In The Rough Riders (1899), a riveting account of the Spanish-American war(which led to the establishment of the base atGuantanamo Bay), Teddy describes an engagement with the Spanishenemy in Cuba: "By this time we were all in the spirit of the thing and greatly excited by the charge,the men cheering and running forward between shots, while the delighted faces of the foremost officers, likeCaptain CJ Stevens, of the Ninth, as they ran at the head of their troops, will always stay in my mind."

The imperial resolve of the old warrior is admired to this day. Donald Rumsfeld,the US defence secretary, has a plaque in his office with a quotation from Roosevelt in praise of war andempire. The prescience of the Nobel committee can only be admired.

The decision must have led to a vigorous debate in which the doves triumphed.For the next four years, the prize was awarded to genuine peace activists. Soon after, the blood of the firstworld war soiled the drawing rooms of the belle époque. A traumatised Nobel committee went into hibernation.No prizes were awarded between 1914 and 1919, with the exception of the prize given to the Red Cross in 1917.

This is slightly surprising since there was no shortage of distinguishedthinkers and politicians opposed to the war: Keir Hardie and Bertrand Russell in Britain; the French Socialistleader, Jean Jaures, who was assassinated for his hostility to the conflict; the German Socialist member ofparliament, Karl Liebknecht, who voted against war credits in the Reichstag and declared that "a patriotwas an international blackleg", and his colleague Rosa Luxemburg, who was imprisoned for her fieryanti-war speeches; and yes, two unknown Russian exiles, Lenin and Trotsky, who convened a European conferencein the Swiss town of Zimmerwald to oppose the war. None of these people was considered suitable for the prize.

There was no doubt in 1920. The architect of the Treaty of Versailles was theunanimous choice of the committee. Both variants of US imperial power - Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson -had now been rewarded. A pity that no member of the committee had bothered to read Keynes' lucid pamphlet, TheEconomic Consequences of the Peace, which predicted the dire results that led to the rise of fascism inGermany.

Throughout the 1920s, the committee reflected a pathetic helplessness in theface of a growing crisis. Politicians, usually of the same liberal-conservative stripe, were regularlyrewarded. During the 1930s, world politics was dominated by the fascist victories in Italy, Germany and Spain,the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and the eruption of a mass non-violent struggle against the Britishempire in India. The committee, sensitive to these developments, was divided. In 1938, the shortlist for theprize was headed by Hitler and Gandhi. The choice proved too difficult for the mandarins. The prize ultimatelywent to the Nansen International Office of Refugees.

The committee's inclusion of Hitler appears shocking today, but at the timemany in the west regarded the German Führer as a bulwark against Bolshevism. Earlier, the American writerGertrude Stein had come out for Hitler getting the prize. "I say that Hitler ought to have the peaceprize, because he is removing all the elements of contest and of struggle from Germany," she wrote in theNew York Times magazine in May 1934. "By driving out the Jews and the democratic and left element, he isdriving out everything that conduces to activity. That means peace... By suppressing Jews... he was endingstruggle in Germany."

In 1938, Time magazine had made Hitler its "Man of the Year" with anappreciative profile and in Britain, Geoffrey Dawson, editor of the Times, had no doubt that an Anglo-Germandeal was vital for world peace. Hitler's pre-invasion rhetoric, too, emphasised his desire for peace. Theinvasions were presented as defensive, humanitarian operations, necessitated by the threat posed to the ThirdReich or ethnic Germans by Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, etc.

The committee decided that if Hitler was not acceptable, then neither wasGandhi. But did it ever consider giving them a joint prize, as became the norm later in that century? In 1973it was Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam's chief negotiator, Le Duc Tho (the latter declined to accept theprize in such company); in 1978 it was the former Israeli terrorist Menachem Begin and the turncoat Egyptianleader Anwar Sadat; in 1993 it was Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk; in 1994 three recipients - Yasser Arafat,Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin - shared the loot. Why was Mother Teresa awarded it on her own in 1979? Surelyher close friend and sponsor Papa Doc Duvalier of Haiti could have been included?

In keeping with this tradition, the shortlist for this year included a jointaward to George Bush and Tony Blair. The committee was browbeaten by 43,000 protest letters from all over theworld and caved in to the pressure. Another time, perhaps - after the occupation of Iraq. Also on the list wasHamid Karzai, the puppet ruler of Kabul, but without his sparring partner Mullah Omar, whose refusal to engagemade it a short war. Instead, the committee panicked and awarded the prize to another US president.

Thecommendation honouring Carter should read as follows:

For ordering the CIA to organise the killers running the death squads in Argentina to train NicaraguanContras in Honduras and hurl them into battle against the Sandinista government.
For dispatching millions in aid and riot equipment to the Salvadorian military and sending US personnel totrain Salvadorian officers in Panama.
For sending special envoy Richard Holbrooke to South Korea, where workers and students were demandingdemocracy. Holbrooke gave US backing to the South Korean military and insisted that they crush the rebellion.Some 3,000 South Koreans were killed in March 1980.
For authorising the covert CIA operation in Afghanistan that led to the creation of the mojahedin and givingthe green light for Saudi religious, ideological and financial intervention, begun under the leadership ofOsama bin Laden.
For re-arming Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Thailand after they were defeated by the Vietnamese.
For leading a campaign in favour of the release of Lieutenant William Calley, found guilty of mass murder inthe My Lai massacre in South Vietnam.
For support and weaponry supplied to the Indonesian military dictatorship after the brutal occupation of EastTimor.
For encouraging the rise of the Christian right.
For accepting financial help from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International while this outfit calmlycheated its depositors.